Consider the following three
questions with respect to your software:
What is it?
How does it work?
Why is it important?
Far too often demos focus
briefly on the “What is it” portion and then largely on the “How does it work”
segments – leaving the “Why is it important” for customers to figure out on
their own. While this may work adequately
for Early Adopters, it fails for most other populations. The lack of communicating the “Why is it
important” information in demos is often referred by sales management as
failing to articulate the “Business Value”.
Let’s explore the intriguing
differences between these three questions with a simple example: Your colleague turns to you and asks, “What
time is it?”
You respond, “It’s 9:30…”
That’s what time it is, right
now. The answer is a simple fact – a number. What it means, however, to your
colleague and why it might be important are missing.
As you offer the time, you
might ask, “Why do you want to know what time it is?” The range of responses represent the potential
“Business Value” for your colleague, for example:
- “Oh good – I have a call at
10:00...” [Business Value: I have time
to get ready for the call…]
- “I’m right on time for my
9:30 meeting...” [Business Value: I’m right on time – no apologies to make…!]
- “Darn, I’m late for my 9:00
meeting..!” [Business Value: Better work
on an apology/reason…]
- “I need to meet my friend in
15 minutes...” [Business Value: I better
leave now to be on time…]
- “Great, I have 1 more hour…” [Business Value: I can do some other work before…]
- “I mean, what time is it in Singapore?”
[Business Value: I have to connect with
our Singapore office and don’t want to call after hours…]
In most demos, presenters say, “Here’s
where you can see what time it is…” – that’s the “what”. Unfortunately, the presenter often misses the next step – describing the “why”: “So that you can tell if you are early, on
time, or late for your next appointment and prepare or adjust accordingly…”
Even worse, many presenters go
directly from the “what” to the “how”: “Here’s
where you can see what time it is… And
here’s how the time system works: there
is a spring that drives an oscillating mini-pendulum, lubricated by molybdenum,
that actuates the first set of gears that drive the main gearing to rotate the
second hand one step forward, while accumulating (and this part is really cool) the next 59 seconds in a
capacitor that then releases its charge to drive the minute hand…”
In a demo, contemplate
presenting “what” your software does, followed by “why” it is useful – the Business
Value. Let the customer ask to see “how” it works, if they are
interested.
In Great Demo! methodology, we
suggest presenting the “why”/Business Value when you are presenting
Illustrations and in each Summary, at least.
For an Illustration, you might
say something like, “What you are looking at here is a dashboard that shows the
day-by-day operation of the department.
Each bar on the graph shows the time taken to execute the workflow, so
if you see an exception you can drill down to explore why that exception is
happening, find the root cause, and address it to improve your overall results.”
Here’s a bonus thought: If you have done a great job in Discovery,
you should be able to connect the Business Value back to specific pain points and
capabilities desired. In these cases,
you can add the phrase, “…which you said you need…” to your Business Value
statement. Sweet!
So why communicate the “why”? To communicate the Business Value!
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