The Menu Approach – An Example!

More on a Truly Terrific Demo Self-Rescue Technique

 

You’ve been asked to present a demo to a prospect team of dozen people, about which you know very little. Instead of taking the prospect on a painful and boring Harbor Tour demo, you start by presenting a list of topics that you believe may be of interest. 

 

For a CRM system, a typical list of “menu items” might look like:

 

-       Improving Contact Management

-       Analytics and AI Insights

-       Workflow Automation

-       Opportunity Management and Coaching

-       Marketing Campaign Execution

-       Forecast and Pipeline Reporting and Inspection

-       Enablement Support

 

You say, “Here is a list of some topics we could cover. Let me describe each of these briefly and then I’ll ask for a show of hands, and each of you can vote for as many topics as you wish.”

 

At the end of the exercise, your list might look like:

 

-       Improving Contact Management – 5 

-       Analytics and AI Insights – 12 

-       Workflow Automation – 10 

-       Opportunity Management and Coaching – 7 

-       Marketing Campaign Execution – 4 

-       Forecast and Pipeline Reporting and Inspection – 11 

-       Enablement Support – 4 

 

You then re-order to yield a list that is rank prioritized in accord with your prospect’s interests:

 

-       Analytics and AI Insights – 12 

-       Forecast and Pipeline Reporting and Inspection – 11 

-       Workflow Automation – 10 

-       Opportunity Management and Coaching – 7 

-       Improving Contact Management – 5 

-       Marketing Campaign Execution – 4 

-       Enablement Support – 4 

 

Wow! You just accomplished several, truly terrific things:

 

1.     You’ve uncovered the prospect’s most important issues (they’re at the top of the list).

2.     You have a roadmap for the balance of your demo.

3.     You can organize your time to ensure you address the high-importance topics first (and it’s OK if you don’t have time to cover everything on the list). 

 

This third item also takes advantage the Inverted Pyramid structure, a fabulously successful method that enables you to align with your prospect’s depth and level of interest for the topics.

 

Additionally, you may have also expanded your prospect’s vision of what solutions and solution areas your organization can provide. It is possible that your prospect was previously unaware that you have solutions across this range of topics.

 

Give The Menu Approach a try!

 

Next: A Few Important Subtleties…

 

 

If you missed the first post, you can find it here: 

https://greatdemo.com/the-menu-approach-a-truly-terrific-demo-self-rescue-technique-2/ 

 

 

And see “Origins of The Menu Approach: A Demo Survival Success Story” in Suspending Disbelief for a real-life successful example of The Menu Approach! https://tinyurl.com/yc7rsrmy)