Should You Disqualify Competitors Who Attend Your Webinar?

If you run free webinars for a professional-services firm, other professionals in your field will register. Most firms treat them as a targeting problem and drop them from follow-up. We've learned they can be one of the most valuable segments in the audience, because they already work with the clients you want. The better move is to split them out and follow up with a partnership conversation.

Why other professionals register for your webinars

Webinars in a big vertical like financial services attract more than prospects. A session on tax planning, exit planning or reading financial statements is useful to anyone who advises business owners, so financial advisors, attorneys, bankers and other accountants sign up alongside the owners you were targeting.

As long as your webinars are free and your topics are useful, it's pretty much unavoidable. Tightening the ad targeting rarely removes them, and it can shrink the audience you do want.

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Why they're worth keeping

Most firms see an adjacent job title in the registrant list and flag it as a poor fit. That makes sense if the only goal of the webinar is selling to the person in the room.

But these people already work with your ideal clients. Their services very likely complement yours, and referrals in both directions would help both firms. One advisor who sends you clients for years is worth more than most single prospects in the audience.

How to follow up with them

The key is to treat them as their own segment, with their own follow-up.

Tag every registrant by role. In the CRM, mark each contact as a business owner, an advisor or referral source, or a direct competitor. Job title, firm type and a quick look at their website usually settle it.

Take them out of the prospect sequence. A referral source who gets your "book a consultation" email is getting the wrong message, and it signals you didn't notice who they are.

Reach out personally with a partnership angle. Mention the session they attended, say what kind of clients you serve, and ask about theirs. The goal is a conversation about how you could help each other's clients.

Keep inviting them. Someone who came once to a session on a topic their clients care about will often come back, and every session is another touchpoint before the referral conversation.

An example

Say a CPA attends a financial advisor's webinar on retirement planning for business owners.

The advisor's sales follow-up would be wasted on the CPA. But the advisor could reach out and ask how the CPA helps clients save on taxes, so those clients have more to reinvest. That's a natural conversation, it's relevant to both practices, and it can turn into referrals in both directions.

What this has looked like in practice

One of the firms I work with has done exactly this. Some of their booked meetings came from this shift, which then led to new client referrals. Their CRM now tags every webinar attendee by type, so the partners can see which referral sources are already in the audience before they reach out.

When a competitor really is a competitor

Some registrants really are direct competitors checking out your content. That's fine. Your webinar is public, and the value you deliver to clients is in how you do the work, which a one-hour session doesn't give away. Tag them so they stay out of both the prospect and the partner follow-up, and move on.

Frequently asked questions

Should I block competitors from registering for my webinar?

Usually not. Blocking takes effort, it's easy to get wrong, and it can screen out the advisors and other professionals who could refer clients to you. Tagging them and following up differently is simpler and more useful.

How do I tell a referral partner from a competitor in my registrant list?

Look at what their firm does and who it serves. Someone who serves the same clients with a different service, like an advisor attending a CPA's webinar, is a potential referral partner. Someone offering the same service to the same clients is a competitor. A short research pass on each registrant's title and website, or an enrichment step in your CRM, sorts most of the list.

What should follow-up to a referral partner say?

Keep it personal and short. Reference the session they attended, say who you serve and how, and ask about the clients they work with. Leave the consultation offer out. The goal of the first message is a relationship.

Does this only apply to financial services firms?

No. Any professional-services firm whose clients also work with other advisors has the same opportunity: accounting, law, wealth management, consulting, insurance and banking all overlap.

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Webinar follow-up is part of how we run webinar programs for professional-services firms: every registrant is researched and tagged, so each segment gets the follow-up that fits it.