“They don’t know what they don’t know…!” commented a head of presales. “50% of our sales opportunities end in ‘No Decision’ and 30% of our demos are just pure waste. We must move from our traditional approaches to a validated, proven methodology that delivers improved results!”
Here’s a simple method to assess where you and your team stand, based on ten levels of increasing demo skills proficiency:
Level 1: Follows the standard demo script
Level 2: Customizes based on prospect’s market/industry
Level 3: Customizes based on discovery information uncovered
Level 4: Communicates tangible business value
Level 5: Applies both Vision Generation and Technical Proof Demos
Level 6: Manages and explores prospect questions
Level 7: Uses Biased Questions to outflank competition and reengineer vision
Level 8: Applies storytelling techniques to reinforce key ideas
Level 9: Applies these skills to the broad range of demo scenarios required, including demos for prospects occupying different portions of the Technology Adoption Curve, presenting new products, Executive Briefing Centers, transactional sales cycles, expansion opportunities, lunch and learn sessions, tradeshows, demos for analysts and third parties, channel partners, internal demos, and other scenarios
Level 10: Captures and reuses demo success scenarios, and integrates, aligns, and leverages the skills above into a cohesive demonstration methodology
Where are you and your team on this spectrum?
Most people and teams, when they are honest with themselves, are operating at Levels 1-3 (and Level 3 is often debatable…). That leaves a lot of room for improvement!
The average vendor suffers from a ~45% No Decision rate and finds that ~35% of their demos are wasted. If those numbers are similar to your experiences, then perhaps a change is in order! And even if your metrics are better, we should all constantly seek to advance our skills.
What are some pathways to improvement? Books are a terrific starting point, providing self-paced learning. However, you cannot have a conversation with a book (or a video), so answers to your questions or clarification of ideas have to come from somewhere else. Book clubs can be a mechanism to address this, but you are still at risk of the blind leading the blind!
Seminars and webinars provide the means to introduce new ideas and catalyze the process of change. These sessions are wonderful ways to kick off new programs and embrace large populations at once.
Workshops provide the strongest tactic to achieve substantive change. Workshops include multiple rounds of roleplay, where participants prepare and deliver new demos applying the methodology. Each round builds upon the previous and includes personal feedback, tuning, and guidance.
Choose the mechanism that works best for you!
Workshops, Seminars, and Webinars:
https://greatdemo.com/training/workshops/great-demo/
Books:
Great Demo! Third Edition:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0C9SNKC2Y/
Doing Discovery:
https://www.amazon.com/Doing-Discovery-Important-Enablement-Processes/dp/B0B8RJK4C2/
Suspending Disbelief:
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