How Discovery on the Fly Results in Buying It Back 

“What do you think of this feature?” inquired the rep.

“Sorry, don’t need it…” replied the prospect.

“OK, let me show you another really cool function…” said the rep as they dove further into their software. “Can you see yourself using this?”

“No, we don’t have that use case…,” said the prospect.

As the “discovery on the fly” demo went on, this exchange occurred more and more.

At the end of the meeting, the rep asked, “So, what do you think?”

The prospect replied, “It’s way more than we need. Do you have a scaled-back version?”

“No,” said the rep, “It’s all one package. You get everything…”

“Then it’s too much!” was the prospect’s response.

This was part of the dialogue in a recorded call. The rep ended up offering a large discount to offset the prospect’s concerns: Yet another example of the woes of Buying It Back!

Many vendors who do “discovery on the fly” end up Buying It Back and it happens far too frequently.

 The tendency of vendors to fall into this self-made trap is huge, partly because he temptation to dive into your software is extremely high once it has been launched. It takes enormous discipline to avoid showing capabilities that the prospect doesn’t need or want (or be willing to pay for!).

There are two solutions to avoid Buying It Back when doing Discovery on the Fly:

1. Introduce your capabilities in the form of a question before showing them.

If your prospect responds positively, then you can say, “Well, we have that capability – would you like to see it?”

On the other hand, if your prospect’s response is, “No, we don’t really want that….” or “We can’t see situations where that would be valuable,” then you simply move on. Don’t show that capability!

Note that if the negative response happens too frequently, you are still at risk of Buying It Back, since your prospect will begin to assume that all of these capabilities will be in the software they purchase from you, if they move forward.

2. Use a Vision Generation Demonstration instead of trying to do traditional Discovery on the Fly. A Vision Generation Demo is designed to satisfy the prospect’s desire to “see what’s possible” while moving the prospect (gently, yet firmly!) into a discovery conversation. (See Chapter 11 in Great Demo! for details.)

The subsequent discovery dialog should yield the list of Specific Capabilities your prospect wants and needs, enabling you to present a Technical Proof Demo that is tailored precisely and avoid Buying It Back. (Chapters 5-9 in Great Demo!)

 

Solution Resources:

Do Discovery before the demo!

https://www.amazon.com/Doing-Discovery-Important-Enablement-Processes/dp/B0B8RJK4C2/

Apply the Menu Approach

https://greatdemo.com/the-menu-approach-a-truly-terrific-demo-self-rescue-technique-3/

Great Demo! Chapters 5-9 and 11

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0C9SNKC2Y/