Why Did They Say, “Oh That’s Cool…!”?

In the delivery of traditional demos, presenters typically note when audience members react positively to particular software screens – and often incorporate those screens in future demos with the expectation that other audiences will be similarly interested.

Seasoned practitioners (and especially seasoned Great Demo! practitioners) not only recognize the importance of those particular screens, but also seek to understand the “why” behind customers’ reactions.

In the course of a demo, when a customer audience member offers an unexpected positive response to a particular software screen (“Oh, that’s really cool…!”), seasoned presales people pursue a dialog that might go something like this:

Customer (reacting to the particular screen of interest):  “Oh, that’s really cool…!”

Demonstrator:  “Great – glad you like it.   Would you share why it caught your eye?”

Customer:  “Sure – this screen solves one of our major issues…”

Demonstrator:  “And what issue is that?”

Customer:  “Well, with our current process, it takes forever to get this done.”

Demonstrator:  “Interesting – how often do you have to run this process, and how many people are involved?”

Customer:  “We’re doing it weekly and it consumes about 10 folks time for an entire day each.”

Demonstrator:  “Wow – so being able to complete process in a few mouse clicks translates to freeing up something like 2 FTE.  You’re right – that’s really cool.”

…And the dialog could continue…

Our objective here is to be able to complete a Situation Slide, essentially, giving us the ability to use the “Oh, cool…!” customer response in a much more focused and leveraged manner for other customers (as well as in our summary at the end of the current demo).