Illustrations: Doing the Last Thing First!

Illustrations: Doing the Last Thing First

An Advanced Never Stop Learning! Article

“Wow!” exclaimed the CRO, “You really nailed it. That’s exactly what I’m looking for!”

That’s what often happens when you Do the Last Thing First in a Great Demo! and present a compelling Illustration. It’s also one of the more challenging aspects of putting together a Great Demo!, so let’s break it down and explore:

– What’s an Illustration
– Selecting Your Illustrations
– Presenting Your Illustrations

What’s an Illustration?

Very simply, a Great Demo! Illustration is the end result desired by your prospect. It is frequently the output of a workflow or process. Generating that output is often the reason that the workflow or process exists.

Workflows in your accounting department offer some good examples. Here’s a simple one that is (hopefully) ancient history for most companies but is a good starting point!

When a prospect becomes a customer, an accounting workflow is triggered to ensure they receive an invoice for the product they purchased. This workflow takes the customer’s purchase order, links it with any applicable license agreements, and generates an invoice that clearly outlines what was purchased, the payment amounts, and the payment schedule.

Now, let’s say your accounting group is doing everything manually, using paper. They are falling behind pushing out invoices, and many of the invoices suffer from errors due to the manual processes. Additionally, payments are delayed and customers are unhappy. As a result, your accounting team decides to automate their workflow and invites a software vendor to propose solutions.

This vendor takes a close look at your team’s existing processes to carefully characterize the current state and desired changes. They do an excellent job of discovery and report their results to your accounting team, who confirm the findings.

The vendor proposes automating the accounting workflow and presents a demo following Great Demo! methodology. They begin the demo with a Situation Slide that summarizes your accounting group’s Critical Business Issue, Problems and Reasons, Specific Capabilities, Delta, and Critical Date. They also identify a meaningful Value Realization Event: the first time that your accounting team generates an accurate invoice using the new, automated workflow.

What is an appropriate Illustration for this demo? There are three options:

– A completed invoice, generated using the new, automated workflow
– An improved version of the invoice, generated using the new workflow
– The new workflow itself

Let’s explore each of these!

It’s the Same as Before, But…

The completed invoice is the output for the new accounting workflow and is, accordingly, an excellent candidate for an Illustration. “But it’s just the same invoice!” I hear you cry.

That is correct!

That invoice represents the benefits of the new, automated workflow. It was accurately completed in minutes, without errors, in an entirely automated fashion. And that is the message the software vendor needs to communicate to your accounting team as they present the invoice in the demo.

The verbal presentation of that Illustration might sound like this:

“What you are looking at here appears to be the very same invoice you generated previously, using your old manual workflow. However, this invoice was processed in minutes with just a few mouse clicks and was delivered electronically to your customer, then automatically logged and tracked until full payment is received. Additionally, any variances in terms of payment amounts, missed dates, or other issues are also automatically tracked and recorded. No errors, no manual processes, no frustrated customers; all your invoices are now accurate, correct, and delivered right on time. And implementing this new automated workflow will enable you to reduce invoice generation and delivery from days or weeks to a few minutes, redeploy four FTE to focus on more important tasks, eliminate invoicing errors, and improve your customer NPS scores.”

When presenting the invoice as the Illustration, this vendor has communicated three key ideas:

What the prospect is seeing: the completed invoice.
How it addresses the prospect’s problems: no errors, no manual processes, no delays.
How Much value is associated with making the change: reduce time from days/weeks to
minutes, recover four FTE, reduce errors to zero, and improve NPS scores.

What could be better?

It’s an Improved Version

This is often the best case for an Illustration and should be pursued accordingly!

In our example, your accounting department enjoys the same benefits of the error-free automated workflow plus the invoice itself has been improved. It’s a win-win for your accounting team!

In addition to the workflow improvements in above, let’s say your accounting folks also want to provide incentive for your customers to pay earlier than required, and the old manual process made it very difficult or impossible to accomplish this. The new workflow offers an automated ability to reduce your customers’ payments by a few percent in return for payment within a shorter timeframe. Additionally, the new workflow offers rules that examine the terms for each invoice and present payment offers that scale with the payment amounts and due dates. Furthermore, the system tracks and offers analytics to help your accounting team tune in the most effective adjusted terms.

What a delight! (Well, it’s a delight if you are passionate about accounting!)

By the way, in the discovery phase it’s possible that your accounting group had no idea that these kinds of payment options were even possible. The vendor did a terrific job with Vision Reengineering to extend your team’s vision of their desired solution. (See page 217 in Doing Discovery for details.)

When presenting this improved invoice as the Illustration, the vendor again communicates three sets of information, but with a few additions:

What the prospect is seeing: the completed, improved invoice.
How it addresses the prospect’s problems: no errors, no manual processes, no delays, plus how it enables optimization of payment terms.
How Much value is associated with making the change: reduce time from days/weeks to minutes, recover four FTE, reduce errors to zero, improve NPS scores, plus reduce and optimize days outstanding against payment amounts.

Illustrations that represent improved deliverables can be extremely compelling! Are there other alternatives to consider?

It’s the Workflow

A third option for the vendor’s Illustration is to present the improved workflow itself. This could be done in a few ways, depending on the software’s capabilities:

– If the vendor’s software has a tool that enables a user to define the workflow steps graphically, the new workflow as rendered in the “builder” can make an excellent Illustration.
– Alternatively, the vendor might create a simple graphic (generated using another tool like Miro, Lucidchart, PowerPoint, or Google Slides) that shows the key steps of the automated workflow.

A cautionary caveat: Choosing the workflow as the Illustration can be more abstract and less tangible for some people than the invoice options. After all, in the old manual process the accounting team actually held the completed invoices in their hands!

When presenting the workflow as the Illustration, the vendor again communicates three sets of information, but from the perspective of the new workflow and what it enables:

What the prospect is seeing: the new, fully automated workflow that generates completed and/or improved invoices.
How it addresses the prospect’s problems: no errors, no manual processes, no delays, and enables optimization of payment terms.
How Much value is associated with making the change: reduce time from days/weeks to minutes, recover four FTE, reduce errors to zero, improve NPS scores, and reduce and optimize Days Sales Outstanding against payment amounts (Days Sales Outstanding or DSO is the measure of how long it takes a company to collect payment)

So, for the accounting example, the software vendor can choose between the same invoice, an improved invoice, or the improved workflow as the Illustration. Do you have to pick one of these options over the other?

One Two Three!

Nope: frequently the best approach is a one, two, three reveal:

One: the vendor presents the improved workflow as an Illustration, then
Two: the vendor presents the same invoice, but generated with the new workflow, and then
Three: the vendor presents the improved invoices.

That’s good, better, best!
In all cases, the vendor remembers to communicate:

What What the prospect is seeing
How it addresses the prospect’s problems
How Much value is associated with making the change

In summary, successful Illustrations are either improvements on current deliverables (faster, better, cheaper) or new deliverables (that couldn’t be done before), or both.

Any other tips?

Before and After

Certainly!

A very effective approach is to use a “Before and After” comparison. The “Before” shows your accounting department’s sad, painful, current state; the “After” is the improved deliverable (presented with the sound of angels singing!).

A simple example of a “Before” is an image of piles of paper on desks. A more elegant “Before”might include images of overflowing filing cabinets plus a picture of sheets of paper that have literally fallen into cracks behind a desk! The “After” Illustration might be an image of an accounting person’s now clean, paper-free desk, with the improved invoice on their computer screen. Delightful!

Bonus idea for face-to-face demos is to use physical stacks of paper as props or visual aids!

I noted that most organizations have transitioned to paperless processes, so let’s now explore another example scenario…

A Refined Example

Thankfully, your accounting team completed their digital transformation several years ago. However, your accounts receivable (AR) group is now under increased pressure to shorten the time it takes to receive payments from customers.

Accordingly, your AR manager has been assigned an objective to reduce DSO by twenty percent. A Great Demo! Situation Slide for this manager might include:

Job Title/Industry: Manager Accounts Receivable, SaaS Software
Critical Business Issue: Reduce DSO 20% by end of the fiscal year (June 30)
Problems/Reasons: No visibility into invoice aging; Monthly customer “pings” insufficient
Specific Capabilities: Report/dashboard that shows invoice amounts and aging; alerts for
large amounts; AI analysis and action recommendations to incite or
incentivize payment; also show current DSO status and trend
Delta: Achieve reduction of DSO by 10% by December 31; 20% by June 30
Critical Date: Implement before next billing cycle (August 1)
Value Realization Event: First large payment successfully brought forward

The Illustration for this scenario is the dashboard itself. This is what your AR manager will use to track their progress against achieving their objective. And it is likely that your AR manager checks that dashboard first thing every morning!

Let’s Peel Back a Layer…

A great Illustration is not necessarily what you think is the coolest part of your software, it’s what your prospect sees as the most important deliverable. For example:

– It’s not your AI engine that is of interest to most prospects, but what it delivers.
– It’s not how configurable your software is, but what it provides.
– It’s not the broad range of options your software offers, but what it produces.

And the relative importance of the deliverables depends on the perspective of each prospect individual. One person’s treasure is another person’s trash!

Why? The most important deliverables, outputs, and products of your software depend on each prospect individual’s job title and industry. That’s exactly why Great Demo! Situation Slides start with job title and industry.

Let’s use a CRM system as an example. Here is a partial list of CRM users based on job title, along with potential Illustrations for each:

– CRO: Dashboards showing the current forecast, pipeline, and key opportunities across new business, renewals, and expansion.
– Head of Sales: Dashboards showing the current forecast, pipeline, and key opportunities for new business, along with views into the sales team’s specific activities for coaching.
– Head of Customer Success: Dashboards showing the current forecast, pipeline, and key opportunities for renewals and expansion.
– Head of Marketing: Dashboards showing campaign activity and results, lead generation, and lead conversion.
– Salesperson: Dashboards showing current forecast, pipeline, key opportunities, opportunity next steps and issues, and summaries of prospects’ profiles.
– Product Marketing Manager: Dashboards showing product sales and forecast, campaign activity, results, lead generation, and lead conversion for that product.
– Sales Enablement: Dashboards showing time between sales process steps overall, by region, and by rep, and onboarding progress and activities (if supported by the CRM).

The more complex your offering is and the more user job titles it embraces, the more important it is to align Illustrations with job title!

It Begins with Discovery

Workflow Analysis is the process that most fruitfully uncovers candidate Illustrations for your prospects. (See Doing Discovery starting on page 80.) It enables you to clearly understand:

1. Your prospect’s current workflow
2. The output(s) of the workflow
3. The pain points or problem areas
4. The value of making the change
5. And the Specific Capabilities needed to solve their problem(s)

Note that the second item is the output(s) of the workflow: These are your candidates for terrific Illustrations.

A wonderful way to uncover and understand your prospects’ desired deliverables is to ask for a Reverse Demo. Very simply, you are asking your prospect to demo their existing environment to you! (See page 225 in Doing Discovery for details.)

Reverse Demos and Workflow Analysis are excellent ways to identify great Illustrations. Is there another approach to consider?

Monday Morning

Yes!

Think about what you did first thing on Monday morning. (I mean, after you checked your email and consumed the comics, sport scores, or other news!) You likely did one or both:

– Checked the status of your KPIs
– Examined your lists of tasks and activities

The software reports, dashboards, and screens you review are excellent examples of your own personal Illustrations. They enable you to assess your status, track your progress, and establish your plan for the upcoming days.

Now put yourself in your prospects’ shoes and ask the same questions, but from their perspective. What dashboards, reports, or screens do they currently review on Monday morning? And how would this same information be delivered and consumed using your software? These are good candidates for Illustrations.

Coming back to you and your personal situation, what would make your Monday morning review more accurate, effective, productive, visible, or timely? What data is lacking or insufficient today and what would its availability mean for you? What improved or new dashboards or reports would enable you to achieve your objectives more effectively or rapidly?

Now let’s ask the same question, but again from your prospects’ perspective: what would make their Monday morning review more accurate, effective, productive, visible, or timely? The screens and reports from your software are terrific Illustration candidates that represent improvements over your prospects’ current processes and reports.

Your next step is to test, tune, and confirm your findings: Are these screens and reports from your software really what are desired by your prospects? One of the best ways to accomplish this is to ask your existing customers two questions:

1. “What were you using/consuming on the typical Monday morning before implementing our software?”
2. “What are you regularly reviewing now, using our software?”

What a delightful way to validate your assumptions! And you can go one step further by completing a Situation Slide for each customer that represents their “before” situation and associating the Illustration or Illustrations that they now consume with the job title-specific Situation Slides.

Importantly, the higher the job title, the more this Monday Morning approach is effective at uncovering compelling Illustrations that are typically dashboards and reports. Conversely, individual contributors will be more focused on lists of tasks and activities.

There is an old saying, “Never tell a good story only once.” The same is true for compelling Illustrations!

Build a Library

Some of the most successful organizations who have adopted Great Demo! have created libraries of Situation Slides and corresponding Illustrations. This enables their customer-facing teams to leverage one another’s learnings.

Rather than create Situation Slides and Illustrations from scratch for each new prospect, sales, presales, customer success, and marketing folks can enjoy a running start by taking advantage

of their peers’ previous efforts. Editing is typically much faster than drafting! Providing incentive to contribute to this library will drive its growth and utility.

Most libraries are reasonably finite in terms of the number of Situation Slides and Illustrations. After all, that’s what defines a market!

Are there other uses for your library?

Vision Generation Demos

Yes, indeed!

You can harvest your existing Situation Slides and corresponding Illustrations for use in Vision Generation Demos, also known as the “crisp cure for stunningly awful harbor tour demos!”

When a prospect clicks the “Book a Demo!” button on your website, they want to see a demo. They don’t want to suffer through a qualification call by an SDR or BDR; they don’t want to have to endure a thirty-minute discovery call before they see your software; and they don’t want to be dragged onto an hour-long overview harbor tour.

They want to see a few representative screens. They just want a taste of your offering, not a seven-course banquet.

That’s what a Vision Generation Demo provides: it’s a terrific sampling, just a few tasty representative bites.

And all you need is a Situation Slide for that prospect’s job title and industry along with the corresponding Illustrations! (See Chapter 11 “Vision Generation Demos” in Great Demo! for the process.)

One of the wonderful things about Vision Generation Demos (VG Demos) is that you don’t need to be an expert user of your software to be highly competent at delivering VG Demos. Anyone who has a reasonable understanding of your offerings should be able to deliver credible VG Demos, including salespeople, customer success, and marketing in addition to the presales folks.

This raises another question: Should you present your Illustrations using your live software or pre-captured screens?

Live vs Static

Static Illustrations are software screens that have been captured and saved as Google or PowerPoint slides or via another similar mechanism. For Static Illustrations I recommend capturing the full screen that you would display if you were running the live software.

And, in fact, that’s exactly the way to capture those images: as full screens, pasted onto slides and filling the slide fully from corner to corner. No arrows, circles, or other “callouts.” When presented in slide show mode, they should look just like the live screen (only you will know the difference!).

Here’s a quick breakdown on when live software or static screens are best:

– Static: when the software is unavailable.
– Static: when the presenter is unable to run the software.
– Static: when navigating to the desired Illustration screen is challenging.
– Live: when the software is available, the presenter is competent to run the software, and it is very easy to navigate to the Illustration (BTW that’s your Do It pathway!).
– Live: when the screen has dynamic elements that cannot be shown with static captured screens.

In either case, are there tips and guidelines for presenting your Illustrations? Why, yes!

Presenting Your Illustrations

We’ve already reviewed your verbal delivery when presenting Illustrations, but because adults learn by repetition, let me share the three key ideas again! Remember to articulate:

1. What your prospect is seeing
2. How it addresses your prospect’s problems
3. How Much value is associated with making the change

But that’s just your voice. Are there other techniques to make your communication more effective? You bet!

When you are face-to-face and presenting via a large monitor or projector/beamer:

– Point smoothly and deliberately at each key screen element as you describe them (What your prospect is seeing).
– Use a stick pointer, telescoping pointer, or use the two-finger pointing method to precisely identify each important element. I don’t generally recommend laser pointers as they are imprecise, don’t work on many screens, and are illegal in some countries!
– When possible, actually touch the viewing screen. An audible tapping sound reinforces audience retention of the ideas. (Each of our five senses that are engaged increases retention by 10% for each one applied – you can taste the difference!)

When you are presenting over the web:

– Use the annotation tools in Zoom (and other collaboration software) to circle, underline, and otherwise highlight the screen elements you want your prospect to consume. Practice using these before your live session with your prospect so that you are comfortable applying the tools, including clearing your annotations.
– Increase the size and visibility of your mouse. You may need to change your mouse style from an outline to filled in, for example.
– Move your mouse smoooooothy and deliberately, and when you reach the target location stop! Do not circle a screen element around and around and around…

In both cases:

– Don’t assume that your prospect “gets it,” in fact assume the opposite. While you may have seen that screen dozens of times, this is the first time your prospect has seen it.Linger lovingly over it while you communicate the three ideas, then pause to give your
prospect time to take it in.
– Ask for feedback on what they are seeing: Does it resonate with them? Any questions? Any comments or observations? Would they like to go deeper?
– You do not need to explain everything on the screen. Focus only on the relevant elements and ignore the rest!

Finally, stay in “you” mode. You want the problem and the solution to be owned by your prospect. Note the example talk track from our earlier scenario and how the presenter stays in “you” mode:

“What you are looking at here appears to be the very same invoice you generated previously, using your old manual workflow. However, this invoice was processed in minutes with just a few mouse clicks and was delivered electronically to your customer, then automatically logged and tracked until full payment is received. Additionally, any variances in terms of payment amounts, missed dates, or other issues are also automatically tracked and recorded. No errors, no manual processes, no frustrated customers; all your invoices are now accurate, correct, and delivered right on time. And implementing this new automated workflow will enable you to reduce invoice generation and delivery from days or weeks to a few minutes, redeploy four FTE to focus on more important tasks, eliminate invoicing errors, and improve your customer NPS scores.”

Let’s wrap up this article with…

A Few Analogies

To help paint the picture for selecting compelling Illustrations, consider the following:

– Pencils, paint, brushes, paper and canvas are the materials; the completed picture is the desired deliverable.
– Spices, vegetables, meats, fish, and sauces are the ingredients; the plated dish placed precisely in front of the restaurant patron is the anticipated end result.
– Planes, trains, automobiles, check-in lines, delays, and uncomfortable coach seats is how you reach your destination; those gorgeous beach sunsets are what your vacation is all about!

Putting this another way: Most great Illustrations communicate what is desired as an end result, not how you get there.

A Final Analogy

Great Demo! methodology teaches vendor teams to apply the Inverted Pyramid approach when organizing the content of your demos: You present the most important things first, then the next most important, and so on. Illustrations are at the top of that pyramid.

You see Inverted Pyramid applied every day in the news you read online (or in a newspaper, if you are that old school!). When you scan your favorite news sites, you are typically attracted to compelling images first. Those are, in fact, Illustrations!

Even though we have five senses, humans are visual animals and images resonate much stronger than words.

Science, Not Art

To repeat, successful Illustrations are either improvements on current deliverables (faster, better, cheaper) or new deliverables (that couldn’t be done before), or both.

Identifying and presenting Illustrations successfully is a combination of discovery, data collection, experimentation, and analysis. By building a library of Situation Slides and corresponding Illustrations, you move from hope and guesswork to repeatable, effective
practices.

Have a question about your illustrations? Let us know!

To learn the methods introduced above, consider enrolling in a Great Demo! Doing Discovery or Demonstration Skills Workshop. For more demo and discovery tips, best practices, tools and techniques, explore our blog and articles on the Resources pages of our website at https://GreatDemo.com and join the Great Demo! & Doing Discovery LinkedIn Group to learn from others and share your experiences.