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ES Great Demo!
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Diagnose and Ignore? Another Sales Prevention Team True Story!
“You can ignore reality, but you can’t ignore the consequences of ignoring reality.” – Ayn Rand The prospect had invested in several hours ...
Demo Desperation – Another Sales Prevention Team True Story!
“Wait! Don’t go away, we haven’t gotten to the best stuff yet!” – Vendor rep watching people leave the room… It was an ...
Help, Mr. Wizard…! Another Sales Prevention Team True Story!
“Tell me, old friend, when did you abandon wisdom for madness?” – Gandalf to Saruman Software wizards are intended to make a ...
Setup Mode Horror – Another Sales Prevention Team True Story!
“Life is too short for you to be the caretaker of the wrong details.” – Alexandra Stoddard I watched a ninety-minute demo recording ...
An Online Oops… A Sales Prevention Team True Story!
“It’s the little details that are vital. Little things make big things happen.” – John Wooden A lack of situational awareness can be ...
The Terrible Tabs Death March – A Sales Prevention Team True Story!
“The happiness of most people is not ruined by great catastrophes or fatal errors, but by the repetition of slowly destructive little things.” – ...
Do You Use Ranging Probes?
Of course, you are familiar with Open and Closed Probes… What’s an example of an Open Probe? (THAT’s one!) And do you use Closed ...
Demos and Prospects’ Initial Mindset
What are your prospects’ emotional stances when you start your demos? Enthused? Curious? Skeptical? Cynical? Annoyed? Apathetic? Neutral? How does their mindset ...
The Sad Story of the Way Cool Tool: A Surprising Product and Demo Lesson!
Drawing tools are always evolving, seeking to improve and streamline image and diagram production. And in the world of chemistry, drawing chemical structures has ...
For Founders – Storytelling, Sales, and Business Growth: Turning Ideas into Revenue!
Do’s and Don’ts: Fabulous Framing for Founders! “Peter E. Cohan shares how storytelling, sales strategy, and business thinking drive real growth. Learn how to ...
Why Structure Demos Like the News – Part 6 of 6: Running Short on Time – Pro Tip!
In an earlier post I noted that newspaper editors could trim articles to fit the available space by cutting stories from the bottom upwards. ...
Why Structure Demos Like the News – Part 5: Answering Questions!
“Can it export to ___?” asks the prospect. “Absolutely! We support seven different types of export formats, including ___, ___, ___, ___, and especially ...
Why Structure Demos Like the News – Part 4: Managing Multiple Job Titles
How? Combine the Menu Approach with Inverted Pyramid! Let’s say you have four prospect players in your demo meeting: An executive A middle manager ...
Why Structure Demos Like a News Article – Part 3: Ever Run Out of Time?
Have you ever heard a demo presenter say, “We have lot to cover so I’ll go really fast…”? Have you ever said something similar ...
Why Structure Demos Like a News Article? Part 2: Inverted Pyramid!
Carefully examine the next news article you read… Each individual article is cleverly organized to enable readers to make rapid decisions about their depth ...
You Are My Audience…
A colleague pointed out that many people are perfectly comfortable staying exactly where they are with respect to skills and practices. They come to ...
Founding and Growing Your New Company Podcast: Why Most B2B Software Demos Fail and How to Fix Them
I joined Emmanuel King Ibironke of The Intelligence Forge for this discussion of demos, discovery, and founding and developing a training and content business. ...
Assessing Demonstration Skills Levels – The Complete Article!
What’s in this article for you? Assess yourself and your team Ten levels of demonstration skills Exploration of each level’s characteristics Measurements for achieving ...
Demo Skills Level 10 – Methodology!
What’s important about “methodology”? A great deal! A methodology is an integrated, coherent suite of skills that interconnect, leverage and support one another, enabling ...
Demo Skills Level 10 – Demo Assets!
What is “Demo Capital” and what does it enable? Demo Capital supports amplification of demo and discovery best practices! Level 10 is really an ...
Demo Skills Level 9 – Adapts Across a Broad Range of Demo Scenarios
How adept are you with these? Demos to the 5 Technology Adoption Curve Populations “Burn Victims” Executive Briefing Centers New Products and New Categories ...
Demo Skills Level 8 – Applies Storytelling!
Next to “communicating business value” storytelling is the most frequent demo skills improvement sought by sales and presales managers. But just “wrapping a story ...
Demo Skills Level 7: Using Biased Questions to Outflank Competition
Achieving Level 7 is a major step! Most presales and salespeople are completely unaware of the use of Biased Questions. In traditional demos, vendors ...
Demonstration Skills Level 6: Manages and Explores Prospect Questions
“Any questions so far?” “Nope, we’re good…” There are three parts to this level: Assessing and managing the flow of questions. Exploring the intent ...
Demonstration Skills Level 5: Vision Generation!
Solving the “No Disco No Demo!” vs “Just Show Me a Demo!” Dilemma How often are you asked to provide an overview demo to ...
Demonstration Skills Level 4: Communicates Business Value
Value! Value! Value! Value! The number one complaint from presales, sales, and customer success leaders about their teams’ demos is that “they don’t communicate ...
Assessing Demonstration Skills – Level 3 – Incorporating Discovery!
Wait, what? You want discovery information before presenting the demo? Yes, please! Level 3: Customizes Based on Discovery Information Uncovered This requires three steps ...