Which of these do you (or your team) suffer from?
- You didn’t do any discovery
- You did qualification, but not discovery
- You have no clue as to the prospect’s needs and wants
- You did do discovery, but then ignored it in the demo
- You did do discovery, but didn’t summarize it before diving into your demo
- You think you are doing “discovery on the fly” but it really is just your standard demo
- You don’t connect capabilities to solving prospect problems
- You don’t communicate business value
- You treat everyone the same and don’t differentiate by job title
- You think an “overview” needs to be at least an hour
- You try to pack as much into the time as possible
- You say, “Stop me if you have any questions” but you don’t mean it
- You ask, “Any questions so far?” over and over and over, without realizing that there are other options to draw from
- You ask, “Does that make sense?” without realizing the consequences
- You suffer from rampaging pronouns
- You suffer from zippy mouse syndrome
- You don’t start with the most important deliverable
- You assume your prospect “gets it” and understands everything they are seeing
- You assume your prospect can remember dozens of “important” things
- You show all the if, or, and also pathways
- You turn a 3-click pathway into a 20-click ordeal
- You show detailed workflows to executives
- You show Setup Mode items to everyone
- You “save the best for last”
- You run out of time before you get to the best stuff
- You show the latest, coolest new features regardless of prospect interest
- You don’t ask your prospects, “Would you like to see…,” you just show it
- You don’t understand how to apply the Primacy-Recency Effect or the Serial Positioning Effect
- You don’t understand the power of threes
- You don’t understand inverted pyramid
- You show capabilities the prospect doesn’t need or want to pay for
- You don’t understand “Buying It Back”
- You say, “Remember when I showed you __?” and they don’t
- You don’t actively encourage prospect questions and comments
- You don’t explore the “why” behind prospect questions
- You show detailed answers when “Yes” would have been sufficient
- You don’t “park” questions when appropriate
- You don’t close questions
- 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.
