1-Hour Web “Overview” Demo Timeline
There’s a rough but strangely consistent timeline for
a web-delivered “1 hour overview demo” that seems to go like this [starting
time for each element on the left side]:
00:00: Fumbling with
WebEx/GoToMeeting/Live Meeting – “Did you get the link? Can you see my screen?” (This consumption of
time has been delightfully called the “WebEx/GoToMeeting/Live Meeting Tax”).
00:04: Semi-mutual
introductions, but generally one-sided:
introductions (and brief personal history of each of the vendor
participants), but limited information requested or offered regarding customer
participants – and no request to do discovery on the part of the vendor
00:08: Corporate overview
presentation (gag…)
00:18: Product overview
presentation (yawn), including
1.
Obligatory architecture
slide(s), with equally obligatory rectangles and cylinders representing
software and database components (how novel…)
2.
Obligatory product-centric
slide (showing company’s product in the center of a circle of other things
(e.g., users, other applications, process steps, you name it – so novel, once
again!)
3.
Key “differentiators”,
presented without context to the customer’s needs or specific situation (and
largely forgotten by the customer, since they haven’t yet seen a solution that
makes remembering anything relevant)
4.
Case studies, if any,
generally appear at the end and are
typically skipped over “because we are short on time…” (too bad – real case
studies would be the most interesting part of the overview)
00:28: “Actual”
demo, including
a.
Opening statement that “we
need to compress the planned 45 minute demo into 30 minutes “so we’ll have to
go real fast…”
b.
Request that “this be
interactive, so please stop me if you have any questions…”, followed by a
fire-hose-like delivery with no time for meaningful questions
c.
Re-introduction of the
offering (again, even though it was covered in the product overview
presentation)
d.
Brief introduction of the for
plan for a “story” and 3 fictional characters whose “day in the life” will be
followed in the demo
e.
Overview of navigation
elements…
f.
Introduction and
definitions of key vendor jargon, acronyms and product names
g.
Explanation of how to set up
and configure the application, which then consumes most of the remaining time
(even though this task is typically done once, when first implemented, and then
rarely ever after)
h.
A walk-through of the
workflow (a run-through, in fact, since time is really getting short)
i.
A rapid, largely verbal
description of the canned and custom reporting capabilities (often including
the claim that “we have over 600 canned reports…” of which a typical user might
consume only 1 or 2…!)
j.
Comment that “we didn’t
have enough time to show you everything…”
00:58 Sales person summary,
with platitude marketing “value proposition” statements (that have little or
limited bearing on the customer’s specific situation)
00:60: Wrap-up
with no action items
Frightening, gruesome and remarkably common!
If the objective was to “show the customer a demo”
then that objective was achieved –
but it is very doubtful that other tangible progress was made in the sale. Very sad; and largely a waste of time for all
involved.
But Wait – It’s Even Worse…
The pain often starts earlier – and ends later. Many presales people find they have scheduled
(or have been scheduled by someone else) to deliver two or more demos back-to-back. For teams in highly “transactional” sales
situations this can run all day…!
Far too often, one demo runs beyond the time allocated
– causing the presales person to be late joining the next web session (“Sorry
I’m late…”) and allowing no time to prepare.
Similarly, there’s no time at the end of the demo to
document questions, issues or impressions for the presales person before having
to dive into the next demo session. It
only takes a few of these in a row to reduce whatever notes might have been captured to a few, often
erroneous items!
A Few Recommendations
(Note – these are not necessarily mutually
exclusive! One or more of these ideas
can be combined)
0. Set the
WebEx/GoToMeeting/Live Meeting session to begin 10 minutes before the “real”
meeting is scheduled to start (not applicable if multiple customer participants
are connecting from several remote locations, but truly terrific if the
customer participants are in a single conference room).
1.
If you must do a corporate overview, reduce it to
one slide.
2.
Turn the call into a
Discovery session, if possible (and appropriate).
3.
Reduce the product
overview presentation to just the case study slides. Case studies can be a wonderful way to move
the customer into doing Discovery – “here’s an example of how other, similar
customers have used our capabilities to solve specific business challenges –
how does what they faced compare with your situation?”
4.
Use the Menu Approach (a
terrific self-rescue technique), if the audience is a group and/or if your
software addresses a range of problem areas.
[See my article entitled, The Menu
Approach – a Truly Terrific Demo Self-Rescue Technique for more details.]
5.
Organize the demo itself
in chunks – similar to how newspapers and web news services present news
articles. [See my article entitled, Why Structure a Demo Like a News Article for
more details.]
And, for those who often are currently scheduled to do
multiple demos back-to-back, consider blocking the 15 minutes before and 15
minutes after each demo as “Prep” and “Clean-Up” time on your calendar – give
yourself a fighting chance!
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