Could Your Demos Be Better?

Consider this a checklist and identify where you could do better:

• You didn’t do any discovery
• You did qualification, but not discovery
• You have no clue as to the prospect’s needs and wants
• You did do discovery, but then ignored it in the demo
• You did do discovery, but didn’t summarize it before diving into your software
• You think you are doing “discovery on the fly” but it really is just your standard demo
• You don’t connect capabilities to solving prospect problems
• You don’t communicate business value
• You treat everyone the same and don’t differentiate by job title
• You think an “overview” needs to be at least an hour 
• You feel the need to pack as much into the time as possible
• You say, “Stop me if you have any questions” but you don’t mean it
• You ask, “Any questions so far?” over and over and over, without realizing that there are other options to draw from
• You ask, “Does that make sense?” without realizing the consequences
• You suffer from rampaging pronouns
• You suffer from zippy mouse syndrome
• You don’t start with the most important deliverable
• You assume your prospect “gets it” and understands everything they are seeing
• You assume your prospect can remember dozens of “important” things
• You show all of the if, or, and also pathways
• You turn a 3-click pathway into a 20-click ordeal
• You show detailed workflows to executives
• You show Setup Mode items to everyone
• You save “the best for last”
• You run out of time before you get to the best stuff
• You show the latest, coolest new features regardless of prospect interest
• You don’t ask your prospects, “Would you like to see…,” you just show it
• You don’t understand how to apply the Primacy-Recency Effect or the Serial Positioning Effect
• You don’t understand the power of threes
• You don’t understand inverted pyramid
• You show capabilities the prospect doesn’t need or want to pay for
• You don’t understand “Buying It Back”
• You say, “Remember when I showed you xx?” and they don’t
• You don’t actively encourage prospect questions and comments
• You don’t explore the “why” behind prospect questions
• You show detailed answers when “Yes” would have been sufficient
• You don’t “park” questions, when appropriate
• You don’t close questions
• You don’t customize the data to match the prospect’s industry/vertical
• Your data time-series, action items, and alerts are not realistic
• You use the phrase, “What we call a …”and assume your prospect will remember
• You don’t understand the power of the pause
• You demo on autopilot, with little enthusiasm
• You present from a large monitor to prospects with small screens
• You never use annotation tools
• You don’t use props or visual aids
• You think “a day in the life” is an effective story 
• You don’t use analogies or metaphors
• You don’t use mini-stories
• You don’t invite the prospect to “drive” by proxy
• You don’t operate as a team when multiple vendor players are involved
• You don’t prepare or plan roles when multiple vendor players are involved
• You “pile-on” answers to prospect questions
• You use American/UK/etc. colloquialisms with non- American/UK/etc. audiences
• You inflict corporate overview presentations on your prospects
• You inflict product overview presentations on your prospects
• You ignore the case studies, the single most valuable portions of corporate overview presentations
• You don’t dry-run important demos
• You offer trials and POCs without need
• You deluge “just browsing” prospects with hour-long “overviews”
• You don’t understand the difference between Vision Generation and Technical Proof Demos
• You understand the difference between Vision Generation and Technical Proof Demos, but don’t apply the principles
• You’ve been trained in “Tell Show Tell” but never do it
• You feel you're at the top of your game...

Any others to add?

To avoid the above, consider enrolling in a Great Demo! Workshop. For more demo tips, best practices, tools and techniques, explore our blog and articles on the Resources pages of our website at https://GreatDemo.com and join the Great Demo! LinkedIn Group to share your experiences and hear from others.

“Doing Discovery” is coming – expect availability in August!