Monday, July 29, 2024

Discovery Don’t #3 Use a “Disco Demo”

 

(This one will be contentious!)

 

“Disco Demos” or “Discovery on the Fly” are simply other terms for Harbor Tour demos, but where the vendor asks (over and over!), “Is this something of interest to you?” These are often inflicted on prospects in response to prospects’ requests to “just show me a demo!”

 

While the intent is to provide your prospect with examples of your offering and associated advantages, most of these demos devolve into a flood of features, resulting in very little useful discovery information and suffering from severe risk of Buying It Back.

 

Hospital Analogy: Imagine you’ve headed to the hospital because you feel very sick. A doctor meets you at the entrance and, instead of asking any questions, they take you on a tour of the hospital. They show you the X-ray equipment and say, “We have a terrific, state-of-the-art X-ray system – is that something you might want?” and repeat that process for each department!

 

Solution? When possible, gently (but firmly!) convince your prospect of the value of doing discovery first, followed by a demo that focuses crisply on what was learned in discovery.

 

The doctor analogy can be an effective approach: “Before I offer a diagnosis and suggest a cure, I need to perform an examination…”

 

If your prospect still demands, “Just show me a demo…,” use the highly effective Vision Generation Demo method to satisfy your prospect’s desire to “see what’s possible,” while moving them comfortably into a discovery conversation: Win-win! (Chapter 11 in Great Demo!)

 

This is #3 from The Dirty Dozen of Discovery Don’ts – you can find all twelve here! https://lnkd.in/evUnp8YV

 

You can find the full set of DO’s and DON’Ts in Doing Discovery: 

https://lnkd.in/g28PXx55

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