Pearls and Epiphanies: Meetings

Being early is on time; 

Being on time is late; 

And being late is inexcusable!

How Is Cooking Like Doing Discovery and Demos?

Because cooking (successfully, that is!) requires methodology. Wait… Cooking is a methodology?

Most definitely!

Cooking successfully requires you to know what to do, how to do it, and when to do it.

Simple example? Let’s fry an egg!

What: Crack an egg into a buttered hot pan. Cook until done.

How: Heat the pan until the butter bubbles but doesn’t quite brown. Crack the egg into the pan carefully so that the yolk doesn’t break. Cook until the white is just browning…

When: Macro? Breakfast (for many, but definitely not all folks). Micro? How long do you heat the pan? How long do you cook the egg? Etc.

Note that the descriptions above are still insufficient for a novice. What kind of pan? How much butter? Does the size of the egg matter? Do you want it “over easy” or “sunny side up”? What degree of doneness do you want? How do you flip the egg for “over easy” without the yolk breaking? And that’s just a starter set!

And what happens if you miss a step, do things wrong, or in the wrong order? (Provide your own awful outcomes in the comments!)

Now contemplate cooking a meal that includes a main, starch, and vegetable, all of which need to be prepped, cooked, and plated such that they can all be served at once. Methodology is what makes it possible!

Knowing what to do, how to do it, and when to do it.

Successful discovery requires a methodology! Successful demos requires a methodology! Most customer-facing teams focus on the “What” and pay too little attention to “How” and “When”. Training can address this.

In cooking, if you ruin a fried egg, you can try again, cheaply. For software vendors, the stakes (ahem) are much higher!

What’s the Connection Between Monday Morning and Vision Generation Demos?

Think about what you did first thing on Monday morning. (I mean, after you consumed the comics or the sport scores or other news…!)

You likely did one or both of two things:

1. Checked the status of your KPIs
2. Reviewed what you have to do today (or are looking forward to doing, depending on your mindset!)

Vision Generation demos are nothing more (and nothing less!) than presenting the possibility of a much better Monday morning. 

What information would make your Monday morning review more accurate, effective, productive, visible, or timely? What data is lacking or insufficient today and what would its availability mean for you? What improved or new dashboards or reports would enable you to achieve your objectives more effectively or rapidly?

Now put yourself in your prospects’ shoes and ask the same questions, but from their perspective. What dashboards, reports, or screens from your software would improve their situation?

Choose a handful the most compelling of these screens, based on their specific Job Titles. Those are your candidates for terrific Vision Generation Demos!

For more on this extremely effective process, see Chapter 11 Vision Generation Demos in the Third Edition of Great Demo!

Bonus Thought: As a prospect on a Monday morning, would you prefer a crisp, focused Vision Generation Demo or a stunningly awful Harbor Tour?!

Webinar Recording – “Discovery Masterclass”

I joined Julien Emery of Superpanel for this delightful discussion:

• Why discovery?
• What is discovery?
• Common questions/challenges, including
• What if a prospect doesn’t want to answer your questions?
• What if someone just wants a demo?
• What if the person doesn’t know the answers?
• What if it is an existing customer – expansion opportunities?
• Discovery framework – with real-life brief examples!
• 5 secrets (which are now no longer secret!)

The actual webinar starts around 3.5 minutes in. You can find the recording here!

Bits About Books – Great Demo! Third Edition Conversation

 

From the host:

“Bits About Books episode #70 featuring Peter E. Cohan, is now live. We welcome him back to BAB and speak with him about the latest edition of his Best Seller ‘𝗚𝗿𝗲𝗮𝘁 𝗗𝗲𝗺𝗼! - 𝗛𝗼𝘄 𝗧𝗼 𝗖𝗿𝗲𝗮𝘁𝗲 𝗔𝗻𝗱 𝗘𝘅𝗲𝗰𝘂𝘁𝗲 𝗦𝘁𝘂𝗻𝗻𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗦𝗼𝗳𝘁𝘄𝗮𝗿𝗲 𝗗𝗲𝗺𝗼𝗻𝘀𝘁𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀 (Third Edition).’

Available in iTunes, Google Podcast, Spotify, Stitcher and all major outlets. It is a Bizcast.in Original Production. Brought to you by Pitch.Link - The Buyer Seller Engagement Platform. 𝘔𝘢𝘬𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘣𝘶𝘺𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘦𝘢𝘴𝘺!

Most Demos of software fail miserably because they are not crafted with the viewer in mind. They start and end by demonstrating each feature of the software. Within 15 minutes it becomes boring and irrelevant, and the viewers have tuned out. What they should be, instead, is a demonstration of the problem solving ability for the viewer being presented to.

Each person in the buyer organization has a different objective, and a different problem to solve. For the CXO level it is about revenue and long-term growth. They are not interested in the details of how each function within the software functions. So, when presenting to this level, the seller must take into account this requirement, and craft the demo accordingly to address their needs and concerns.

The way to craft captivating demos that resonate with the audience is through focused, conversational storytelling that align with the customers’ problems and show how the software being demonstrated has solved similar problems for other customers in the same category. This helps to engage the audience and improve the effectiveness of demos, in turn, increasing close rates aiding go-to-market strategy.”

You can find this 1-hour recording here. Enjoy!

Two Presales in a Pod – Digging into Discovery

 

How much discovery is enough, and is a disco demo a good thing or bad thing? Peter Cohan joined legume-man Adam Freeman for this 38-minute exploration of:

• How do you know enough discovery is … enough?
• An illustrative story about visiting two doctors – and the answer to the “enough?” question
• Personality differences and “enough”
• Trust and relationship – and discovery
• Asking even when you already know the answers
• Prospects need to feel “heard”
• Culture-based discovery questions
• POCs vs discovery
• Vendor job perspective: salespeople vs presales vs implementation vs customer success
• The Curse of Knowledge revisited
• What to do if something is missing
• Going further than just uncovering pain
• Pain vs Critical Business Issues and risk avoidance
• Vision Generation – earning the right to discover
• “Just Browsing” vs “Active Buying Process” prospects – and No Decision outcomes
• Two great final questions
• Sharing the info during discovery (very effective!)
• “Disco Demos” defined – when should they be used?
• “Monday Morning” as a paradigm for Vision Generation Demos
• The Disco Demo sad reality
• Shameless self-promotion!

You can find the recording here. Enjoy!

Interview: The importance of Discovering Critical Business Issues

Listen to my recent interview with Tom Meerstadt of Cuvama where I share practical tips to avoid “No Decision” outcomes. We explored:

• 2023 sales (and buying) challenges 
• Changing our thinking for 2024
• No Decision outcomes – 45% in typical years
• Three discovery elements that yield No Decision results
• Critical Business Issues as the main reason for No Decision outcomes
• The difference between pain and Critical Business Issues – an automobile example
• Another example: A Head of Sales
• Tips for uncovering Critical Business Issues
• Using “why?” and other insightful questions
• The impact (and challenges!) of Job Title level on uncovering Critical Business Issues
• Why isn’t sufficient discovery done in most organizations?
• What about call recording tools?
• Learning takes place by doing!
• Three discovery elements reprised

You can watch this 25-minute interview here. Enjoy!

The “Butter Test” for Demos

What is the “Butter Test”? It’s another term for the “5-Second” analysis for user interface navigability. Very simply, it is a method to ensure that the minimum effort is required to complete any function or task.

We can apply the same principle to demos, as well!

Every pathway we show in a demo needs to be as short as possible (Just “Do It!”). The more clicks or steps that are shown, the rougher the journey.

More clicks or steps generates more friction, resulting in more work for your prospect (and for your sales process). It’s simple physics!

Make your demos “as smooth as butter…!”

The Advantages of the Incumbent Vendor

The Advantages of the Incumbent Vendor

–

Leveraging Its Impact on Managing Competition, Renewals and Expansion Sales

(A Never Stop Learning! Article)

“Get their data, and their hearts and minds will follow”

Michael Cusumano, The Business of Software

Let’s explore some of the advantages enjoyed by being the incumbent vendor and how you can leverage this position for renewals and expansion sales, while holding your competition at bay. We’ll examine:

• Leveraging sunk costs, time and energy investment
• Change avoidance
• Risk avoidance
• Burn victims
• Social capital
• Users’ Groups
• Leverage

https://greatdemo.com/the-advantages-of-the-incumbent-vendor/

Enjoy!

The Opposite of Active Listening?

How many of us find ourselves forming a response to a prospect or customer comment or question, well before they have finished speaking? I’d guess we are guilty of doing this far too frequently! 

Doing this is, in fact, the opposite of active listening – yet we do it all the time. We could call this, “pre-response processing”.

What are the negative impacts? Myriad! While we are constructing our responses, we may miss tone, inflection, words, or even full phrases, putting us at risk of misinterpretation or worse. An answer that is out of alignment with our prospect or customer’s intent negatively impacts their trust in us, damages our authenticity, and can throttle the conversation. They will not feel “heard”.

Pre-response processing seems to happen most frequently when you have “heard it all before”. This can take place in a discovery conversation, when your prospect is describing their situation, and you’ve heard that same story a hundred times before from others!

I found myself doing this today and had to apologize… Which brings me to some solutions:

• Recognize that you have stopped listening, apologize, and ask them to repeat. Better to ask them to repeat than to misunderstand! “Sorry, can you please repeat that? I want to make sure I hear what you are saying…” (If you are operating over the web, you can consider blaming “the connection…”!)
• Ask them to pause, so that you can jot down a note – do so – then re-engage. “Hang on, let me write this down…” This actually helps the conversation, as it gives the appearance that you are making notes about what they said (even if you are simply making a note about what you want to say…!)
• Practice active curiosity, meaning listen intently while seeking to hear anything new or unusual (even if you’ve heard the story a hundred times before…). It is terrific to be able to observe, “Wow, that’s a twist I’ve never heard before!”
• Simply stop your pre-response processing! (This is the hardest to actually put into practice.)

Other suggestions?