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Advanced Guidance: Discovery and Demos for Renewals and Expansion
NOTE: This is advanced material, suitable for senior presales, sales, and customer success individual contributors and leaders! What’s in this article for you? Guidance ...
Active Listening?
If you’re already thinking about your response, you aren’t actively listening! (And why do we often look upwards at an angle when we ...
Acronym Musings
Forty years ago, when electrons were slower, there was an acronym that guided development, marketing, and sales of software: RSVP. (And no, in this ...
Achieving Success with Web-based Software Demonstrations
The name of the game in remote demonstrations is interactivity! Your ability to attract and compel your audience’s attention is your recipe for success.
A Twist on Establishing Rapport
I’ve been experimenting with “establishing rapport” in discovery calls and believe I’ve uncovered a more effective approach… Traditionally, vendors seek to establish rapport in ...
A True Story of Stunningly Awful Harbor Tour Demos!
“What’s he doing?” whispered my colleague in my ear… I was a third party joining a demo presented by a partner vendor to a large ...
A Terrible Tabs Demo Death March
I was watching a demo recently where the presenter executed one of the longest Terrible Tabs Demo Death Marches I’ve seen. No fewer than 11 ...
A Tale of Three Leaders – What’s YOUR Diagnosis?
Once upon a time (about a week ago), a CRO, a sales leader and a presales leader reached out to me. They said their sales ...
A Surprising Stance on Demos and Some Startling Data
By Steve Kraner, Guest Blogger Where does the demo fit in a software or SaaS sales cycle?
A Story of LEGOs and Demos
The wonderful thing about “toolkit” software offerings is that they can do so many things – the challenge is that the customer often doesn’t know ...
A Story a Day – A Rewarding Strategy!
What a great idea… A colleague shared his intriguing strategy for consuming Suspending Disbelief: A Collection of Sales, Presales, and Marketing Stories (and Lessons ...
A Simple, Terrific Qualification Test
Just browsing prospects don’t want discovery; Active buying prospects often want to be discovered…!
A Simple Test for Discovery Skills: How Do You Rate?
Yes, really simple! Take a look at your Talk:Listen ratio: 45:55 – If you are here or better (less talking), congratulations! You are at ...
A Refreshing Example of Using Props and Visual Aids in Vision Reengineering
Prospects don’t know what they don’t know, and part of discovery is to understand and address this. “An optimist will tell you the ...
A Perfect Demo Environment…
In your demos, how often do you find you are apologizing for an inability to demonstrate capabilities, complete workflows, or present compelling results and reports? ...
A Perfect Demo Environment
Have you ever said or heard: “Sorry, I don’t have an example like that in our demo system…” “No, we can’t show that workflow ...
A Painful Logo Slide Lesson
“Cured me!” I commented to my colleague, after a visit to a prospect. He had wondered why I didn’t do a corporate overview presentation ...
A Painful Logo Slide Lesson
“Cured me!” I commented to my colleague, after a visit to a prospect. He had wondered why I didn’t do a corporate overview ...
A Painful “No Decision” Analogy…
Imagine that you own and operate a nice restaurant. How would you feel if you took reservations from 100 folks for an evening of ...
A Novel Approach to Qualification
“Every system is perfectly designed to get the results it gets…” W. Edwards Deming Most current qualification processes are perfectly designed to protect valuable ...
A New Strangely Accurate Forecast and Pipeline Term
LITLOH! What is LITLOH? Living In The Land Of Hope. And if the opportunity rolls over into the next quarter it is Lounging ...
A New “Touch” in the New Normal
I was recently asked the following question in an interview: “While business travel appears to be opening up, it looks like working from home is ...
A Masterpiece of Modern Presales Wisdom
A Masterpiece of Modern Presales Wisdom: Peter Cohan’s “Great Demo!” Third Edition Reviewed in Germany on 15 November 2023 I always thought the second ...
A Late Majority Story: No Compelling Reason to Change
Buck’s Restaurant in Woodside, California was renowned as a place where many Silicon Valley startups were founded. Stories of cocktail-napkin drawings sketched at Buck’s ...
A Few Great Demo! Haiku
Make all your demos Virtual or face-to-face A conversation! And in all cases Proven success is when you Do the Last Thing First! ...
A Demo Horror Story – Snatching Defeat from the Jaws of Victory
“This story could be called, ‘The Sales Prevention Team’!” he commented ruefully. The Workshop participants and I all leaned forward to listen…
A Clever Way to Identify Critical Business Issues – Before the Call!
A recent Great Demo! Workshop graduate asked, “How can we find relevant Critical Business Issues (CBIs) for prospects with job titles that are unfamiliar ...