It’s Not About You Or Your Product

Your customers could care less about you, your product, your company, etc. All they care about is, can you help them run their business. Will their life be better because of your product or service or not? 

Don’t ever lead with what you do, lead with understanding what they do.

NO Qualification Process, NO Demo

If you can’t get the client to participate in a qualification process (aka as discovery call or sales interview) before the demo, don’t do the demo.  The discovery call is the pre-call you set up BEFORE the demo to get a specific understanding of the prospects unique business needs and objectives. A discovery call done correctly acts as a compass allowing you to know where to take the demo.

Don’t Demo Spaghetti

Your objective is not to highlight every feature your product.  It’s to align the features with the specific problem(s) your buyer is struggling with.  If what you’re showing isn’t connected to a real business problem, don’t show it.  Remember the objective of a demo is to get your buyer to see your product solving their biggest problems or issues. They are not a wall for your demo spaghetti. Don’t throw all kinds of features against them, hoping something sticks.

How Questions

How questions are questions that get to how a buyer does something. How questions allow the sales person to find the real opportunities for the sale. How people do things is what differentiates one company from another. If you want to understand where the opportunities are for your product or service, start asking questions that break down their approaches or processes.  How do they do what they do today. Where are the inefficiencies? Where do they struggle? What frustrates them? What processes create road blocks? What aren’t they doing that creates risk, leaves them exposed or could potentially be costing them money?

• Would you mind sharing how you . . .?
• I’m curious how do you address . . .?
• When you . . . what happens?
• What happens when you execute xyz process?
• What is your process  for . . . ?

No “Ifs”

There is NO room for “If’s” in your Demo’s. If you find yourself saying “if,” in the demo when referencing a feature, you’re doing it wrong and you’re headed in the wrong direction.

This is the most important litmus test in demoing. If you can give a full 45-60 minute demo without every saying “if,” you’ve done a good demo.

What do I mean by doing a demo without saying “if?” I mean, you never say;  “If you have this problem, then… “Or “If you struggle with this issue then you’ll like this feature.” If you are saying “if” in a demo, you’re doing them wrong. Demoing should be a highly targeted, highly customized experience for the buyers. They should feel the demo they are getting is a customized demo just for them.

The only way to ensure “if then” statements don’t creep into the demo is to do a thorough discovery process, identifying as many issues your solution can resolve as possible.

Six Feature Demo

The six feature demo is the idea that a targeted demo should not highlight or show more than 6 critical features.  In addition to the fact that a customer rarely has more than 3-4 key business problems.  If you’re showing more than 6 features, you’re not giving each feature the appropriate amount time.

It’s better to spend more time on a feature and highlight it’s business value than it is to spend a little bit of time on a whole bunch of features.

Trial Close / Anchoring

Trial closing is to gauge whether you client is ready to say yes.  Trial closing should be combined with anchoring which means that the client can see themselves in or using the product.

Try by asking:

• Can you see this improving your churn rate?
• Can you see this improving your ability to market to your base?
• Do you think this will increase your conversions?
• Do you see how this will shorten data input?
• Can you see this increasing conversions?