The Menu Approach: A Few Important Subtleties

Not all votes are *ahem* equal!

 

When counting votes, remember that businesses are not necessarily democracies, and all votes are not necessarily equal! For example, if there is one C-level person in the room, and she is the only one who wants “Marketing Campaign Execution,” that topic moves (magically and mystically) to the top of the list.

 

Similarly, you can choose to bias the presentation (and subsequent scoring) of topics up or down in accord with your current understanding of your prospect’s situation: “Many of the other customers we’ve worked with in very similar situations to what you’ve shared with us so far found that the topic of “Analytics and AI Insights” was most important. They were able to save months of otherwise wasted effort as a result of what they learned. How many of you are interested in this?”

 

Finally, when you complete a topic, you can use strike-through text to show that it has been completed, giving you and your prospect a written record of what was completed and what is still open:

 

-       Analytics and AI Insights – 12 

-       Forecast and Pipeline Reporting and Inspection – 11 

-       Workflow Automation – 10 

-       Opportunity Management and Coaching – 7 

-       Improving Contact Management – 5 

-       Marketing Campaign Execution – 4 

-       Enablement Support – 4 

 

Pro Tip: Be Prepared!

 

Do menus need to be implemented on-the-fly?

 

Successful practitioners of The Menu Approach recommend having a menu (or two or three) previously prepared. Their starting point is to create an “uber menu” that includes a fairly long list of topics spanning the full set of expected audience member job titles, markets, verticals, and applications.

 

Next, they generate subset menus that are aligned with specific verticals and likely prospect interests. These get tuned over time to improve, add, or remove specific menu items. It’s like a restaurant, constantly seeking to improve their own menus!

 

And along those lines, draft your individual topics as solution phrases or problem statements, rather than lists of features.

 

 

If you missed the first or second posts, you can find them here: 

https://greatdemo.com/the-menu-approach-a-truly-terrific-demo-self-rescue-technique-2/ 

 

https://greatdemo.com/the-menu-approach-an-example/ 

 

 

And see “Origins of The Menu Approach: A Demo Survival Success Story” in Suspending Disbelief for a real-life successful example of The Menu Approach! https://tinyurl.com/yc7rsrmy)