Great Demo!
Articles
Stunningly Successful Methodology Implementation – Best (and Worst) Practices
This article was specifically written for:
– Presales managers and mentors (guidance on implementation and coaching your team)
– Presales individual contributors (read the article as if you were coaching yourself)
– Anyone contemplating implementing a sales or presales methodology (especially senior management)
Trade-Show Demonstrations – Using the “Menu Approach”
I both love and hate doing demonstrations at trade shows. They are wonderful because of the opportunity to interact with so many customers. They are terrible when you consider how many of those customer interactions, and demos, are unqualified and unproductive.
Why Did They Buy?
Here’s a novel idea: Go visit your new customers four or five months after they purchased your software and after they have deployed it into production use. Ask them, “How are you using our software? What applications have you implemented? What value are you receiving?”
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.
Demo Capital – Underutilized, Undervalued and Often Insufficient
Consider the sum of an organization’s knowledge, know-how, tools, techniques, tips and success stories related to demonstrating one’s offerings. As with other types of capital, how can this best be captured, developed, and leveraged? How is it valued (how should it be valued)? And is what you have today sufficient?
Storytelling in Demos
Stories can be one of the most effective mechanisms in demos to help your customers remember – and re-communicate – the use cases and value of your offerings.
Surprisingly Successful Complex Situation Demos
Have you ever had a demo where multiple customer players wanted to see multiple solutions? Did you ever feel like the demo appeared complicated or confusing? Would you like a cleaner, more effective approach?
Stunningly Awful Remote Demos – The Top Ten List of Inflicting Pain at at Distance
Would you like a horror story?
What Can We Learn From Analyzing 67,439 Demos? Some Surprising Insights
What can we learn by analyzing 67,149 software demos? A great deal…!
Stunningly Awful Demos – The Great Demo! Top Ten List of What NOT to Do
Here’s a collection of poor tactics, bad errors and faulty steps you can take to increase the likelihood that your demo will be a failure. We recommend that you avoid doing these things!
Disasters Neatly Averted – Dealing with Day-in-the-Life Demos
A colleague once cynically commented, in response to a request for a “day-in-the-life” demo, “Give me a week and I can show you a day-in-the-life…” Very clever, but still painful! Day-in-the-life demos are challenging, so here are some Great Demo! principles you can apply to increase your success rates.
The Role of Sales in Great Demos
Regarding the role of sales in demos, here’s what NOT to do:
1. Nothing.
2. Way too much.
Stunningly Awful Demos – Lost in the Weeds
How do we simultaneously encourage questions, yet make sure they don’t take us off track?
Stunningly Awful Demos – The Relative Irrelevance of Set-Up Mode
It’s Monday morning and you’ve just arrived in your office – what is the first thing you do?
Vision Generation Demos
What is a Vision Generation demo? It is just enough demo to generate a vision in the customer’s mind that a solution to a business challenge is possible – and to enable a Discovery conversation to take place.
Stunningly Awful Demos: Waaay Out of Alignment
I’m often surprised at how traditional demos are organized – they seem to focus on the least important items for the target audience.
Stunningly Awful Demo Phrases
Here are a handful of phrases that we often hear from software vendors in demo meetings, followed by what the customer thinks in response…
Stunningly Awful On-Boarding Demos – The Trouble Begins
“Learn the demo…” the group of newly hired presales folks are told, “and when you think you’re ready, we’ll have you present the demo back to us. If you do well, you’ll be certified and ready to start presenting to customers.” What’s wrong with this picture?
Stunningly Awful Sales Tactics – The Future-Sales Prevention Team Or The Curse of the Hunter-Farmer Model
re your sales teams traditional, better than average, or truly great? Contemplate the following (ugly) scenario…
Stunningly Awful Demo Communication – Unencrispening the Demo
Here are a few areas where we can likely improve our verbal delivery in demos…
Let’s Talk About Value – Uncovering the Delta
To paraphrase Mark Twain’s comment about the weather, everyone talks about value, but very few people actually do something about it. Clearly value is important: Insufficient perception of value is one of the three main reasons that sales opportunities end up as a “No Decision”.
Stunningly Awful Sales Kickoff Demos Selling to Your Sales Force – The Toughest Customer of All!
Cries of “Who cares?”, “So what?” and “What’s this good for?” issue from the more vocal members of the audience – and everyone else appears to be apathetic. Bad news!
Stunningly Awful Demo Outcomes – Why Objections Shouldn’t Need To Be Overcome
“Help me understand how to handle customer objections…”
“My team needs to learn how to handle objections…”
What’s wrong with these requests?
Stunningly Awful vs. Truly Terrific Competitive Differentiation – What, When, and How
Competitive Differentiation: vendors want to differentiate, vendors try to differentiate, but most vendors fail to meaningfully and successfully differentiate, in the opinion of their customers. When done poorly, differentiation can be stunningly awful; when done well it can be truly terrific!
Surprisingly Delectable Demos – Delightful Dining Analogies
What could we possibly learn from the realm of restaurants and food that we can apply to the wonderful world of demos? Much more than that one might guess!