How Much Discovery Is Enough?

Is it a qualified lead?

Ten questions?

Twenty questions?

Fifty questions?

A longer list of questions?

One hour per person?

A clear definition of “pain”?

 

How much discovery is enough? When both of the following are true:

 

When you (the vendor) have sufficient information to confidently and clearly propose a precise solution;

 

and

 

When your prospect is comfortable that you have a sufficient understanding of their situation to confidently and clearly propose a precise solution!

 

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

What’s the Core Difference Between Qualification and Discovery?

Qualification is done for of the vendor only;

Discovery is done for both parties!

 

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

The SaaS Backwards Podcast and Great Demo!

 

Why Your Demos May be Costing You Deals

 

I joined the fine folks at Austin Lawrence Group for this 35-minute conversation:

 

00:45   Provocative Questions!

01:15   Common demo mistakes and a tasty example

02:45   The end result! “How” vs “What” (and “Why”)

04:00   A (painful) bicycle accident analogy

04:45   Flip your demo upside down!

05:00   Tailoring demos to your audience – a CRM system example

06:45   A structured approach

08:00   How does Great Demo! differ from traditional approaches?

09:45   What is “Buying It Back”?

10:45   What’s the difference between skills and methodology?

12:15   What can we learn from news articles?

14:25   How should discovery work (or work best)?

16:00   What’s a solution for “Just show me a demo…!”

17:00   Two types of buyers? And the horrors of Lead Churn!

19:25   Who should give demos?

23:00   A different take (or two!) on storytelling in demos

29:00   What demo metrics should we track?

32:00   A Great Demo! success story?

33:30   How can you contact Great Demo!

 

Enjoy this podcast here!

“You Must Now Show Us How…!”

Early Experiments with Great Demo! Illustrations

 

One hundred years ago I was working out of our Swiss office with the mission to “Achieve deployment of our flagship product into our key European accounts.” We had sold large licenses of this software but much of it was “shelfware,” not yet in production use by our target end users.

 

Accordingly, we had organized regular Sprechstunden (doctor’s hours, effectively) at one of our key customers near Frankfurt and it was my turn to be the “doctor.” We had just released an important add-on capability (thanks Dave D!) that finally provided users with the deliverables they needed: the ability to generate Structure Activity Relationship (SAR) tables in Excel.

 

These tables were (and still are!) the currency for analysis and communication by drug discovery scientists and medicinal chemists, in particular. They often have piles of these tables on their desktops. Producing these tables had previously been a laborious cut-and-paste process, requiring repeated toggling between several systems: A real pain! Our new capability reduced hours of this effort down to minutes.

 

I’d seen demos from other members of our team that took the traditional approach, starting from an empty spreadsheet and progressing step-by-step while showing several options and alternatives along the way. I’d observed that audiences looked bored until they saw the completed SAR tables at the end of the demo, often taking twenty or thirty minutes.

 

When I noticed how audiences visibly perked up when they saw the final output, I decided to run an experiment for this meeting.

 

I entered our customer’s large meeting room to see sixty German medicinal chemists seated, ready for our Sprechstunde. I set up my laptop and immediately presented a simple example of a SAR table output and asked, “Is this the kind of thing you’d like to generate?”

 

There was an audible sound of people leaning forward in their chairs, and a few chemists started to speak, but I held up my hand and said, “How about this one?” as I presented a more complex example.

 

There were some vigorous head-nods, and many chemists knocked their knuckles on the tables in front of them (a sign of agreement and/or appreciation in that part of the world). Again, a few started to speak, but I held up my hand again.

 

“And what do you think about this one?” I asked as I presented a publication-ready example, the kind of output they deeply desired.

 

One of the chemists in the front row stood up and declared, “You must now show us how…!”

 

This was one of the first experiments with the idea of “Do the Last Thing First” through presenting compelling Illustrations, and it was a terrific success!

 

You’ll find the complete methodology in Great Demo! or (even better) learn how to achieve similar results in a Great Demo! Workshop.

What Would You Do?

I saw this message Subject in my Junk folder: “Upcoming Consultation - See You There Peter”

 

I thought, “Oh, I must have agreed to a meeting that I’ve forgotten about…” However, here’s the text of the message when I opened it:

 

“Peter -- Is it okay to send you a meeting invite on Thursday at 1:30 PM  to discuss our services?

 

Basically, it's a business-to-business comprehensive appointment setting services combining Telemarketing, Linkedin and Email Marketing

 

If this makes sense to you?. What's the best number to reach you?

 

You may also book an appointment here:  BOOK HERE

 

All the best,

YYYYYY ZZZZZ || Marketing Associate

Lead Mastery”

 

[This is copied directly from the message; only the name of the Associate has been changed.]

 

How disingenuous! What is the likelihood that I will EVER use their services? They’ve just joined my personal business blacklist!

A Painful Logo Slide Lesson

 

“Cured me!” I commented to my colleague, after a visit to a prospect. He had wondered why I didn’t do a corporate overview presentation and why I didn’t at least show a “logo slide.” I told him the following true story…

 

Some years ago, I was leading and doing sales for a Silicon Valley startup. At that time, we had an extensive corporate overview deck that described our technology, our founders, our mission, our investors, our product history, our corporate milestones, and our logo slide. We were very proud of what we had accomplished so far!

 

Our standard practice was to begin prospect meetings with this presentation to establish our credentials and set the stage for our product pitches. It was a very typical sales approach for the time.

 

I was meeting with a large prospect organization located on the U.S. East Coast. The meeting got underway, and I began to present our corporate overview.

 

When our logo slide appeared, I noticed one prospect player sitting towards the front of the table lean over and whisper a few words to his colleague in the next seat. As he spoke, he pointed to the slide and shook his head negatively.

 

Intrigued and a bit concerned I said, “I noted you reacting to the slide – are you willing to share what you said?”

 

He responded, “Certainly. See those guys [the logo] at the bottom-left corner of your slide? We think they’re idiots and we’d never purchase something that they would!”

 

Ouch! Cured me!

 

Just because you, the vendor, may be proud of your logo slide doesn’t mean that it resonates (positively) with your prospect. Even if you think you’ve selected logos that align with this prospect’s market, vertical, size and other factors, there’s no guarantee that it will connect as you might desire!

“Customer Fill In” – A Truly Terrific Demo Tip!

 

I was watching demos that highlighted vendors’ customer-facing intake forms/portals and noted some poor practices. Each vendor claimed that end-customers “can complete the process in five minutes or less” but:

 

-        They turned the 5-minute workflow into 15-30 minutes…!

-        They used obviously fake demo data.

-        They covered many options, often exhaustively!

-        It was obvious that the demonstrators had presented the same demo pathway dozens of times (it sounded like the presenters were boring themselves!).

-        The prospects were largely silent through the entire demos.

-        And the vendors never asked prospects to provide input into the workflows…

 

This last item really struck me as a MAJOR error! Our objective is to turn demos into conversations.

 

Here’s a truly terrific tip for these situations: Invite your prospect to be the end-customer and fill in the form!

 

Let’s say your software offers an intake portal for consumers who want a loan. You say to your prospect, “OK, let’s have you play the part of your customer. You tell me what to enter on each screen…”

 

Advantages?

• You and your prospect complete the intake form in five minutes (proving your original claim).
• Your prospect gains a first-hand vision of how the process works.
• Your prospect thinks about the options and asks relevant questions.
• And your prospect is fully engaged throughout the process!

This approach is called “Customer Fill In.”

 

Any time there is an option to choose from (and you don’t care about the choice), invite your prospect to make the choice. They’ll be engaged, taking ownership of the process and the result. Delightful!

 

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

Demos for Executives

A Never Stop Learning! Article

 

“Get to the point…!”

 – Nearly Every Executive Exasperated by Traditional Salespeople

 

What’s in This Article for You?

 

-       A Real-life Story of Transformation

-       Who Is an Executive?

-       Demos for Executives

-       Two More Tips

 

You’ve completed discovery with your prospect’s executive and team, and now it’s time for the demo. What do they want to see?

 

A Real-life Story

 

“Walk a mile in your prospects’ shoes…!”

 

Earlier in my career when I was growing a sizeable business, we needed to implement a CRM system, and vendors were invited to present their offerings. Of the five vendors solicited, only two held any discovery conversations, and all five requested two-hour slots for demos with my evaluation team of eight people. Our experience was not a positive one, but it was transformational!

You’ll find the full article here. Enjoy! 

Signed Copies for Your Kickoff?

 

Sure! 

 

As you plan your 2025 sales kickoff or similar events, contemplate the impact of the team receiving signed copies of Great Demo! or Doing Discovery – or both! 

 

Book Club Bonus: If you do a book club with either book (https://greatdemo.com/learn/books/), I’d be happy to join a session or two gratis to discuss the ideas, answer questions, and provide examples. 

 

Contact me at PCohan@GreatDemo.com if you’d like to explore!

Demo Tip #233: One Picture Is worth...

Demo Tip #233: One picture is worth a thousand words; one compelling screen is worth a thousand mouse clicks! (That’s a Great Demo! Illustration.)

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

Could Your Demos Be Better? (Part 2!)

Which of these do you (or your team) suffer from?

 

-        You don’t customize the data to match your prospect’s industry/vertical

-        Your data time-series, action items, and alerts are not realistic

-        You use the phrase, “What we call a …” and assume your prospect will remember

-        You don’t understand the power of the pause

-        You demo on autopilot, with little enthusiasm

-        You present from a large monitor to prospects with small screens

-        You never use annotation tools

-        You don’t use props or visual aids

-        You think “a day in the life” is an effective story 

-        You don’t use analogies, metaphors, or similes

-        You don’t use meaningful stories

-        You don’t invite the prospect to “drive” by proxy

-        You don’t operate as a team when multiple vendor players are involved

-        You don’t prepare or plan roles when multiple vendor players are involved

-        You “pile-on” answers to prospect questions

-        You use American/UK/etc. colloquialisms with non- American/UK/etc. audiences

-        You inflict corporate overview presentations on your prospects

-        You inflict product overview presentations on your prospects

-        You ignore the case studies (the single most valuable portions of corporate overview presentations)

-        You don’t dry-run important demos

-        You offer trials and POCs without need

-        You deluge “just browsing” prospects with hour-long “overviews”

-        You don’t understand the difference between Vision Generation and Technical Proof Demos

-        You understand the difference between Vision Generation and Technical Proof Demos, but don’t apply the principles

-        You’ve been trained in “Tell Show Tell” but never do it

-        You feel you're at the top of your game...

 

Any others to add?

 

For rapid improvement, grab a copy of Great Demo! or enroll in a Doing Discovery or Great Demo! Workshop. 

 

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