A Masterpiece of Modern Presales Wisdom

A Masterpiece of Modern Presales Wisdom: Peter Cohan's "Great Demo!" Third Edition

Reviewed in Germany on 15 November 2023

I always thought the second edition of "Great Demo!" by could not get any better, but Peter Cohan proved me wrong:

I recently dove into the latest edition of Peter Cohan's "Great Demo!" and let me tell you, it's not just a book—it's a revelation for anyone navigating the intricate world of product demonstrations. As a seasoned Pre-Sales Engineer, I've seen my fair share of methodologies, but Cohan's third edition takes the cake.

The third edition seamlessly weaves together the timeless wisdom from its predecessors with a fresh perspective on today's digital landscape. Cohan's signature wit and clarity remain intact, making complex ideas a breeze for readers of all backgrounds. But what truly sets this edition apart is its deep dive into the modern era of virtual demos and online presentations. Peter Cohan recognizes the shift in showcasing products and provides invaluable guidance on engaging audiences effectively, whether in person or through a screen.

The inclusion of real-world examples from a myriad of industries adds a vibrant touch to the book, offering a diverse set of scenarios that resonate with professionals across the board. It's not just a guide for presales professionals; "Great Demo!" spills over into sales organizations and leadership roles, introducing game-changing concepts like "do the last thing first."

Cohan's emphasis on continuous improvement is not just a strategy; it's a philosophy backed by tangible activities and exercises to "sharpen the saw." This approach fosters a culture of teamwork, collaboration, and adaptation—crucial elements for staying ahead in today's competitive market.

But it doesn't stop there. The frameworks and strategies presented in "Great Demo!" are a gift that keeps on giving. Sales leaders can apply these principles to guide and coach their teams, creating outstanding customer engagements and product demonstrations. The book's focus on clear communication, audience understanding, and storytelling can influence how leaders present their vision, fostering alignment and buy-in throughout the organization.

Having implemented the principles outlined in "Great Demo!" since its discovery in 2004, I can attest to its transformative impact on presentation skills and tangible business results. The methodology outlined by Cohan consistently leads to increased win rates and shortened sales cycles, creating solutions that add value to clients.

Whether you're in Presales, Sales, Customer Success, Marketing, or Business Development, "Great Demo!" is a game-changer. It's not just a book; it's your ticket to becoming an expert presenter and communicator while driving growth efficiently. Peter Cohan's wisdom equips you with the tools to deliver impactful presentations that leave a lasting impression on your audience.

This book deserves a prime spot on every professional's bookshelf. Highly recommended!

( Many thanks, Hans-Peter…! You can find this review on Amazon.de)

A Few Great Demo! Haiku

Make all your demos

Virtual or face-to-face

A conversation!

And in all cases

Proven success is when you

Do the Last Thing First!

Higher job titles?

Only need the big picture 

Deliverables!

Lower job titles?

Those who run the workflow steps

Expect great detail!

So much to show them?

An inverted pyramid

Is your solution!

Best of luck this year

And next, for you and your team

Make it Great Demo!

Share your demo or discovery haiku – there might be a prize involved!

(Bonus for including a kireji and/or seasonal reference…)

(And many thanks to Hokusai for his incredible The Great Wave Off Kanagawa painting.)

‘Twas the Night Before the Big Demo

 

‘Twas the Night Before the Big Demo

A 2023 Updated Visit from the DiscoAndDemoGuru! 

(with apologies to Clement Clarke Moore)

‘Twas the night ‘fore the demo and all through the house

Not a creature was stirring, ‘cept my SE and their mouse;

I’d proposed a big licensing deal with great care

In hope that a big order soon would be there;

Management was restless and not in their beds

As visions of bonuses danced in their heads;

And my VP with their forecast and me with my own,

Had just started a long EOQ roam,

When out from my mobile there came a great tone,

I sprang from my chair to answer my phone,

What could it be? Was it good news or no?

A last-minute order? A contract? PO?

You can find the balance of this updated classic here – enjoy!

Great Demo! or Doing Discovery – Which to Read First?

Many people have asked, “What’s the best way to consume these books? Which should be first?”

Here’s a recommended reading plan: A combo approach!

Start with Doing Discovery and read through the end of the Discovery Methodology chapter. This provides you with the foundational skills and knowledge for everything that follows in a sales typical process.

Next, open Great Demo! and read all of Part 1, Core Methodology. Completing this positions you to prepare and deliver surprisingly effective demos following the validated Great Demo! methodology.

At this point you’ll have consumed about one third of Doing Discovery and half of Great Demo! You can now cherry-pick chapters and topics from both books in accord with your interests and typical situations. A few suggestions:

• If you represent complex offerings, I’d suggest you continue with the “Elements of Discovery” chapter in Doing Discovery. Doing so enables you to outflank your competition who are likely operating at Level 1 or 2 of the seven discovery skills levels. “The vendor that is perceived as doing a superior job with discovery is in a competitively advantageous position.”

• If you frequently present multiple-solutions demos and/or have mixed audiences with several job titles, choose “Multi-Solution, Multi-Player Demos” in Great Demo!

• And if you are often asked to provide “overview” demos without having the chance to do any real discovery, definitely study the “Vision Generation Demos” chapter in Great Demo!

Finally, I strongly recommend that you actually do the exercises in both books. We learn best by doing: applying ideas in day-to-day practice. Additionally, Doing Discovery and Great Demo! Workshops offer you opportunities to refine these skills with guidance from knowledgeable facilitators.

You can find both books on Amazon, plus we provide discounts for volume purchases. The holidays are a great time to upskill yourself (and your team) for next year – enjoy!

We Are Programmed to Forget – And How That Impacts Our Demos

What’s in This Article for You?

• How our brains process inputs
• What is forgotten vs remembered in traditional demos
• Three tactics to improve retention
• Making your demos remarkable

What You Do and Don’t Remember

Imagine you are driving home from work or on an errand to a local store…

What do you remember about the cars and signs you see, the people, buildings, trees, road-side debris, and the other things you past along the way? How much of that information is retained?

Very little!

Only a tiny fraction of what you see is actually remembered. Our brains are continuously evaluating what we see and hear as we move through our day and we are continuously discarding anything that is not considered important, threatening, or particularly interesting.

What don’t we remember? Everything that is typical, expected, or normal. We are, indeed, programmed to forget.

On the other hand, what do we remember?

Read the balance of this short article here!

We Are Programmed to Forget – And How That Impacts Our Demos - Great Demo

A Novel Approach to Qualification

“Every system is perfectly designed to get the results it gets…”

W. Edwards Deming

Most current qualification processes are perfectly designed to protect valuable vendor resources from potential waste. That’s the good news.

The bad news is that these same qualification processes also cause Lead Churn for as many as 50% of your leads who are qualifiable, but who are not yet in an Active Buying Process. SDRs, BDRs, and Inside Salespeople qualify prospects through mechanisms like BANT, GPCT, MEDDIC, etc., all of which focus on gaining an understanding of your prospects’ status on their buying journeys.

Prospects who are interested in planning or budgeting for the future (those who are “Just Browsing”) are qualified out, in theory saving vendors from investing resources in sales processes that won’t yield short-term positive results.

But consider: “Just Browsing” prospects who are qualified out never have their desires satisfied. They clicked the “Book a Demo” button but never saw a demo. The result? They churn, even before they enter your sales funnel!

What is an elegant solution to this?

First, provide a Vision Generation Demo, then qualify. (You can find the full process for Vision Generation Demos in Chapter 11 of Great Demo! Third Edition.)

The entire process can still be completed by the same SDR, BDR, or Inside Sales staff (with training) and only requires a 15-20-minute call with the prospect:

Step 1: Intro – About the Prospect

Step 2: Menu and Vision Generation Demo

Step 3: Qualification Conversation

Step 4: Mutual Action Plan

Step 1 invests in a brief exploration of your prospect’s background. (See the “About You” discussion in Doing Discovery for full details.)

Step 2 applies the Menu Approach (when you have multiple solutions or offerings) to guide your prospect to an area of focus or specific interest, followed by a Vision Generation Demo. This satisfies your prospect’s desire to “see a demo of what’s possible”.

Step 3 is when you ask your qualification questions to determine whether your prospect is in an Active Buying Process or Just Browsing.

Step 4 harvests the results of Step 3 to enable a Mutual Action Plan that proceeds into a sales process for prospects in an Active Buying Process or a nurture “keep you informed” marketing process if your prospect is Just Browsing.

(Bonus for the enlightened: Change “sales process” to “buyer enablement process”.)

By following this approach, you’ve successfully accomplished the objectives for both vendor and prospect:

Vendor: Qualify your prospect to avoid wasting valuable vendor resources.

Prospect: See a demo of what’s possible.

And, as opposed to suffering from Lead Churn, when you follow this process, you’ll find that your prospects are predisposed to return to you when they move from Just Browsing to an Active Buying Process.

Congratulations!

A Twist on Establishing Rapport

I’ve been experimenting with “establishing rapport” in discovery calls and believe I’ve uncovered a more effective approach…

Traditionally, vendors seek to establish rapport in the first few minutes of a call by asking about something in the prospect’s physical background (e.g., books, awards, pictures, etc.), history (e.g., from LinkedIn), or similar. These brief interactions are designed to ease the parties into a discovery conversation, in theory.

However, these gambits often seem contrived and can be perceived, accordingly, as fake, manipulative, or unauthentic.

Instead, begin your discovery conversations with the “About You” dialogue (discussed in the Doing Discovery book). This approach has proven to achieve the desired results, plus it provides insights into your prospect’s background and history, often well beyond what can be gleaned from LinkedIn.

However, that’s not the twist: The new approach is to build your relationship with your prospect at the end of the call! 

After you’ve had your business and discovery discussion, then ask about an intriguing aspect of their personal history or something visible in their office that sparks your curiosity. It’s amazing how people will open up and talk freely about the topic at the end of the call.

Try it – and let us know how this works for you! 

What Is a Compelling Image Worth in a Demo?

Multiple Choice:

A) One compelling software screen, properly presented, is worth 1000 words.

B) One compelling software screen, properly presented, is worth 1000 mouse clicks.

C) One compelling software screen, properly presented, is often the difference between winning the business, losing the business, or a No Decision outcome.

D) All of the above.

Hint – choose “D”! The full answer can be found here – see chapter 7.

Doing Discovery Is as Simple as ABC

(No, not Always Be Closing…!)

ABC = Always Be Curious!

Being genuinely curious turns discovery sessions from inquisitions and interrogations into comfortable, bidirectional conversations.

If you’ve “heard it all before”, you aren’t being sufficiently curious. Consider: There are over 8 billion people on the earth, all of whom are individuals with distinct differences.

Similarly, there may be 100s or 1000s of prospect organizations for you, but all have their own specific differences. Find out what they are!

Being curious provides authentic quid pro quo opportunities when doing discovery. Any time you hear something new or even slightly different in a discovery call, explore it.

Always Be Curious!

(And for the full process for doing discovery successfully, grab yourself a copy of Doing Discovery on Amazon!)

Assessing Demonstration Skills Levels – How Do You Rate?

 

(A Never Stop Learning! Article)

What’s in this article for you?

• Assess yourself and your team
• Ten levels of demonstration skills
• Exploration of each level’s characteristics
• Measurements for achieving each level
• Pros and cons of each level’s demos, plus grades
• The significant gains enjoyed by advancing through the skills levels

A head of presales commented, “They don’t know what they don’t know…! 50% of our sales opportunities end in ‘No Decision’ and 30% of our demos are just pure waste. We must move from our traditional approaches to a validated, proven methodology that delivers improved results!”

Here’s a simple method to assess where you and your team stand, based on ten levels of increasing demo skills proficiency:

Level 1:  Follows the standard demo script

Level 2:  Customizes based on prospect’s market/industry

Level 3:  Customizes based on discovery information uncovered

Level 4: Communicates tangible business value

Level 5:  Applies both Vision Generation and Technical Proof Demos

Level 6: Manages and explores prospect questions

Level 7: Uses Biased Questions to outflank competition and reengineer vision

Level 8: Applies storytelling techniques to reinforce key ideas

Level 9: Applies these skills to the broad range of demo scenarios required, including demos for prospects occupying different portions of the Technology Adoption Curve, presenting new products, Executive Briefing Centers, transactional sales cycles, expansion opportunities, lunch and learn sessions, tradeshows, demos for analysts and third parties, channel partners, internal demos, and other scenarios

Level 10: Captures and reuses demo success scenarios, and integrates, aligns, and leverages the skills above into a cohesive demonstration methodology

Where are you and your team on this spectrum? 

You can find the balance of this article here – enjoy!