Great Demo! – Disruptive Innovation

At a recent Great Demo! Workshop, a senior manager commented that Great Demo! is not an incremental change – it is a disruptive innovation.  I asked him to explain.

He said that several years ago he’d had his team go through a “demo skills training” class (not Great Demo!) and saw some small incremental improvements.  He noted things like adding benefit statements after introducing capabilities and being a bit more engaging.  He commented, however, that while the team’s demos were a bit better, they weren’t yielding the corresponding improvements in the metrics he tracked and wanted.

He noted that he’d researched Great Demo! and sent “scouts” to a Public Great Demo! Workshop about 18 months ago.  On strength of their feedback – and more important, on the changes in the metrics that he tracked – he decided to put his entire team through the training. 

As he tracked the first few teams of graduates’ progress, he noted substantial improvements in the metrics he tracked, including number-of-demos-per-$-of-revenue, sales-cycle-time, length-of-demos, number-of-closes-by-demo vs. by-POC, and others (including direct feedback/comments from customers and sales people).

He said the improvements started incrementally, but then exhibited a moderately steep increase, reaching a new and surprisingly high (his words) level of performance. 

On the basis of the metrics he tracked, he said the implementation of Great Demo! throughout his organization has resulted in a rather remarkable, disruptive positive change in performance.

[By the way, the next Great Demo! Public Workshop takes place next week in Silicon Valley – you can find more information here.]