A wise colleague commented, “Just because you could show a demo doesn’t mean that you should…!”
There are only 225-ish selling days per year (do the math for your situation). Clearly, any time consumed by demos that do not yield reasonable progress is wasted. That same time could have been invested in sales opportunities with better likelihoods of success, so the loss of that time is doubly hurtful!
Ask yourself, “What sales opportunities could I/we have pursued if I/we had not been consumed by demos that went nowhere?”
~30% of all demos delivered are considered wasted effort by presales teams. These are often “overview” demos presented with little or no discovery.
How much of your team’s time is consumed annually by these fruitless pursuits?
Even worse, the average No Decision (or “Do Nothing”) outcomes for B2B software vendors is ~45%. That means that nearly half of the sales opportunities you chase go nowhere. These are the forecasted opportunities that never close, in spite of consuming an astounding amount of time in many cases.
How many opportunities did you pursue during the last year that never closed, yet included one or more overview demos, qualification discussions, discovery conversations, deeper demos, POCs, POVs, proposals, etc.?
(Extra Credit: Count the number of No Decision outcomes from the past year. Estimate how many hours were consumed by the activities above. Cry.)
Time is the one resource that we cannot get any more of. (Sadly, there are only 28 hours in a day…!)
What else could have been done with the resources squandered in wasted demos and No Decision projects?
Think of your use of time as either “investing” or “wasting.” Investing implies a positive outcome; wasting time is pointless!
Resources:
Avoiding No Decision Outcomes
https://greatdemo.com/avoiding-no-decision-outcomes/
Great Demo! Third Edition
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0C9SNKC2Y/
Doing Discovery:
https://www.amazon.com/Doing-Discovery-Important-Enablement-Processes/dp/B0B8RJK4C2/
Training
https://greatdemo.com/training/workshops/great-demo/
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