Which of These Discovery Skills DON’T You Know?

 

- Starting Discovery

- Summarizing and Summaries

- The Curse of Knowledge

- Executives

- Enabling Your Champion

- Groups Versus Individuals

- Communication Within Your Team

- Overactive Listening

- Burn Victims

- The Technology Adoption Curve

- New Products – Disruptive Products

- Expansion and Renewals

- Discovery for Transactional Sales Cycles

- Guidelines for Discovery on the Fly

- Discovery Success and Metrics

 

You’ll find all of these and more in Doing Discovery. Make 2025 your year to upskill!

 

Consider enrolling in a Doing Discovery or Great Demo! Workshop or explore our books, blog and articles on the Resources pages of our website at https://GreatDemo.com. Join the Great Demo! & Doing Discovery LinkedIn Group to learn from others and share your experiences.

 

And you can find Doing Discovery here! 

https://www.amazon.com/Doing-Discovery-Important-Enablement-Processes/dp/B0B8RJK4C2/

Price, Price Range, and the Anchoring Effect

 

Of course you are all familiar with the Anchoring Effect and use it to your advantage. Here’s an interesting twist: Offering a price range both defeats and leverages the Anchoring Effect!

 

Many vendors refuse to offer pricing information to their prospects until sufficient information is collected to be able to provide a precise price. This practice often frustrates and annoys prospects who simply want to understand whether the price of the vendor’s offering is within their means.

 

After all, prospects want to learn early in their investigation whether the price is near their expectations. It is frustrating for a prospect to invest significant time and effort into researching a product only to find that their price expectations are off by a zero or two! (E.g., $200,000 vs $2,000,000!)

 

Accordingly, I recommend that vendors provide a price range to their prospects early in the process to avoid these unpleasant surprises.

 

However, the upper and lower ends of the price range also represent two anchoring points. Setting these anchors too low or too high may impact your prospects’ perceptions of affordability and whether they feel they are getting a great deal once a precise price is revealed!

 

Here’s an example:

 

Your prospect is interested in your offering, but you need more information before you can provide a precise price. You tell your prospect, “The price for this product ranges from as low as $1000 per user per year to as high as $5000 per user per year for some of our premium customers.”

 

This is a large range which helps to defeat the Anchoring Effect, but it leaves your prospect wondering where they sit on this price spectrum. So, you solve this by adding, “Most of our customers who are similar to you [in size, number of users, or other relevant parameters] are paying between $2500 to $4000 annually per user.”

 

This provides your prospect with two new anchoring points. Additionally, it lets your prospect know that they aren’t at the top (or bottom) of the price range. Biasing the range towards the high end offers an interesting advantage: if your final price comes in at or below $2500, they may actually feel they are getting a deal.

 

And that’s no fluke!

A Perfect Demo Environment

 

Have you ever said or heard:

 

“Sorry, I don’t have an example like that in our demo system…”

 

“No, we can’t show that workflow – this is a demo database…”

 

“Our demo environment isn’t up to date – that’s why this feature isn’t working…”

 

“No, I don’t have good data to show in this report – no data, in fact – sorry…!”

 

“That report hasn’t been built for our demo system – but trust me, it’s terrific!”

 

In your demos, how often do you find you are apologizing for an inability to demonstrate capabilities, complete workflows, or present compelling results and reports? Far too often, in many cases!

 

A perfect demo environment enables you to show what you need to show, clearly and convincingly. No apologies, no excuses. Accordingly, here are some recommendations for demo environments to make your demos as crisp, compelling and successful as possible.

 

What’s in this article for you? A lot!

 

-       Demo = Fake!

-       And Don’t Label Things “Demo”

-       No Obviously Fictional Names

-       Include Problems, Exceptions, and Opportunities

-       U.S. vs International

-       Market Alignment

-       Market Maturity

-       Who Am I?

-       Be a Customer

-       Keep It Current

-       Refresh or Reset

-       Availability

-       Performance

-       Surprise – No Internet Access!

-       “Trust Me…”

-       Screen and Projection Woes

-       Mini Mouse

-       Infrastructure Checklist

-       A Perfect Demo Environment

 

You can find the full article here: https://greatdemo.com/a-perfect-demo-environment-never-stop-learning/ 

 

Enjoy!

What Happens If You Train an AI Engine with…?

 

What happens if you train an AI engine with poor data? 

You get Artificial Ignorance!

 

What happens if you train an AI engine with biased data? 

You get Artificial Influence!

 

What happens if you train an AI engine with too little data? 

You get Artificial Inexperience!

 

What happens if you train an AI engine with narrow, non-best-practices data? 

You get Artificial ineptitude!

 

What happens if you train an AI engine with worst-practices data? 

You get Artificial Inferiority!

 

What happens if you train an AI engine with ridiculous data? 

You get Artificial Insanity!

Demo Storylines: Journey, Destination, or Both?

There’s a lot of discussion today about storytelling in demos and related sales activities. Many software vendors talk about “The Journey” or “The Customer’s Journey” as a storyline. We need to ask ourselves, however, what is important for your prospect or your customer?

 

Is it really the Journey, or is it the Destination, or possibly Both?

 

What’s in This Article for You?

 

-        What’s the Difference between the Journey and the Destination?

-        It’s All about Value

-        When It’s Not the Journey

-        When It Is the Journey

-        When It Is the Destination

-        When It Is Both

-        A Matter of Perspective

 

You can find the full article here: https://greatdemo.com/demo-storylines-journey-destination-or-both/ 

 

Enjoy!

“Supposing is good, but finding out is better.”

“Supposing is good, but finding out is better.”

– Mark Twain

Just because all your existing customers suffered from X, Y, and Z doesn’t mean that your next prospect has the same challenges: Be aware of expectation bias when doing discovery!

Data – Information – Knowledge – Wisdom: Where Are You on This Spectrum for Discovery?

Here’s an example of the DIKW progression – contemplate sailing in the ocean:

 

-       Data: The wind is blowing at 30 knots.

-       Information: The forecast shows deteriorating weather and there are already large white-capped waves.

-       Knowledge: The conditions might be too much for our boat.

-       Wisdom: Let’s wait until the winds and seas have abated.

-       Additional Wisdom: And in addition to our lifejackets, let’s carry an emergency raft with a radio, food, and water.

-       Deep Wisdom: My wife says to me, “How about we fly?”

 

And here’s an example regarding doing discovery:

 

-       Data: Uncovers and explores pain (Doing Discovery Levels 1-2).

-       Information: Uncovers and explores pain, impact, and tangible value (Doing Discovery Levels 3-4).

-       Knowledge: Uncovers and explores pain, impact, tangible value, and reengineers vision. Applies these skills to the broad range of prospects across the Technology Adoption Curve, “burn victims,” disruptive and new product categories, transactional sales cycles, and other scenarios (Doing Discovery Levels 5-6).

-       Wisdom: Integrates, aligns, and leverages these skills into a cohesive discovery methodology (Doing Discovery Level 7).

 

Where are you on this spectrum?

 

Uplevel your DIKW with the Doing Discovery book and training!

 

https://GreatDemo.com

 

https://www.amazon.com/Doing-Discovery-Important-Enablement-Processes/dp/B0B8RJK4C2/