Here
are ten steps you can take to improve the success rates for your demos:
1. Be clear on your Objectives for the demonstration.
“It’s a HUGE
opportunity” is not an objective…
It’s Hope – and Hope is not a strategy!
Why are you
doing this demo? Is it Technical Proof
or Vision Generation (or is this a “Harbor Tour”)?
You – the selling
team (sales and presales) – must know what you want to accomplish before
you begin and plan your demo meeting with those objectives in mind – it’s a
Team Sport.
2. Reconfirm
the Meeting Objectives and Time Constraints at the start of the
meeting.
This apparent
courtesy serves to manage surprises and help you stay in alignment with your customer.
How many
times have you started a demo only to learn that you have only half the time
you thought you had? How often has the
customer brought a larger group of people than you expected?
Investing a
few minutes at the beginning of the meeting to reconfirm the time constrains
and review the customer’s objectives can help you “rescue” a meeting otherwise
headed for disaster!
“…What is
your name, job title, and what would you like to accomplish in the meeting today…?”
3. Be clear on your Customer’s Needs.
What are the
Critical Business Issues, Goals or Objectives your customer wants to address?
Incredible as
it may seem, your customer may not be as in love with your software as you are!
They simply want to solve their business
issues. If you don’t know your
customer’s business issues, it may be too early for a demo.
Situation
Slides are a surprisingly effective tool to determine if you are ready for a
substantive demo:
Job Title and Industry: For an individual – think in terms of one
situation slide for each key player.
Critical Business Issue: This person’s top-level challenge – often
best expressed as a quarterly, annual or project-based goal or objective that
is at risk.
Problems/Reasons: What makes it a problem today – what is making it hard to
achieve the goal or objective – how are they doing things today, what is the
impact?
Specific Capabilities: What specific capabilities does the
customer need to solve their problems, from the customer’s perspective?
Delta: The
tangible value associated with making the change (customer’s numbers).
Critical Date / V.R.E.: A date by when the customer needs to
have a solution in place (and why) / V.R.E. (Value Realization Event) – first
success using the solution.
If one or
more of these are missing or incomplete, you may want to do some Discovery before
a demo. The lack of a Critical Business Issue,
Delta and/or Critical Date may yield a dreaded “No Decision”!
Begin by
reviewing your customer’s situation, “Is this all correct? Has anything changed?”
4. Show
the “What” first, then follow with the “How”.
Illustrate
what good things your offering can do to help the customer address their key issues
as the first thing in the demo.
Once they see
that your offering can help them, then you can reveal how the capabilities
in your offering accomplish this. If you
spend 30 or 40 (or 50 or…) minutes telling a loooong story to get to a final
“pay-off” screen, you may find your audience has “checked-out” – and that the
key people have left before you reach the big benefit message.
Illustrate
for your customer what business problems your tools will help them address – right
up-front. Your customer will become
engaged right away and will drive the demo forward.
5. Show only the Specific Capabilities needed to address the customer’s problems.
This is not
product training; it is a critical step in the sales and buying processes.
Avoid packing
too much into the demo – focus on the Specific Capabilities your customer needs
to see. Avoid using “If”, “Or” and “Also”
in the early stages of a demo – you’ll be taking yourself into the weeds…! Avoid showing “Set-up Mode” items too early (or
at all, in many cases).
Sales have
been lost because “the software looked too complicated” in the eyes of the customer.
6. Use the Fewest Number of Clicks in every
pathway – just “Do It”.
Customers
want to see the fastest way to complete their work.
They cannot
discriminate the options from the direct pathway. The more options you show, the more choices
you present, the more confused your audience gets – making your software look
hard to use.
“…Every click
you make, every tap you take…” – your audience is watching you…!
7. Peel Back
your capabilities in layers,
in accord with the customer’s level of interest.
Enable a two-way,
bidirectional conversation with your audience.
Instead of pre-answering
questions (also known as “premature elaboration”), let your customer ask
the questions to drive the demo forward.
Your demo is
going perfectly when your audience is asking the questions you want
them to be asking…!
8. Use the “Inverted Pyramid” structure and
organize in Chunks.
Leverage how
news articles organize and present information in the Inverted Pyramid format –
and apply this to your demos.
Inverted Pyramid
articles start with the most important ideas at the top, followed by the next
most important information, then down further and further into the details. Readers explore as deep as they desire, and
then, once satisfied, they move on to the next article. And like newspapers and news articles on the
web, you can organize your demo into “chunks”.
Each major
topic can be introduced with an Illustration, proven rapidly with a “Do It” pathway,
then Peel Back the Layers as far as necessary – with a summary at the end of
each “chunk”.
9. Manage “Good” Questions.
Avoid the
weeds…!
Answer Great
Questions right away – they move your demo forward and underscore your offering’s
value. Park Good Questions (and Stupid
Questions) that will take you off track and into the weeds. Use a “Parking Lot” and address them during Q&A
or later on in the demo.
Good
questions represent one of the greatest risks to an otherwise well-prepared
demonstration.
10. Manage your Delivery.
“You said,
you said, you said…”; “You would click here”; “You would see this screen…”
Stay in “You”
mode. With SaaS software today it is
even more important to be clear that it will be your customer using the
tools to solve their problems.
Stay in
alignment with your audience’s level, interests, and vocabulary. Executives, Middle Managers, Staffers and
System Admins typically have different sets of needs – and want to see deliverables
and workflows that are in accord with their expected use of the tools.
Map your pace
and language according to locale, technical acumen, etc. Avoid using your organization’s jargon and
avoid using non-local colloquialisms. Be
human and inject humor as appropriate; be as passionate, compelling and
remarkable as possible!
Use compelling
stories to support key take-aways, to make them “sticky” and memorable.
11. (Bonus!) Manage your Demo Environment.
Make and use
a checklist – that bad thing should happen only once, if it is under your
control!
Ensure that
your equipment, software, and materials are ready to go before you demo. When preparing your demo environment, make
everything look as real as possible. No
fake names; no use of “demo” or “test”; no unbelievable timelines or data.
Include realistic
problems, exceptions and opportunities that can be surfaced and addressed.
Follow these
“Top Ten” guidelines to increase your probability of success with your demos. When you do these ten simple things, you should
expect your audience to say, “Wow! That was a Great Demo!”
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