Congratulations, you’ve survived a Great
Demo! Workshop. Now what?
Some folks start making changes right
away. Others watch to see how it goes
with their peers. And (sadly) a few
ignore the investment completely…
If you want to go to “club” – if you
are looking to collect more bonus and commission – if you would like to move from
individual contributor to become a mentor, team-lead, principal or manager – if
you hope to include any these on your resume – or if you simply have the desire
to continue to improve – then you need to get to work!
This article presumes nothing about
your organization. In the best case, your
manager is ready and eager to coach you, supported by a full set of resources
from your enablement team. In many
cases, however, you may be largely on your own.
Accordingly, you must take responsibility for your own success…!
Let’s explore how to get the most from
the training you experienced.
Change Has (Substantial) Rewards
To whet your appetite, here are a few
examples of results of change from Great Demo! Workshop participants:
“A Real Differentiator…”
“This
has become a real differentiator for us in conversations. It has become a
great standard process used between sales and presales to ensure we are on the
same page walking into a call.
A
recent interaction with XXX Corp, where we were given feedback that we were the
only company out of 5 invited in that actually listened to their needs and
delivered a demo focused on their specific use case.”
-
Sales Director
“…Send Him the DocuSign.”
“We
had a great discovery conversation with XXX in Indianapolis. The owner was open
and willing to share the true pain they are experiencing. We set our
presentation for 48 hours later and showed them how we’d fix their issue
straight out of the gate. That took a total of 11 minutes. After another 29.5
minutes we completed our presentation (demo) at which point the client asked us
to send him the DocuSign.”
-
Regional Sales Manager, Transportation Software
“Subject: Great Demos Are Working!”
“I
took your Great Demo! class in late 2016. We were slow to completely implement
the principles of the Great Demo! into all parts of our demo, but I am glad we
revisited at the beginning of this year and implemented into all our demos and
scoping calls. We have also started doing a lot more scoping calls to make sure
that the demos only focus on what people need.
Well
this year it has paid off! We had 7 app sales in 2017 and with the use of the
Great Demo! principles and scoping calls we completed to 19 in 2018 and have
over 23 sales in 2019 and a few more about to sign up!”
- Val
- Marketing & Support Specialist, Non-Profit Organization Software
“DRASTIC”
“So
obviously it is slightly early to put insight into performance over a long
period of time but I have noticed a DRASTIC decrease in ALL of my sales cycles
after the Great Demo!
This
past month I had 2-3 demonstrations that closed within about a month of the
opportunity being created and only a week or two after the demo.
I
will continue to collect data and insights but my sales cycles have compressed
greatly since this class.
I
want to mention the only way to see progress is to have some way to quantify or
measure it.
I
have numerous dashboards that track where I spend my time, the demos I
conducted along with their opportunity status, and metrics around sales cycles.
Since the Great Demo! class I have closed 5 deals (1 renewal, 3 new logos, and
1 upsell). That puts me at 36 new logos this year.”
-
Solution Consultant, ITSM Software
These success stories have a few embedded
messages that we can learn from:
1. In the first organization, Great Demo!
has become standard practice.
2. In two organizations, improved Discovery
skills yielded fabulous results.
3. The third organization revisited Great
Demo! well after the training was completed – with terrific outcomes.
4. All tracked their progress, using one
or more metrics.
Did they implement everything
they learned in the Workshop? Nope – each
chose a few high value elements to focus on first, and then expanded their
practice over time.
Setting Goals
It is challenging for any individual to
move from traditional demos to a full Great Demo! implementation in a single
leap. Accordingly, we recommend ongoing,
consistent progress towards small, achievable goals.
With that in mind, here are five key
Great Demo! elements that represent large implementation objectives:
1.
Generate
and use Situation Slides
2.
Develop
and present Illustrations
3.
Break
up your content into short, discrete chunks
4.
Use the
fewest number of clicks
5.
Remember
to summarize
Let’s take Situation Slides and create
a set of smaller, along-the-route goals:
-
Generate
a Situation Slide for one upcoming demo – regardless of the level of
completeness.
-
Assess:
o Which elements are missing or incomplete?
o What tuning could be done to improve?
o Are there additional Discovery
questions that I should be asking my prospects?
Choose one small improvement as a goal
for your next Discovery conversation and corresponding Situation Slide. Practice it – note the results and repeat
until it becomes comfortable, natural and embedded as habit. Then set the next goal – excelsior!
Here’s a second, high-value example – “Develop
and Present Illustrations”:
-
Choose
one specific capability that is typically requested by customers, then develop
and present an Illustration for it.
o Is the Illustration representative of
the desired deliverable?
o Did I present it compellingly?
o What was the customer’s reaction?
Choose one small improvement as a goal
for your next demo. Practice it – assess
and repeat.
Let’s do one more example – “Fewest
Number of Clicks”:
-
Select
one typical demo pathway that you commonly show and execute it.
o How many clicks was it?
o Could it have been shorter?
o Did I remember to summarize at the
end?
Again, choose one small improvement as
a goal for your next demo. Practice it –
evaluate and repeat.
[Note:
We have guidelines available for developing and presenting Situation
Slides, Illustrations, Do It and Peel Back the Layers pathways, Managing Questions
and Summaries – contact
us if you would like a set!]
Track and Celebrate Your Progress
A terrific mechanism to support your
efforts to change is to track your progress.
Many folks use a Word document or Excel spreadsheet to set and track
progress towards their goals (large or small).
Intriguingly, the act of writing down
specific goals often drives individuals to achieve them – it becomes a personal
commitment. Similarly, as each goal is achieved,
putting a ü upon completion gives many of us a feeling of
progress – celebrating small but significant accomplishments!
Some people set small daily goals while
others go for weekly accomplishments – choose what you are comfortable with. Whatever cadence you select should be short
enough that you can see real progress in a reasonable timeframe – monthly or quarterly
is too long…!
How Small Is Small?
Remember the expression, “How do you
eat an elephant? One bite at a time…” (apologies
to the elephant). Adopting a methodology
like Great Demo! means making substantial changes to one’s practices, but in
alignment with your personal “appetite”.
Some folks are willing to make big
changes and try some of the more challenging aspects of the new practices; others
will want to start with smaller, easier-to-implement changes.
One way to look at this is to use a
four-quadrant grid, with the Y axis identifying the level of gain or pay-back
and the X axis showing the implementation or adoption effort:
When you populate this graph with the
key skills and practices of the methodology, you have a tool you can use to
select your goals, in accord with your personality. Folks who want the “biggest bang” for their
efforts will be directed to the top-right quadrant first; next they may work on
items in the top-left quadrant. (And any
sane person will avoid, as possible, the bottom-left quadrant…!)
For Great Demo!, here are a few examples
of effort vs. pay-off:
Low Effort, High Pay-off:
1. Fewest Number of Clicks
2. “You” Mode
3. Preparing Situation Slides, based on
existing “Discovery” information (likely incomplete)
4. Precise pointing
5. Full screen mode (in browsers)
Moderate Effort, High Pay-off:
1. Completing Situation Slides (which may
require executing more Discovery)
2. Identifying and presenting compelling
Illustrations
3. Peeling Back the Layers
4. Transition Vision and V.R.E.
discussions
5. Communicating and connecting to the
Business Value (the Delta) throughout the demo
6. The Menu Approach
7. Vision Generation Demos
High Effort, High Pay-off:
1. Preparing and delivering Complex
Situation Demos (e.g., for multiple stakeholders, multiple solutions)
2. Reaching agreement with the customer
on success criteria, the timeline and the players for a POC
3. Deeper Discovery skills (e.g., from a
Great Demo! Master Class)
Low Effort, Moderate Pay-off:
1. Remote Demos practices
2. Color, xy graph and related
Illustration presentation tactics
3. Managing Questions
4. Smooth and deliberate mousing
5. Summarizing
6. Making Demos Remarkable elements (e.g.,
visual aids, whiteboard work, storytelling…)
7. Letting the customer drive (requires
more courage than effort!)
Let’s Talk About Coaching
Coaching is a hot topic today – but it
is a bit like weather: “Everyone talks
about it – but no-one does anything about it…”
So let’s not just talk about coaching, let’s put it into practice.
Why is coaching important? Very simply, coaching helps us get better,
faster.
[Brief sidebar: What is the difference between training and
coaching? You can train someone to
follow a process; coaching explores how well that process is being executed and
makes improvements in performance.
For example, you can train someone on how
to run a 5-kilometer race: he/she should
start, pace him/herself over the first 4.5 kilometers, and then “kick” the last
half a kilometer to finish. The runner
listens to the instructions, then runs the course as best he/she understands or
interprets the plan. That’s training.
Coaching is what happens next. A coach, who has watched and timed our
athlete during the run, reviews what happened – and offers positive feedback
along with corrections and changes. “Your
time was good, overall – nice job. Start
a bit faster; remember to focus on smooth, steady breathing, and when you see
the final half kilometer sign you can start your ‘kick’ – increase steadily
over that half km so that you are at top speed in the last 100m before the finish
line.” That’s coaching – working to
improve the performance of the process.
Our athlete (after a bit of a rest),
runs the course again, focusing on the guidance from the coach – and sees some
significant improvement. Importantly, coaching
creates a positive feedback loop that enables ongoing positive change.]
OK, so who is available to coach you on
your journey towards Great Demo! perfection?
-
Best? Your manager.
[This presumes that your manager is already a skilled Great Demo!
coach or practitioner.]
Your
manager can help set goals, review your pre-demo materials (e.g., Situation
Slides and Illustrations), and provide feedback and tuning both pre- and post-demo.
For
face-to-face demos, invite your manager to join you on a regular basis – this enables
timely and precise coaching to take place.
For
web-delivered demos (using Zoom, GoToMeeting, WebEx, etc.) record your demos so
that you and your manager can review.
Consider using Refract.ai to
enable asynchronous feedback (I love these guys – check them out…!)
-
Next Best? A mentor or a peer. [This again presumes that your mentor/peer is
already a skilled Great Demo! coach or practitioner.]
Same/similar
opportunities for coaching guidance, but it is less likely that a mentor or
peer will be able to join you in face-to-face demo meetings.
-
Who’s
next? Yourself.
Yes,
you can coach yourself. You’ll miss the
insights that another person can provide, but most of us have been self-coaching
for years. The main challenge here is to
be consistent in the process: goal-setting,
self-review, improvement tuning, etc. should executed on a regular cadence.
One
of best ways to coach yourself is to watch recordings of your demos. (First step?
Get over the sound of your voice…!)
It can be very humbling, but very effective. You’ll see your mouse movements; you’ll hear your
“crutch” words (“um”, “actually”, etc.); you’ll hear how you responded to
customer questions; your pace; your tone…
Time
how long you talk before you have a question or comment from your customer (and
set a goal to target enable a “speaker switch" an average of every 76
seconds…!).
Make
notes as you review your recording – what did I do well? What could I have done better? What could I have done differently? These notes will yield your next small goals –
and enable you to celebrate the victories you have achieved so far!
-
Also available
– your Great Demo! Workshop Facilitator.
Clearly,
your Workshop Facilitator can help you improve your Great Demo! practices – a
terrific option! Of course, they may
need to charge for coaching as a service (the ROI on these services has proven
to be truly remarkable!).
Anything Else?
Why, yes! Here is a terrific list to help you help
yourself:
ü
Watch
demos from other vendors. No, not
your competition (although you should do this anyway), but vendors of software
that you are actually interested in.
Sign up for a demo on the vendor’s website – and let the fun begin… You get the opportunity to be a customer
– what a great perspective to have!
ü
Watch
demos from your peers. This is a great
opportunity to see how they address customer needs, present demo pathways – and
if they are also Great Demo! graduates you’ll be able to see how they present
and prepare Situation Slides, Illustrations, Do It pathways, etc.
ü
Participate
in QBR and related Opportunity Review Sessions.
See how you can apply situation Slides to assess the likelihood of the
opportunity moving forward (or ending as a “No Decision”).
ü
Generate
a Peel Back the Layers list of questions.
Each week (for example), write down five questions you heard from
customers in demos – and practice the answers (is it a “Yes or No” question –
or do I need to show the answer in the software…?). These will become plug-and-play demo chunks for
you.
ü
Ensure
that you schedule pre-demo prep calls with your sales colleagues and team members. Use Situation Slides to review what you know
and don’t know about the customer.
Discuss what Illustrations you plan to use, who will manage questions,
who will provide the final summary, etc.
ü
Similarly,
schedule post-demo reviews. What did we
do well? What could we have done better?
ü
Regarding
scheduling, please give yourself some time to “sharpen the saw”. It is very hard to get better when you are
booked into back-to-back-to-back-to-back meetings all day…!
ü
Review
the materials from your Great Demo! Workshop – paging through the workbook will
refresh your memory of the ideas we discussed and remind you of concepts you may
have forgotten.
ü
Join
the Great Demo! Group on LinkedIn. The Group on serves as an ongoing, evergreen
mechanism to share new ideas, surface best practices, and provide tips on new
technologies. It is, in essence, a Great
Demo! Users’ Group. You are welcome and
encouraged to join!
ü
Explore
the Great Demo! Website. Look on the Resources pages for a large selection
of articles (like this one!) on a broad range of demo topics – and the Blog is where
you can find the latest ideas.
Get Better, Get Great!
Improving one’s practice is change –
and change takes work. Choose and set
one small goal for yourself, right now – let’s get the process started.
Invest in yourself and reap the
rewards – that additional bonus or commission; those accolades from your sales
colleagues; that “club” trip to the Bahamas; those happy and successful
customers; that promotion; and the knowledge that you are, indeed, moving from
good to better to truly Great!
Copyright © 2019 The Second Derivative – All
Rights Reserved.
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