As a prospect, imagine investing several hours in discovery discussions with a vendor, only to have the vendor ignore the information you provided. Instead, they show you features or entire modules you told them you aren’t interested in. They show you a list of hundreds of reports, but you only specified needing a handful. How would you feel? (I’d move on to another vendor who actually listens!)
Despite how incredibly insulting this is to the prospect, I see this happen far too frequently! Why does this happen? Several possible reasons:
- Discovery information was not communicated within the selling team and the person or people delivering the demo resorted to their best guess or “standard overview” demo.
- The person (or people) presenting the demo was told by management to include certain capabilities in every demo. These are often identified as “our key differentiators…”
- Discovery information is habitually ignored in demos. Hard to believe, but it happens!
In complex sales involving multiple players from both the prospect and vendor, it is even more important to communicate effectively. Great Demo! Situation Slides are a terrific currency for passing discovery information from person to person and team to team.
Hospital Analogy: Regardless of the diagnosis, everyone in this hospital is treated for appendicitis!
Solution? Execute crisp and complete information handoffs between team members. Review and discuss discovery notes prior to any demo to reach agreement on what to show and what not to show! Bonus: Communicate that same information to your implementation/professional services folks and your customer success team!
This is #8 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:
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