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The Content-Free Buzzword-Compliant Vocabulary List
“Our powerful software is flexible, intuitive, easy-to-use and integrates seamlessly with your other tools. Robust and scalable, your organization can enjoy the benefits of our best-of-breed world-class offering.” How many times have you heard these…
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The Significant Failure of Selling in Modern Demos
The Tell, Show, Tell approach has served the industry well for years and has helped many presales consultants improve their ability to tell stories and connect with buyers. However, when we consider new research from…
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Rescue – From the Tyranny of Traditional Demos
Throw off the shackles of the old traditional approach. Embrace this new, delightfully effective approach to creating and delivering demos.
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Presales Tools Summary – April 2022
Here is a listing of presales tools that we’ve explored, including a paragraph from the vendor and our comments for many of these offerings.
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Stunningly Awful Demos – Buying It Back
Have you ever been in a situation where your prospect said, “In your demo, you showed us a bunch of stuff that we’ll never use – and we don’t want to pay for capabilities that…
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Assessing Demonstration Skill Levels – How Does Your Team Rate?
Many presales and sales practitioners say they are skilled at doing demos – but are they? Here’s a simple method to assess where you and your team stand, based on twelve levels of increasing proficiency…
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Stunningly Awful Demos: Insufficient Customization
Are your current demos sufficiently customized, from your prospects’ perspective? What more customization could you do to improve your demo effectiveness?
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A Dinner Party as an Analogy for Discovery
You’ve invited a large number of friends and colleagues over for a dinner party – how do you prepare? The process the Party Planner follows and questions asked provide a surprisingly good example for doing…
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How to Rake Your Way into the Future of Presales
Keeping up with the rollercoaster of changes, or ‘new normals’ if you will, is something we’re all facing in the middle of this COVID-19 commotion. But for presales in the IT and software industry it…
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Presales Metrics – What to Measure and Why
Presales has entered a renaissance, enjoying increased visibility, emerging tools and communities, and cataloging of know-how and best practices. This is the perfect time to rethink your vision for your organization (or your personal vision),…
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People Buy From People They Trust
B2B buyers expect sales reps to understand their business, but the reality is that buyers perceive that less than 50% of reps actually do. They expect the sales rep to provide a solution, but the…
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Hybrid Demo Meetings – The Challenges of Mixed Face-to-Face and…
What is the strategy for handling situations where you are face-to-face with one group of prospects and other participants are connecting remotely?
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Automated Demo Content – Getting It Right
You’ve been asked to put together the content for an automated or recorded demo – where do you start? What should be included?
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Assessing Discovery Skill Levels – How Does Your Team Rate?…
Many sales and presales practitioners say they are skilled at doing Discovery – but are they? Here’s a simple method to assess, based on seven levels of increasing proficiency:
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Discovery and Demos for Transactional Sales Cycles – When More…
Is it possible to complete an introduction, engage with a Vision Generation Demo, segue into a Discovery conversation, deliver a brief Technical Proof Demo, and execute a soft close in a 45- or 60-minute call?…
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Expansion Questions – An Essential Discovery Skill
Expansion Questions are a series of interrelated questions designed to span five of the Discovery skills levels, from uncovering pain to reengineering vision. They are a simple, yet essential skill to master in doing Discovery…
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Your Persona Demo is Failing!
The breakdown with persona-based demos is the lack of ability to fully connect the challenges your audience is having with the value your solution provides.
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Success-Ready Leads: A Provocative Definition of “Qualified Lead” Based on…
Here’s a novel idea: Front-load your pipeline with prospects that are most likely to succeed!
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‘Twas the Night Before the Big Demo
‘Twas the night ‘fore the demo and all through the house Not a creature was stirring, ‘cept my SE and his mouse;
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The Great Demo! 2020 Articles Index
There are currently well over 75 articles in our articles page – here’s a handy index to help you find specific topics and explore others. Enjoy!
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Expansion and Renewal Demos
“Land and Expand” is the major sales strategy for many software companies and great attention is focused on customer acquisition and on corresponding demos. But what about securing renewals and expanding your footprint?
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The Advantages of Being the Incumbent Vendor – And Its…
Let’s explore some of the advantages enjoyed by being the incumbent vendor and how you can leverage this position for renewals and expansion sales, while holding your competition at bay.
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Lunch and Learn Demos
Lunch and Learn demo meetings are terrific vehicles for securing renewals and driving expansion.
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Why DID They Buy? – Fabulous Fuel for Sales, Presales…
Here’s a novel idea: Go visit your new customers a few months after they purchased your software and well after they have deployed it into production use
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Demo “Storylines”: The Journey, The Destination, or Both
Many software vendors talk about “The Journey” or “The Customer’s Journey” as a storyline for their demos. We need to ask ourselves, however, what is important to the customer?
