Dimensions of Discovery – Webinar Recording Available Now

 

Does one size of discovery fit all prospects? 

Nope!

A surprising number of dimensions impact your discovery effectiveness, beginning with your very first contact and proceeding well beyond purchase. What are these parameters and how do we address them?

How do you get the discovery information you need without overwhelming your prospect? How much is enough? What do you need to capture? We’ll examine:

• Qualification vs Discovery
• “Just Browsing” vs “Active Buying Process” Prospects
• Simple Tools vs Complex Offerings
• Champion Experience
• Buyer Experience
• Executives vs Everybody Else
• Discovery Across the Technology Adoption Curve
• A Medical Analogy
• Applying a Discovery Methodology
• So How Much Discovery Is Enough?

Here is the recording from this exploration of these intriguing and unexpectedly important discovery dimensions!

https://goconsensus.com/webinar/dimensions-of-discovery/

What Should Purple Cows and Demos Have in Common?

 

(What makes your demos remarkable?)

In 2003, Seth Godin published “Purple Cow: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable” which urged organizations to make and market remarkable products. His major point was that a purple cow stands out from all of the other cattle as unique, intriguing, and noteworthy: It is truly remarkable! (Of course, all of the cows are, ahem, outstanding in their field…)

Sadly, most demos are like all of the other bovines, boring and uninteresting, unremarkable and forgettable. Finding ways to stand out can increase your success rates and reduce the number of demos required to secure an order.

I’m curious: What made a demo you delivered, saw, or participated in truly remarkable? Share what happened!

These could include stories that resonated so strongly that they are still retold today, or the use of props or visual aids that people still remember, or any other examples that made that demo stand out with particular intensely.

What was remarkable?

How Does the Anchoring Effect Impact Demos?

You are all aware of the Anchoring Effect, of course… But does the Anchoring Effect also apply to images and other entities in addition to numbers? 

Yes, it does!

When prospects compare software from multiple vendors, the first vendor to present enjoys the advantages of the Anchoring Effect in numerous ways, particularly including setting the anchor for how key screens “should” look. So, be first whenever possible!

Additionally, contemplate which screens you show within your demos, since the first few screens set anchors for those that follow. This is another reason to “Do the Last Thing First!” and apply the Inverted Pyramid approach, both of which are key Great Demo! principles.

“This book is the book I never knew I needed to read!”

“This book is the book I never knew I needed to read!”

- Adam Freeman

Great reading over the holidays (any holidays!).

Doing Discovery!

Dimensions of Discovery – Webinar November 30

Does one size of discovery fit all prospects? 

Nope!

A surprising number of dimensions impact your discovery effectiveness, beginning with your very first contact and proceeding well beyond purchase. What are these parameters and how do we address them?

How do you get the discovery information you need without overwhelming your prospect? How much is enough? What do you need to capture? We’ll examine:

• Qualification vs Discovery
• “Just Browsing” vs “Active Buying Process” Prospects
• Simple Tools vs Complex Offerings
• Champion Experience
• Buyer Experience
• Executives vs Everybody Else
• Discovery Across the Technology Adoption Curve
• A Medical Analogy
• Applying a Discovery Methodology
• So How Much Discovery Is Enough?

Join us Thursday November 30 at 9:00 AM Pacific Time as we explore these intriguing and unexpectedly important discovery dimensions!

Managing Questions and “Reciprocal Inquiry”

How many times have we heard a prospect ask, “Can your software do X?” and the vendor responds “Absolutely! Let me show you how this works…” or “No, but we have a workaround – here, I’ll show you…” without any reciprocal inquiry?

In both cases, the vendor missed an important opportunity to seek clarification. “How important is this to you?” “What prompted your question?” “What is it you need to accomplish with this kind of capability?” “How often would it be used?”

Prospect responses to these questions can make or break a demo. Skilled questions management can keep you out of the weeds, enable you to identify and categorize prospect needs and wants, and address competitive threats, while simultaneously encouraging the conversation.

You can find the full process of responding to and managing questions in Chapter 8 of the 3^rd Edition of Great Demo!

Discovery and Demos Across the Technology Adoption Curve – Part 2

Discovery and Demos Across the Technology Adoption Curve – Part 2

Encountering the Edge

Or

Why Don’t They Get It?

(A Never Stop Learning! Article)

What’s in This Article for You?

• Insights and guidance beyond Part 1.
• How to determine when you are on the edge of the Chasm.
• How to make the transition from Innovators and Early Adopters to the Majority

Axiom

You can’t show a solution to someone who doesn’t perceive they have a problem.

Are They Stupid?

Have you ever presented a demo to a prospect that doesn’t seem to understand what you are offering them? Have you ever felt like the prospect just didn’t “get it”? They didn’t appear to have a clue as to what earth-shattering, game-changing, paradigm-shifting, mind-blowing, disruptive breakthrough you’d just shown them? 

Have you ever found yourself wondering, “Are they stupid or what?”

You are not alone! You are likely dealing with new groups of buyers: The Early and Late Majority. Prepare to change your tactics!

You can read the balance of this article here!

Doing Discovery Edizione Italiana – Doing Discovery Italian Edition

I am absolutely delighted to announce the availability of Doing Discovery in Italian! Many thanks to Giorgio Gnoli who performed the translation. You can find this Edizione Italiana on Amazon.it here in Kindle format. Godere!

The Duck Test: The Curse of Expectation Bias in Discovery and Demos

If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it must be a duck, right?

Nope. 

It turns out that many seabirds pass the “duck test” above, but aren’t ducks, including coots, grebes, and loons, which belong to different non-duck families.

In doing discovery and delivering demos, vendors often suffer similar expectation bias.

We’ve heard prospects respond the same way over and over, and accordingly we expect that our next prospect will follow the same path. If we aren’t really listening, we may miss an important aspect that makes this prospect different or unique. 

The moral? Practice active listening and, when you hear something novel or different, be curious and explore! How you engage in this part of the conversation and what you learn can make the difference between a successful sale vs a loss to a competitor or a No Decision outcome.

Have you ever suffered from expectation bias? (And how would you know, if you weren’t listening carefully?!)

(Groucho Marx offered a different twist on the duck test: "He may look like an idiot and talk like an idiot, but don't let that fool you. He really is an idiot.")

Discovery and Demos Across the Technology Adoption Curve

Discovery and Demos Across the Technology Adoption Curve

or

How to Avoid Crashing into the Chasm

(A Never Stop Learning! Article)

What’s in This Article for You?

• An example of crashing into and then escaping from the Chasm
• A Technology Adoption Curve refresh
• Symptoms and solutions to Chasm crashing
• Intriguing statistics and implications
• What about Laggards?

Plus, Three Take-aways:

1. Why your current demos may no longer work.
2. The level of proof required by prospects increases as you progress across the Curve.
3. No Decision outcomes increase similarly.

Axioms

A “standard” demo will not fit all Curve categories.

Similarly, “standard” discovery does not apply to all Curve categories.

Very simply, for discovery and demos, one size does not fit all!

A Story

We had recently released our new flagship software which embodied the latest cutting-edge technologies. We had great success selling it to some of our existing customers and a few prospects, and then there was the terrible sound of nothing: no subsequent sales.

The balance of our prospects and existing customers didn’t resonate with our technology presentation. They didn’t understand our demo. Discovery, which had been previously seemed very effective, didn’t yield the expected results. We heard nothing but the sound of crickets in an empty room. Over 80% of our market was unresponsive.

What was happening?

My boss at that time was good friends with Geoffrey Moore, who was in the process of launching his “Crossing the Chasm” workshops, and Mr. Moore was invited to use us as a test case for his training.

It was highly successful. In the midst of the session, I exclaimed, “Holy cow – we’re in the Chasm…!”

What we learned and applied pulled us out of the chasm, resulting in a sales renaissance of our flagship, dominating the verticals that we addressed, and catapulting us towards the coveted $100 million annual revenue milestone.

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

What Is Uncontrolled Vocabulary?

“And we offer the highest degree of allowlisting,” said the sales rep.

There were blank looks from the majority of the prospect players in the meeting, but no one said anything.

“But wait: There’s more! Our system delivers near-real-time dynamic allowlisting!” announced the rep, triumphantly, clearly expecting a chorus of “oohs” and “aahs”.

Again, there was no response from the prospect team. In fact, most of them looked confused and slightly annoyed. What was going on?

The vignette above was a segment of a recorded product demo that I was reviewing on behalf of the vendor who had asked me for comments and feedback. In my notes, I said there was clearly a problem with Controlled vs Uncontrolled Vocabulary, and included this explanation:

My colleague Steve Young taught me about Controlled Vocabulary years ago. He noted that vendors frequently use verbiage and jargon that is meaningless to prospects. At that time, we were exceedingly guilty of it ourselves, having just released our new disruptive, technologically advanced flagship product.

We had cooked ourselves a veritable stew of expressions, terms, phrases, words, idioms, and slogans that, while palatable to us, our prospects perceived it as entirely undigestible.

He pointed out that when all participants in a meeting share a common understanding of terms, it is “Controlled Vocabulary” and precise communication can be enjoyed. However, when one or more participants are unfamiliar with a word or a phrase, clear-cut communication is curtailed. 

These terms are “Uncontrolled Vocabulary” and they are effectively rejected by your audience. Even worse, Uncontrolled Vocabulary tends to annoy prospects, as it positions them as uninformed or worse!

The lessons are clear: 

1. Ensure that you and your prospect share the same understanding of terminology.
2. Identify and close any gaps.
3. Use the prospect’s words whenever possible!

What’s the difference between a mystery and a puzzle, with respect to demos?

With a puzzle, the more information you have, the closer you get to solving the puzzle. With a mystery, however, more information doesn’t help – it just makes the mystery more, well, mysterious!

Your objective with a demo is to help your prospect solve their puzzle. That means doing discovery to understand what is needed, and then presenting exactly what your prospect needs to see to complete the solution to their puzzle.

You turn your demo into a mystery by showing features your prospect doesn’t need, want, or care about.

Frankly, it’s a mystery why so many demos do this!