What is a Vision Generation demo? It is just
enough demo to generate a vision in the customer’s mind that a solution
to a business challenge is possible –
and to enable a Discovery conversation to take place.
A Vision Generation demo should only take a few minutes – and may consist entirely of one or two well-chosen
screens or screen-shots (“Illustrations” for you Great Demo! practitioners…). Let’s explore…
Many software vendors have two types of demos:
1. Overview
2. Deep Dive
Both types, when delivered in the absence of sufficient
Discovery information, can lead to stunningly awful results. Generally speaking, “Deep Dive” demos are
delivered after a reasonable amount of Discovery has been completed. Most overview demos, however, are inflicted
with little or no Discovery information in place (and qualification questions alone
are not sufficient!).
As a result, overview demos have a range of
(customer-generated) names, including:
- Show-up and throw-up
- Spray and pray
- Tech splatter
- The IKEA demo
- Living in the Land of Hope
- Whisky-Tango-Foxtrot, and, of
course,
- The Harbor Tour
These painful demos often last 30, 45, or 60 minutes – or
even longer. I’ve heard vendors say, “We
couldn’t possibly do an overview of the system in less than 2 hours…”
Customer recipients during and after these demos are
often heard to mutter phrases such as:
“Where is this going?”
“OMG-when-will-this-end?”
“Kill me now…”
“That’s an hour
I’ll never get back…”
“What was the point?”
“Who invited those
guys in here?”
Equally bad, vendors know that they are wasting time
delivering overview demos that go nowhere…
(Not to mention potentially huge travel and opportunity costs, so I
won’t). What if you could reduce your
traditional overview demos from 1 hour down to a few crisp minutes? What could you use that time for, instead?
Clearly, the best solution is to complete sufficient
Discovery prior to any substantive demo.
However, many customers are either unwilling or unable to provide Discovery
information in the absence of a demo. They
may even say, “Just show me an overview and I’ll let you know if anything looks
interesting…”
How do we solve this conundrum?
One Guideline and Two Ideas
First,
consider the following "rule":
no demo shall last longer than 4 minutes without receiving sufficient
Discovery information. Note that
"receiving sufficient Discovery information" can take place during or
immediately after those 4 minutes of demo...
Think in terms of quid pro quo
– if I show you something (a brief demo), I expect something in return (some
Discovery information).
Second,
contemplate the idea of Vision Generation demos: JUST ENOUGH demo to enable a Discovery
conversation to take place. In Great
Demo! methodology, a Vision Generation demo might include an example Situation
Slide ("Here's how we helped other ______ [job title] in _____
[industry]...") followed by a compelling Illustration or two. Total time?
About 4 minutes or less...
This highly
successful approach is based on reference selling, gently borrowed from a range
of sales methodologies (including Challenger, Solution Selling, CustomerCentric
Selling, Sandler, SPIN, Miller Heiman, Value, TAS, etc.), and applied
specifically when you’ve been asked to present an overview demo. It goes like this:
A customer arranged
a demo meeting with you, but has not (yet) agreed to a Discovery
conversation. His expectation is that
you’ll deliver some kind of “overview” demo…
What you know so far is that he is the VP of Sales of a mid-size
software company (and you sell sales automation software tools).
You say,
“I’m glad we are able to invest this time together today. Before we get into a demo, let me share how
we’ve helped other VP’s of Sales at
similar-sized software organizations address some of their business challenges…” You then present the following slide in
PowerPoint:
SITUATION
Job Title/Industry: VP Sales, Mid-size Software
Critical Business Issue: Achieving/exceeding
quarterly and annual quota
Problems/Reasons: Poor
insight into pipeline/forecast
Specific Capabilities: Rapid view of actuals, status, problems
Delta:
$2M incremental revenue
You note
that “VP’s of Sales at other, similar software companies shared their concerns
about making their quarterly and annual numbers. They said what was holding them back is that
they had little or no visibility into their current forecast and pipeline going
forward. They said it took way too much
time and effort to determine which sales projects were solid, which were at
risk, and where there were holes or gaps in their pipelines. They often had to go back and forth with IT,
who would run searches on their behalf, but the results were often not what
they needed, requiring several iterations of the process – and errors and
miscommunication often took place. The
result was that it was very difficult to coach the sales team properly and they
were often at risk of missing their quarterly numbers.”
You
continue, “They said they were looking for some way to access the full forecast
and pipeline information, see exactly which deals were in good shape and which
needed assistance, and understand exactly where the forward-looking pipeline
was strong and where there were gaps.
They said they wanted to get this information in a dashboard or similar
vehicle that they themselves could query and drill down for details, without
any need for IT.”
You explain,
“We provided those capabilities – and our customers report that they’ve been
able to generate 1-3 million dollars in incremental revenue and redeploy
several full-time-equivalents in sales and sales operations to other, more
productive tasks.”
You then
ask, “How does this compare with your
situation?”
There are
three possible answers from your customer [Quiz – before reading on: what are they?]:
1. “I have that
same situation…”
2. “I have a
similar situation…”
3. “My situation
is different…”
After your
customer’s response, you ask, “Tell me about your specific situation…”
Customer
says (for example), “Oh, well, I am under pressure to make my numbers – that’s
consistent. However, we have pretty good
pipeline management capabilities today, but I do have a number of sales people
who either sandbag [under-forecast] or who have Happy Ears [over-forecast] and
both of these groups need coaching.
Right now I don’t have good insight into their projects – our current
system doesn’t support this…”
You ask (as
you begin to take notes), “What are you using today…?”
What has
just taken place? You and your customer
have just entered into a Discovery conversation – which is exactly what you want.
Delightful!
Discovery, Then Demo, Then
Discovery…
In the
scenario above, it is likely that you continue the Discovery conversation for some
time – and you may get to the point where you’ve now learned enough to provide
a more substantive, focused demo.
In the
spirit of quid pro quo it may be your
turn to provide information – and a short, focused demo segment based on what
you’ve learned so far may be very reasonable.
After that, back to Discovery…
Here’s a
quick road-map of the process so far:
- Vision Generation Demo (≤4 minutes)
- “How does this compare with your situation?”
- Discovery questions and conversation – 10, 20 or 30 minutes – as
long as is comfortable
- Brief focused demo (brief Technical Proof demo, in Great Demo!
methodology vocabulary)
- More Discovery questions and conversation
- Another brief focused demo segment, if appropriate
- Repeat as needed…
Your objective is to gain a clear
and complete understanding of your customer’s situation – partly so that you
can put together and deliver a more substantive focused (Technical Proof) demo,
if needed – and partly so that your customer
is comfortable that you have a sufficient understanding of their situation.
Discovery is done partly for you,
the vendor – and partly (largely!) for the sake of the customer. Customers are typically unwilling to accept a
solution if they feel the vendor has an insufficient understanding of what they
believe is their unique, specific situation.
One Guideline and Two Ideas?
For those of
you who were paying attention and counting, you’ll note that I promised one
guideline and two ideas – it looks like I owe you one more idea, so…
The Vision
Generation demo described above assumes that you have a reasonable
understanding of your customer’s top challenges before the meeting. However, what if you don’t have a good idea of your customer’s main problem areas?
Consider
using the Menu Approach to identify customer challenges and topics of main
interest. (The Menu Approach article on
my website at www.SecondDerivative.com/Articles.html describes how to put this into
practice in detail – you can browse for it or simply send me an email and I’ll
send you the article.)
The Menu
Approach presents the customer with a list of high-probability topics of
interest – and invites the customer to choose which topic(s) are of most
interest to them. You can then
transition to a corresponding Situation Slide and use an appropriate Illustration
or two for each topic – delightful!
Note that
the Menu Approach can be applied on-the-fly during the meeting – or you can
send a Menu of topics (with brief textual description of each topic) to your
customer ahead of time and ask them to rank the topics in terms of importance
to them: “High”, “Medium”, or “Low” – and send the list back to you.
This
“self-Discovery” exercise enables you to target the “High” importance topics
for crisp Vision Generation demos and to drive the Discovery conversation in
accord with what is perceived as most important by the customer.
But Wait: There’s More
Finally,
here are a few additional ideas you may find useful – or at least amusing!
A colleague
of mine, when asked to “just show us an overview demo” by his customers,
responds, “I’d be happy to – our overview demo takes about 2 hours for each
product – and we have a pile of products.
When would you like to schedule this?”
When
receiving the same request (“just show me an overview”), another colleague
tells the customer, “Oh, do you really
want me to show-up-and-throw-up?
Spray-and-pray? Take you on a
tour of an Ikea? You really want a Harbor Tour demo?” After the laughter dies away, he says, “I can
either torture you for a few hours of overview demo – or we can invest a few
minutes of discussion to focus in on what you want. Your choice…!”
Another
Great Demo! practitioner described the “Serial Serving” analogy. He told the customer, “Well, asking me to do
an overview demo is like asking me as a waiter in a nice restaurant to just start
bringing dishes of food to your table – and let me know when you get something
you like… Or, I can show you a menu of what we offer, so that you can see
what is possible for your meal and then choose
what is most interesting to you!”
Vision Generation – An
Encrispened Demo
A Vision Generation demo is designed to provide the
customer with just enough demo for the customer to be willing to
invest more time with you. Four minutes
of Vision Generation may be all that is needed to start a substantive conversation.
Just think: if you
are able to reduce your traditional overview demos from 1 hour down to 4
minutes, what delightful (and more productive) activities could you use that
time for?
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