"You can ignore reality, but you can't ignore the consequences of ignoring reality."
– Ayn Rand
The prospect had invested in several hours of discovery with the vendor, but the vendor’s demo didn’t reflect any of what had been learned…
I was preparing to coach this vendor’s sales and presales teams and had been reviewing a number of discovery conversations and associated demos. In this particular case, I felt the discovery calls (there were two) were quite good. They had uncovered and confirmed several important use cases.
Unfortunately, it appeared that either this information wasn’t communicated to the demo presenter, or the presenter chose to ignore discovery and present their standard demo.
Fascinatingly, about forty minutes into the demo meeting the prospect lead player said, “So, we spent hours with your team outlining our needs and situation. You appear to be ignoring everything we said!”
He paused, looked annoyed, and observed, “You’re showing use cases that are irrelevant and referencing scenarios that we don’t need. You’re like a doctor who did a terrific job diagnosing a specific illness, but your prescription is for diseases that we don’t have!”
He then terminated the demo meeting, ending the sales process for that vendor.
Moral: Map your demos to your discovery information!
Resources:
Situation Slides: A Swiss Army Knife for Sales and Presales
https://greatdemo.com/situation-slides-sales-and-presales-swiss-army-knife/
Doing Discovery
https://www.amazon.com/Doing-Discovery-Important-Enablement-Processes/dp/B0B8RJK4C2/
And see the stories in “Suspending Disbelief” for more engaging lessons learned!
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