The Terrible Tabs Death March - A Sales Prevention Team True Story!

 

“The happiness of most people is not ruined by great catastrophes or fatal errors, but by the repetition of slowly destructive little things.”

 – Ernest Dimnet

 

I joined a face-to-face demo where the vendor presented a screen with ten tabs and then proceeded to march through each of them, one by one, in detail.

 

It was very interesting to watch the body language of the audience as this demo progressed. The response to the initial page was positive. It was a well-constructed dashboard, and it looked good.

 

The next tab was received with moderate interest, but by the third tab many of the audience members were visibly sagging in their seats!

 

By the fourth and fifth tabs nearly everyone had checked out (perhaps even the presenter, who had clearly presented these tabs many, many times!). And there was an audible sigh of relief as the final tab was described.

 

This was a classic case of the presenter following the old, established, traditional demo pathway: a slow, painful march towards no sale!

 

The Moral? Focus on the Specific Capabilities your prospect needs to solve their problem!

 

Resources: 

See Chapters 5-9 in Great Demo! 

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0C9SNKC2Y/

Want more fun, bitesize, engaging stories and lessons learned?

See my new book “Suspending Disbelief!” 

https://tinyurl.com/yc7rsrmy

Do You Use Ranging Probes?

Of course, you are familiar with Open and Closed Probes…

 

What’s an example of an Open Probe?

(THAT’s one!)

 

And do you use Closed Probes?

(And THAT’s a Closed Probe!)

 

So, what is a Ranging Probe?

 

When doing discovery, Ranging Probes are a wonderful solution when dealing with “squishy” information or situations where your prospect’s answers might span a spectrum. Acting like a prism, Ranging Probes can separate intertwined answers into individual colors!

 

Let’s follow an example conversation:

 

You ask, “What’s your typical sales cycle length?”

 

Your prospect replies, “Ummmm….” Your prospect is struggling to condense several possible situations down to a single choice. They’re thinking, “Well, it depends on the market and product…”

 

You cleverly rephrase, realizing that your prospect isn’t sure how to answer, “Okay, what are your fastest sales cycles, what are your longest, and what might be a typical average?”

 

Your prospect responds, “Oh, the shortest run a month, the longer cycles can be a year to eighteen months, and the average is around six months…”

 

Notice that you just been rewarded with three pieces of information on this topic. That’s an unanticipated advantage of Ranging Probes! Now you know much more about your prospect’s sales cycles than just a simple average.

 

Be prepared to rephrase a question as a Ranging Probe whenever there is potential flexibility or squishiness in the response. A long, “Ummmm…” from your prospect is often a good indicator of this situation!

 

You’ll find many more practical tips like this in Doing Discovery here!

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

Demos and Prospects’ Initial Mindset

What are your prospects’ emotional stances when you start your demos?

 

Enthused?

Curious?

Skeptical?

Cynical?

Annoyed?

Apathetic?

Neutral?

 

How does their mindset change over the course of the demo? 

What causes those changes? 

Or does their mindset not change at all?

 

And if YOU are the prospect, what is your emotional stance at the beginning of a demo to you? How and why does your mindset change during the demo (or does it stay the same)?

The Sad Story of the Way Cool Tool: A Surprising Product and Demo Lesson!

  

Drawing tools are always evolving, seeking to improve and streamline image and diagram production. And in the world of chemistry, drawing chemical structures has its own particular challenges that resulted in this unexpected outcome!

 

Our product manager and development team had created a chemical drawing capability that enabled chemical structures to be drawn with a single mouse click followed by dragging. It was fabulous! You could click, hold your mouse button down, and draw out the complex hexagonal chemical structures in a single fluid motion (think “tetra-methyl-chicken-wire”), saving the user dozens of clicks.

 

It was truly way cool! And so, it was named the “Way Cool Tool.”

 

As soon as it was released, we showed it in every demo to both new prospects and existing customers. We reveled in showing it. We found every possible reason to show it, over and over, because (of course) it was waaaay cool!

 

One day, several months after its release, a long-term customer took us aside after a demo and said, “I’m sorry inform you, but we never use your ‘Way Cool Tool.’ We are almost always working from existing structure templates, which we then modify with a few additions or changes. But we never use your ‘Way Cool Tool.’”

 

True story! 

 

The moral?

 

Seek to understand – and gain a clear understanding – of how your customers actually use and want to use your software. Those are the best pathways for your demos!

 

You can find more product, presales, sales, and customer success stories in “Suspending Disbelief” here!

https://tinyurl.com/yc7rsrmy 

For Founders – Storytelling, Sales, and Business Growth: Turning Ideas into Revenue!

 

Do’s and Don’ts: Fabulous Framing for Founders!

 

“Peter E. Cohan shares how storytelling, sales strategy, and business thinking drive real growth.

Learn how to communicate value, build strong business cases, and position yourself as an expert.”

 

I joined Craig Sheets and “Behind Closed Books” for this engaging and pragmatic discussion of founding and growing your business, including: 

 

00:00   Introduction

00:30   Welcome and topics

04:00   Naming your company – and what not to do!

12:30   A surprising way to write a book

15:30   Print-on-demand and publishing options

16:30   Getting to the point!

24:00   Marketing, being perceived as an expert, and bootstrapping

28:00   Struggling to “pull the trigger” in starting the business?

32:30   Tax and company structure pragmatics!

40:00   Storytelling, business success, and effective stories

50:00   Five ways to communicate ideas

55:30   Some thoughts on AI (of course!)

64:30   Freeze-dried beer!

69:30   Origins, changes, and growth

 

You can find the full recording here – enjoy!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eP5-QsGPOw4 

Why Structure Demos Like the News – Part 6 of 6: Running Short on Time – Pro Tip!

 

In an earlier post I noted that newspaper editors could trim articles to fit the available space by cutting stories from the bottom upwards. In doing so they knew they’d lose the least important information and that the balance of the article was unaffected.

 

We can apply the same principle in our demos!

 

Let’s say you expected an hour for your demo meeting, but you’ve only been given thirty minutes: what do you do? By applying Inverted Pyramid, you are able to communicate the most important capabilities and concepts to your prospect; you’ll leave many of the details and less important information out. That’s the demo equivalent of cutting upwards from the bottom of your story.

 

Have only twenty minutes? Same principle.

 

Only ten minutes? Invert that pyramid!

 

How about a one-minute interaction in an elevator? Inverted Pyramid is the answer!

 

Use the News!

 

News organizations have evolved and production hardened the use of the Menu Approach and Inverted Pyramid in presenting information extremely effectively, mapped to each individual’s desire. 

 

Why not apply the same ideas in your demos?

 

(And perhaps in other forms of communication, as well!)

 

 

If you missed Parts 1-5 you can find them here:

https://greatdemo.com/blog/ 

 

Or enjoy the full article here!

https://greatdemo.com/why-structure-demos-like-a-news-article-2/ 

 

And you can enjoy the full methodology here:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0C9SNKC2Y/

Why Structure Demos Like the News – Part 5: Answering Questions!

 

“Can it export to ___?” asks the prospect.

 

“Absolutely! We support seven different types of export formats, including ___, ___, ___, ___, and especially ___, ___, and ___, which offer significant advantages in export fidelity as some of the colors aren’t rendered as accurately in the other formats, plus the translation of European number format to U.S. format is done really well, along with handling address and phone numbers from 71 countries…” responds the vendor, who is about to continue when the prospect says,

 

“Oh – so the answer was ‘yes.’”

 

In addition to organizing the content of your demo, one of the best uses of Inverted Pyramid is answering questions. You start with the highest-level answer and then test to see if your prospect is satisfied or wants more detail.

 

In the dialog above, the vendor should have started with “Yes” and then asked, “Is that sufficient or would you like more depth?”

 

Simple and very effective! (Is that enough or would you like to see more on the Elegant Art of Managing Questions and Time?)

 

If you missed Parts 1-4 you can find them here:

https://greatdemo.com/blog/ 

 

And you can enjoy the full methodology here:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0C9SNKC2Y/

Why Structure Demos Like the News – Part 4: Managing Multiple Job Titles

How? Combine the Menu Approach with Inverted Pyramid!

 

Let’s say you have four prospect players in your demo meeting:

 

1.     An executive

2.     A middle manager

3.     An individual contributor

4.     A system administrator

 

How do you organize your demo for this disparate group of people? You combine the Menu Approach with Inverted Pyramid for each player: it’s actually four individual demos!

 

Work with the executive first: present a Menu for him or her. Let them choose the item of most interest and then present the Illustration. Is this enough or would they like to see more? Yes? One or two “Do It” clicks satisfy their interest and they are done.

 

Who’s next? The middle manager.

 

You follow the same process: Menu, Illustration, Do It, and then Peel Back the Layers in accord with their depth and level of interest.

 

Next up is the individual contributor. Rince and repeat: Menu, Illustration, Do It, and then Peel Back the Layers.

 

Who is last? The system administrator, and you follow the same process for them. Interestingly, what the admin wants to see is like someone who reads sections of the news that nobody else care about!

 

Can Inverted Pyramid be applied elsewhere in demos? But of course! That’ll be tomorrow’s post!

 

If you missed Parts 1-3 you can find them here:

https://greatdemo.com/blog/ 

 

For more on the Menu Approach, see

https://greatdemo.com/the-menu-approach-a-truly-terrific-demo-self-rescue-technique-3/ 

 

And for the full methodology, enjoy a copy of Great Demo!

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0C9SNKC2Y/

Why Structure Demos Like a News Article - Part 3: Ever Run Out of Time?

 

Have you ever heard a demo presenter say, “We have lot to cover so I’ll go really fast…”? Have you ever said something similar yourself?

 

Have you ever been unable to get to the “best stuff” because time was short or a corporate overview presentation consumed part of your time?

 

Many of us respond by moving very rapidly through our demo (while also telling our audience that “we want this to be as interactive as possible, so please ask questions…”). Are we surprised when we don’t get through the material and our prospects don’t ask any questions?

 

We shouldn’t be, we’ve turned the demo into a one-way monologue!

 

So, take a page from the news services. Present the demo equivalent of a headline or photo succinctly and rapidly. That’s the top of the Inverted Pyramid, and in Great Demo! methodology we call this an Illustration.

 

For some prospect players, particularly executives, this may be sufficient!

 

For those interested in the demo equivalent of the first couple of paragraphs (the lede), present the key capabilities using a minimum of mouse clicks. This corresponds to the Great Demo! “Do It” pathway.

 

Finally, for audiences who are really interested, you can dig deeper and explore the breadth and depth of the relevant capabilities, just like those who wish to read more of the article. In Great Demo! we call this “Peeling Back the Layers.”

 

Interestingly, also note that there are very few readers of the news who read everything on a news website (I can’t imagine if it is possible, in fact!). Similarly in demos, you are not obligated to present everything that your software can do, so please don’t.

 

And as news people say, “Don’t bury the lede!”

 

If you missed Part 1 you can find it here:

https://greatdemo.com/why-structure-demos-like-a-news-article/ 

 

And here’s Part 2:

https://greatdemo.com/why-structure-demos-like-a-news-article-part-2-inverted-pyramid/ 

 

For more on the incredible impact of Illustrations, see

https://greatdemo.com/illustrations-doing-the-last-thing-first/ 

 

And for the full methodology, grab a copy of Great Demo!

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0C9SNKC2Y/