Want Better Demos? Do Better Delivery!

 

“I’m overwhelmed and confused!” said the prospect.

 

What was going on?

New hires in software firms are told to “learn the demo” and often need to prove proficiency by showing each of the steps in a traditional overview demo. Their delivery style is generally dry and wooden as they struggle to simply follow the prescribed pathway.

 

As practitioners grow more seasoned, they become comfortable with the software and develop their own personal delivery style, generally defined by (and generally limited to) word choice, presence, energy, pace, and a few personal experiences.

 

This is partly relevant in our equation, but not sufficient.

 

Far too many seasoned veterans (as well as new hires) show screen after screen after screen without actually presenting the screens. Prospects struggle to take in what they are seeing while the presenter works through their “talk track”: A net zero in terms of successful communication.

 

Similarly, traditional demos emphasize showing as much as possible in the time allowed, severely reducing or eliminating any chance for interactivity. Prospects perceive these demos as firehose deliveries, furiously flinging features and functions, frantically overfilling prospects’ craniums with a copious cornucopia of confusing capabilities. (Yes, I had fun with this sentence and hope you did too…!)

 

Great Demo! practitioners learn how to clearly, crisply and compellingly communicate what the audience is seeing on the screen, how prospects can solve their business problems using your tool, and how much value can be enjoyed by making the change.

 

The methodology enables a real conversation to take place by “Peeling Back the Layers,” encouraging interactivity by chunking, avoiding “pre-answering” questions, and the use of frequent summaries to stimulate dialog. These demos are perceived by prospects as engaging and focused on their interests, yielding a true dialog, resulting in fewer demos to move the process forward and secure the order.

 

 

Resources:

 

Bite-sized Is Better: The Power of Chunking in Software Demos

https://greatdemo.com/bite-sized-is-better-the-power-of-chunking-in-software-demos/ 

 

Rescue – From the Tyranny of Traditional Demos

https://greatdemo.com/rescue-from-the-tyranny-of-traditional-demos/

 

Let’s Talk About Value – Uncovering the Delta

https://greatdemo.com/lets-talk-about-value-uncovering-the-delta/ 

 

Why Structure Demos Like a News Article?

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

 

Are you Buying It Back?

https://greatdemo.com/are-you-buying-it-back-2/ 

 

Great Demo! Third Edition

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

 

Doing Discovery:

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

 

Training

https://greatdemo.com/training/workshops/great-demo/ 

 

More Supporting Articles

https://greatdemo.com/learn/articles/ 

Want Better Demos? Use Better Content!

 

Traditional demos attempt to present as many features and capabilities as possible in the time allotted, often without ever covering what the prospect wanted to see. The resulting demos are perceived as confusing and complicated, and the product appears bloated with more features than the prospect needs. There is little interaction between prospect and vendor, and little or no communication of business value.

 

Presales and sales leaders say the lack of communicating business value in demos is their number one area for improvement. “We don’t articulate tangible business value” is a common complaint. And buyer perception of insufficient value is a key contributor to No Decision outcomes.

 

Great Demo! emphasizes completing sufficient discovery prior to a Technical Proof Demo to enable a sharp focus on the Specific Capabilities, key deliverables, and the value associated with your solution. The methodology details communicating specific value elements throughout the demo:

 

-       When presenting Situation Slides (reviewing the prospect’s situation and discovery information)

-       When presenting Illustrations (key deliverables)

-       As part of each interim Summary

-       As part of the Final Summary

 

The “Do the Last Thing First” approach assures that the most important elements (from the prospects’ perspective) are presented right up front, enabling prospects to see exactly what the software will do for them, how it can solve their business problems and how much value can be gained.

 

Great Demo! applies the fabulously simple concept of “Fewest Number of Clicks” to reduce the perception of complexity and to build a vision in your prospects’ minds that they can see themselves using the software! This strategy encourages productive questions from prospects, turning monologues into engaged, bidirectional demo conversations.

 

The Inverted Pyramid strategy enables vendor teams to organize and deliver demos in accord with prospects’ depth and level of interest, presenting just enough to satisfy and complete the technical sale, without the risk of product bloat.

 

Multiple-player and multiple-solution scenarios are elegantly “chunked”, transforming painful sagas (“day-in-the-life-multiple-hats-do-you-remember-when-I-showed-you-this-now-we’ll-go-back-and…”) into well-structured, consumable segments mapped specifically to executives, middle-managers, staffers and administrators. What a delight!

 

Best of all, these production-hardened methods have been fully validated. It’s one thing to know in your heart that these practices are advantageous, it is truly wonderful to have them proven!

 

 

Resources:

 

Rescue – From the Tyranny of Traditional Demos

https://greatdemo.com/rescue-from-the-tyranny-of-traditional-demos/

 

Let’s Talk About Value – Uncovering the Delta

https://greatdemo.com/lets-talk-about-value-uncovering-the-delta/ 

 

Why Structure Demos Like a News Article?

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

 

Are you Buying It Back?

https://greatdemo.com/are-you-buying-it-back-2/ 

 

Bite-sized Is Better: The Power of Chunking in Software Demos

https://greatdemo.com/bite-sized-is-better-the-power-of-chunking-in-software-demos/ 

 

Great Demo! Third Edition

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

 

Doing Discovery:

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

 

Training

https://greatdemo.com/training/workshops/great-demo/ 

 

More Supporting Articles

https://greatdemo.com/learn/articles/ 

AI and Outliers – Missing Important Datapoints?

 

Does AI ignore or embrace outliers?

 

The difference could mean everything!

 

Penicillin was discovered when Alexander Fleming returned from vacation to find yeasts and molds had contaminated petri dishes in which he had been growing bacteria. But one dish was different: it had a small clear area which led to penicillin. That clear area was an anomaly, an outlier.

 

Viagra wasn’t originally intended for erectile dysfunction, but scientists noted a side effect that transformed the drug into the blockbuster it is today. Another outlier.

 

Teflon was similarly produced in an experiment gone sideways.

 

The microwave. Quinine. X-rays. Velcro. Saccharin. LSD. Play-doh. Vulcanized Rubber. And many other discoveries and inventions were the result of exploring outliers and pursuing mistakes.

 

When building your AI models, are you eliminating the possibility of examining intriguing outliers?

What’s the Value of Better Demos? Part 7: The Costs!

 

Consider, then do the math:

 

-       How may demos do you present per week or month?

-       How much time is consumed in demo preparation, delivery, and follow-up (and travel)?

-       What percent would you say are pure waste?

-       What percent were only partly successful?

-       What percent end up as No Decision outcomes?

 

Let’s run an example!

 

If you have 10 presales people, each doing 3 demos per week, that’s 30 demos per week or about 1500 demos per year.

 

If 33% of those demos are wasted with unqualified prospects or result in No Decision outcomes, that’s 500 wasted demos per year!

 

If it takes 2 hours to prepare each demo, plus 1 hour for delivery, then that’s 1500 wasted hours or over ¾ an FTE.

 

At 3 hours prep per demo, plus 1 hour for delivery, then that’s 2000 wasted hours, costing you over a full FTE. That’s expensive!

 

And at 6 hours prep per demo and 2 hours for delivery, that’s 4000 wasted hours, costing you over two full FTEs – that’s a fifth of your team. Ouch!

 

Do your own analysis then ask yourself, “Is this acceptable?” (The correct answer is “No!”)

 

If you feel you should make changes, note that the Great Demo! methodology, training courses, and coaching provide clear definitions of when to say “yes” to delivering a substantive demo and when and how to push back gently. 

 

They also include self-rescue techniques to successfully deal with challenging real-life situations, such as the delightfully effective Menu Approach and Vision Generation Demos (well-beloved by buyers!).

 

 

Resources:

 

The Menu Approach – A Truly Terrific Demo Self-Rescue Technique

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

 

Great Demo! Third Edition

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

 

Doing Discovery:

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

 

Training

https://greatdemo.com/training/workshops/great-demo/ 

 

More Supporting Articles

https://greatdemo.com/learn/articles/ 

 

What’s the Value of Better Demos? Part 6: Repeat Demos?

Too Many Repeated Demos?

 

Very frequently, vendors present multiple demos per opportunity and even per prospect stakeholder. This is commonly due to presenting overview demos followed by one or more deep dive demos for various players on the prospect team without sufficient discovery.

 

One needs to ask, “Was the overview demo necessary…?” and “Was this deep dive demo also necessary?” and “Why did we have to do two or more demos for each of these players?”

 

-       Or would your prospect have been satisfied by a Vision Generation Demo (since they were “Just Browsing” and not yet in an Active Buying Process)?

 

-       Or would your prospect have been willing to invest in a discovery conversation directly and avoid that overview demo? Many are willing and would prefer it!

 

-       Or would a Vision Generation Demo have compressed two calls into one, by replacing the overview-demo meeting and discovery call meeting with a Vision Generation Demo that included substantial discovery?

 

-       And would a few minutes of intelligent discovery rule the prospect out as a qualified lead, avoiding that overview demo and possibly many subsequent deep dive demos and POCs, potentially avoiding a painful No Decision outcome? Hmmm…

 

Next, we need to ask, “In addition to overview demos, why did we need to present deep dive demos twice (or more) to the same people? Could it have been that…

 

-       We didn’t do sufficient discovery and, in spite of delivering two hours of demos the prospect said, “I didn’t see what I was looking for…”?

 

-       The prospect said the first demo(s) looked too complicated and confusing?

 

-       We ran out of time in our first demos (by spending too much time in Setup Mode and workflow options before we got to the “best stuff”)?

 

Unnecessary repeat demos consume far too many presales resources!

 

 

Resources:

 

Stunningly Awful Demos – Two Words to Avoid

https://greatdemo.com/stunningly-awful-demos-two-words-to-avoid/ 

 

Stunningly Awful Demos – The Painful Irrelevance of Setup Mode

https://greatdemo.com/stunningly-awful-demos-the-painful-irrelevance-of-setup-mode/ 

 

Avoiding No Decision Outcomes

https://greatdemo.com/avoiding-no-decision-outcomes/ 

 

Let’s Talk About Value – Uncovering the Delta

https://greatdemo.com/lets-talk-about-value-uncovering-the-delta/ 

 

Critical Dates – Prevent Prospect Procrastination

https://greatdemo.com/critical-dates-prevent-prospect-procrastination/ 

 

Great Demo! Third Edition

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

 

Doing Discovery:

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

 

Training

https://greatdemo.com/training/workshops/great-demo/ 

 

More Supporting Articles

https://greatdemo.com/learn/articles/ 

What’s the Value of Better Demos? Part 5: No Decision?

 

Avoiding No Decision Outcomes

 

B2B software sales teams suffer from a surprisingly large number of No Decision results (where your prospect doesn’t purchase your offering, they don’t go with a competitor, they choose to do nothing and remain with status quo).  

 

How large? The best B2B software companies report ~20-25% of their forecasted opportunities ending as No Decision, the worst are around 75-85%, with most running around 45-50%.

 

This is frightening…! Why?

 

It means that about half the sales projects that you pursue end up going nowhere! (Would you like some of that time back in your life? Say, “Yes”, with passion…!)

 

There are typically three reasons why sales opportunities end as No Decision outcomes:

 

A.    Is there a Critical Business Issue or is it just a problem the prospect is willing to live with?  

B.    Is the value clear and sufficiently large to drive the purchase (The “Delta” in Doing Discovery and Great Demo! methodologies)?

C.     Is there a date by when the prospect needs a solution in place (A “Critical Date” in Doing Discovery and Great Demo! methodologies)?  

 

Doing Discovery and Great Demo! practices help qualify-in or qualify-out deals before investing time in any substantive demo. Far too many sales projects languish “Living in the Land of Hope.” 

 

How many of your organization’s opportunities suffer this fate?

 

 

Resources:

 

Avoiding No Decision Outcomes

https://greatdemo.com/avoiding-no-decision-outcomes/ 

 

Let’s Talk About Value – Uncovering the Delta

https://greatdemo.com/lets-talk-about-value-uncovering-the-delta/ 

 

Critical Dates – Prevent Prospect Procrastination

https://greatdemo.com/critical-dates-prevent-prospect-procrastination/ 

 

Great Demo! Third Edition

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

 

Doing Discovery:

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

 

Training

https://greatdemo.com/training/workshops/great-demo/ 

 

More Supporting Articles

https://greatdemo.com/learn/articles/