Preparing For The Zero Discovery Demo -

The Zero Discovery Demo

We’ve all been in that situation when you walk into the conference room, or start-up your webcast, and you have no idea what the sales call is about or what the customer really needs. It’s known as the “spray and pray”, the “dog and pony show” or “the three hour tour”.

We also know that although it is usually a complete waste of your time, these calls do happen in real life and the professional SE needs to be prepared to deal with them. So, two days from now you are visiting a customer  (or maybe it is a virtual call) and the only information you have is the name and address of the company and the guidance of “they just want a general overview of our products and what we do.” What happens next?

Before You Go

1.    Check Your Attitude! You are probably ready to choke your salesperson, complain about a non-communicative customer and moan about life in general. So go ahead and get it out of your system, update your boss about the event, and then pick up your attitude as if this was a critical multi-million dollar opportunity. Be positive.

2.    Conduct The Research. Ignorance is no excuse for poor preparation. Check out the customer’s website, run a Google search, visit a financial site if they are publicly traded. This data may be in your Sales Force Automation system, or the rep may provide it (at least ask the rep to research if they own any of your solutions at other sites or subsidiaries) – but if you do not have it, you should. At a minimum, you should know what their major products are, where their major locations are, basic finances (profit, revenue, and margin), who they compete with and who they are most similar to within your current customer base. Between Google and LinkedIn, you should be able to research the names of the customer contacts.

3.    Contact The Customer. OK, maybe the rep said not to contact the customer – but you need to make a decision about preparation. Ask for a technical contact to call so that you can validate connectivity, environment, and wireless coverage. Make something up if you need to – but try to call the customer, techie-to-techie, and while you have them on the phone, drop in a few relevant discovery questions. “Hey, as I have you on the phone, can I just ask you…” Do not make your salesperson look like a bumbling idiot, as you are a sales team, but do play up the technical part of your title.

4.    Balance Education v Selling. Your goal is ensure the customer understands how they could use your solution in their environment and the benefits they would gain (and the pain they may avoid. The goal is not to educate them on every nuance of how to use your product. If your demo is “click here, drag this” then it is a navigational functional demo and you are really teaching them how to use your solution as opposed to what it does. Clicks = Complexity

5.    Don’t Forget Do Nothing Inc. 50% of deals are lost because the customer does nothing. Make sure you have a list of compelling reasons for them to act, because you will need them during the call. You do not want to make that stuff up in the middle of the meeting.

6.    Prepare Handouts and a Memorable Leave-Behind. Build a simple summary handout of your presentation/demo. Focus on a couple of key slides or screens, a customer success story and a memorable take-away. This might be a Mnemonic, a Set of Power Numbers or a simple diagram such as a 3x3 grid. In effect, you are giving them a 60-second summary of your meeting based on “if they can’t repeat it, they don’t get it. And if they don’t get it, they won’t buy it.”

Once The Meeting Starts

Do not start presenting or giving a demo. You are now in the position of having to perform some discovery on the fly. This is going to require some flexibility on your part, so consider it as a challenge. Here are some techniques I have found useful to ‘provoke’ the customer into disclosing useful information.

1.    Trade Your Story For Theirs. The rep probably has a strong desire to start with a corporate overview. Although I am not a big fan of “broadcasting” who we are and what we do, you can offer to exchange your corporate story for their version of what brought them into the room today.

2.    The Pain and Gain Sheet. Think of this as a PowerPoint slide with a number of questions on it. These are important questions which you know your solution can answer. Examples vary depending upon what you are selling, but they are along the lines of “how can we reduce our backup window?” or “do you know what your exception rate is on invoices and how much that costs you?” Here is an example of a pain sheet I once used for determining presales metrics to run a business. 

3.    The “A Customer Like You” Story. Start with 2-3 stories about customers just like them. If you are selling to a small-medium community bank, then make it another small financial customer, another small-medium customer, and then another customer in the same city/location as them. You are seeking either a “that sounds just like us” or a “we don’t have that problem” style response.

4.    The Staff Meeting Conversation. When working with a manager and a group of her direct reports, try the “last staff meeting” question. I draw a picture of a table and a couple of stick figures and ask “when you talked about at your last staff meeting – what were the items that came up for action?” This works particularly well if you are selling “IT Plumbing” solutions or equipment varying from servers to heat pumps to medical devices.

5.    The Demo/GPS Roadmap. When called in to perform a generic (out-of-the-box) demo, give the customer some control over what you show. I’ve written before about a Demo/GPSRoadmap – which graphically shows the customer, step-by-step, what they are going to see. Hand this out to customer and ask for feedback in terms of what would be important to them and what isn’t. Choose the one or two items they say are important and ask “how do you do that now?” with as many follow-up questions as you can before they start to get impatient. Try to have them draw something for you to explain their current state.

6.    Just Ask! Play the technical/doctor card. “Listen, I can talk for hours about this subject and all the great things that my solution can do, but I’d like to narrow it down so I can focus on those things that are important to you. Can I ask you a couple of questions before I start?” If you get some resistance, use the doctor analogy about understanding all the symptoms so you can get a complete picture.

Summary

Just because you have been committed to make the zero-discovery sales presentation does not mean it really has to be zero-discovery. Do your research. Once you start the meeting, position your questions as being of benefit to the customer so you do not waste their time. Obviously this is not sales or customer behavior you want to encourage, yet if the technical part of the call fails it is often the technical part of the team that gets the blame, regardless of the circumstances. So be prepared.

“In Sales, just as in Medicine, Prescription before Diagnosis is Malpractice.”

Jim Cathcart, SFA Pioneer

Mouse Radar! A Simple Trick So The Audience Can See Your Mouse

What? I’m suggesting that you can indeed deliver a better presentation by better utilizing your pointing device (a.k.a the mouse)! This is the third in a series of randomly spaced ideas about the little things that can make a big difference in your pitch. (For a more detailed explanation – see The Piranha Effect).

There are many forms of “Mouse Viagra” out there. These programs can zoom the focus of your mouse pointer, turn it into a glowing little GPS-map like fuzz ball and even allow you to make annotations on the fly. All cool stuff. Yet .. there is one very simple way to draw attention to what your mouse is doing and where it is. It only requires a check-box to be activated. The beauty of this tip is that it works both physically (in the same room as the audience) and virtually (over Webex) and doesn’t leave you trying to wave a laser pointer at a Hi-Def TV screen where no-one can see it!

It’s as simple as pressing the CTRL button. Really! In the middle of a Demo, PowerPoint or e-White Board, just press the CTRL button. An “echo” or “ripple” radiated out from your mouse – making it instantly the focus of attention.

Three Steps To Set-Up

1.       Select “Mouse or Pointer Devices” from the Control Panel.

2.       Choose the “Pointer Options” tab.

3.       Check the “Show location of pointer when I press the CTRL key”

You’re Done. Thanks to rock-star SE Guillermo Perez for pointing out this feature that’s been in Windows for years!!

The Power Of Customer Stories . And The Sales Engineer

As a former IT Executive, I’ll tell you a sales secret. One of the best ways to get your message across is to tell me a customer story. Speaking about other customers, their successes and your experiences makes you appear confident, knowledgeable and authentic. Most sales organizations have official references – complete with a glossy brochure accompanied by a PowerPoint slide with logo – and all blessed by legal. And they are totally ineffective!

They are ineffective because they are sanitized. They are ineffective because they are impersonal, and they are ineffective because they are not your own words. As your customer, I want you to bring me some value, tell me something new I cannot read on your website. A corporate reference slide designed by some person in HQ does not do that. A personal customer story does.

So what about using all those unofficial customer stories? The ones that are lying around, uncollected and mostly unused, in your head and in those of your colleagues? Why not collect them and share them to boost your sales performance by removing some risk from your customer’s buying process?

 

How To Get Started

Ask your more experienced and tenured colleagues to share some of their customer stories with you. Don’t just limit yourself to sales and sales engineers, reach out to people in your services or installation teams and ask about their customer experiences too. These people are a walking encyclopedia of customer stories, which is undoubtedly one of the reasons they have been so successful for so long. At your next regional meeting, ask everyone to write down a story as his or her homework.

Unless you are new to your company, you probably have a few stories you can use from your own customer base as well, if only you took the time to think about them. Perhaps next time you visit a customer you can ask them to give you some quantifiable benefits or ROI they have received from your solution. If you don’t ask you don’t get.

Even as a new hire you can say “a colleague of mine told me about one of his customers who ..”. Just put it in your own words.

What Kind of Stories Do I Need?

I classify them as ‘conversational stories” in that you should be able to establish the relevant details in 45-60 seconds. That equates to a maximum of around 160 words. Go any longer and you’ll lose the flow and the customer attention. Imagine you are sharing the story with the customer over a cup of coffee. Michael Bosworth, in his New Solution Selling book lays out a framework for a customer story that may help you – adapted here for the world of the Sales Engineer.

Step	Content
Situation	Customers name, industry and job title
Critical issue	The pain of the person or company
Reasons	The business reasons for the company’s issue biased towards your eventual solution
Vision	In the words of your customer, the capabilities he said he needed to solve the problem; “he told me he needed a way to..”
We provided	If properly described in the vision, just say “we gave him those capabilities”. NO PRODUCT NAMES!!
Result	Some specific measurements

“The Operations Director of a large fleet rental company couldn’t accurately track the mileage and maintenance records of the cars in the fleet and provide that data to his clients as they had no central recording and maintenance system. This was causing massive maintenance costs and lost business as their competitors could supply the data and pointed out this competitive difference. He engaged with us because of a recommendation from one of his management-consulting partners. The director said he needed a way to provide online access and reports to his fleet customers. We provided him with a web-based online system which cut down his maintenance costs by $11m and allowed his sales team to retain 100% of their corporate customers.”

Every Story Has A Happy Ending

 These stories take less than a minute. They can cut days out of your sales cycle as you establish “credible” and “low-risk” as two adjectives the prospect now links to you and your company. A quick customer story can often be a great response to a “can you do..” question in a demo, especially when asked by a mid-level manager. Instead of showing the “how”, you talk about how some other customer did the “how” and speak to benefits instead of features.

Switching personas from a former IT exec to a former presales leader I can tell you this approach absolutely works. Many of my customers now have collections of these unofficial customer reference stories. It works for them too. One of my former SE’s jokingly called my collection “Tales From The Book Of John”. Imagine my surprise when three months later the CFO of our company called me to ask if he could “borrow” some of my stories. I told him yes – as long as they never ended up in a PowerPoint deck!

CALL TO ACTION: Write down your informal references, ask your colleagues to do the same – and share them for success.

“Of course it's the same old story. Truth usually is the same old story”

Margaret Thatcher, former Prime Minister, UK.

11 Visual & Verbal Signs That Your Demo Sucks

This month’s title sounds like it comes straight from Buzzfeed as it is time to stamp out bad habits. The intent is to make you sit up and take notice if you or any of your colleagues are seeing any of these indicators in your customer demos. I am focusing on visual and verbal signs – things customers may see or hear, rather than anything particularly thought provoking and strategic. The good news is that these 11VVI (Visual + Verbal Indicators) are easily fixed.

Your pre-work is to take a recording of your next demo and to use that as input to this document. It can be a live video recording or a webex-style recording of a virtual pitch.

The 11VVI List

1. Kill The Browser Bars.  The customer doesn’t really want to see all your browser bars, search engine aids and bookmarks. Not only are they distracting, but they also take up valuable real estate on the screen. Either use F11 to go full-screen browser, or use a browser skin if your company has developed one. You’ll also get about an extra 10% of usable screen area which may make a difference between scrolling or not.

 

2. You Get Navigational.  Note when and where you use any navigational terms such as “click” , “pull-down” , “selection-list”, “menu options”, “drill-down” etc. Whenever you use these terms it is highly likely that you are talking about a feature instead of a meaningful advantage or benefit.  Remove these phrases from your customer pitch unless you really are teaching someone how to use your product. Your goal as an SE isn’t to teach the customer how to use your stuff, it’s to help them imagine themselves using it and being happy.

 

3. “And Then”. Listen for connective phrases such as “and then”, “also” and “next”. They usually signal that you are chaining together a collection of features without much focus on competitive advantages and benefits. Those phrases are also a sign that you may want to work a story into your demo instead of showing speeds and feeds

 

 

4. You Have Bad Data. Your demo data needs to support the premise of your demo. You can’t show enterprise software and only have four users, seven laptops and a single network. You need scale. You also need up-to-date information. Four-year-old data will get noticed, especially by detail oriented IT of financial folks. So will showing an empty screen and saying “Now, if you actually had any alerts you can imagine that this is where you would see..”

5. Pause And Take A Deep Breath. When the customer asks “Can you do/can you show me..” DO NOT say “Yes, Let Me Show You How..” unless you know WHY they want that particular capability. Many SE’s forget to ask the “Why?” and try to please the customer by showing them the HOW first. Resolve to pause and think it through first. (That’s really a verbal sign from the customer, but …)

 

6. The Invisible Mouse. Change your mouse settings from the default small white mouse outline to a double sized black solid mouse. Why? Because that way your customers can see the mouse and pay attention to what you are doing instead of trying to figure out where the mouse is! There are various “Mouse Enhancement” programs like Mousepose and PointerFocus you can try.

 

7. Filler Words. Everyone uses filler words in an ad-hoc, free-form situation. The key is minimize their use otherwise your audience starts subconsciously counting them. This is where the recording really helps you. As well as listening for “ums, errs and ahhs” you should also note “so”, “you guys”, “right”, “basically” and all such words that serve no purpose. The key to eliminating a filler word is understanding when you use it. Once you figure that out life becomes much easier.

 

8. Clicks And Flicks. Count the number of screens that you show the customer. That’s both unique screens and screens in total. Pop-ups count! Also count the number of mouse-clicks and the number of times you have to scroll up/down or left/right. You now have your base case. Divide the total number by the length of your demo in minutes. Congratulations – you have calculated your DEMOS – Demo Efficiency and Memory Observation Score. Now what can you do to drop your DEMOS? There is no perfect objective score – but the lower the better.

 

9. Throw Away The Product Names And Releases. As a customer I don’t really care what you call your product and what release level you are talking about until I know it can help fix a problem I may have. Stop talking about “new in version 5.2” or the “integration manager”. Instead, focus on what the product does and the benefits.

 

10. Test It With A Projector. What you see isn’t always what you get. When using a projector, test your pitch on the projector from at least 40 feet away. Colours (yellow/red) don’t always show up exactly as you would expect. Don’t make the visuals too difficult for the customer. (More on that topic here)

 

11. Fiddle With The Font Size. Similarly, make sure your screens are legible and easy to read. That may mean you increase the font size or the browser magnification. Use CRTL-plus to increase browser size and CTRL-0 to restore it. If your customer cannot read the screen they certainly will not remember it.

Summary

 

Small changes can make a big difference. Read through the list and pick two or three bad habits (if you have any!) to change and start from there. Make them standard, get used to them. Then fix the next two or three. Repeat as needed.

“The price of doing the same old thing is far higher than the price of change.”

-      Bill Clinton

 

 (Yes - there is a typo in #4 for "detail-oriented IT folks")

 

 

 

The #1 Trick To Improve A PowerPoint Deck

Google "PowerPoint Presentation Tips" and you will get over 47 million hits.

There is some great content out there, ranging from slide design techniques to the classic Non-Verbal Communication tips (stand up straight, look at your audience, breathe, speak slowly etc.) Yet there is one basic, fundamental rule that I see broken all the time - and hardly anyone writes about it. It's simple.

Here is the Prime (PowerPoint) Directive:

"Review your PowerPoint from 40 feet (13m) distance using a standard overhead projector or on a wide screen (60" plus) HDTV".

One of the biggest attention killers is that people simply have to work too hard to read / understand your slides. That because while they may look great on your laptop - when viewed in a conference room setting (where >80% of PPT pitches take place) you have:

1. Poor choice of colors. Red, Yellow, Green and even Light Blue may disappear with an old or underpowered projector. If they are your corporate colors then good luck.
2. Font size is too small. Dinky "product marketing" 10 point font is illegible from that distance.
3. Images are unclear. Usually because they are too small or poorly labeled.
4. Animations and highlighting get lost.

You get the idea! And why 40 feet? The most important person in the room will often sit at the back of the room in the power position. They may also be one of the older folks in the room. If your VIP cannot read your slides - you are lost.

So - call to action. From now on review all your sides using the Prime PPT Directive. If they are slides produced by another division or department - send them back if they fail the test.

Let me know how this works for you.

The Neat And Tidy Sales Engineer (or not ...)

Maybe it is my original background as a Chemical Engineer,
working on an Oil Refinery, but I've always been very conscious of working in a neat, safe and tidy environment. So it's always bothered me that many SE's operate in a totally different way - with cables, hardware, paperwork and everything else they need for a customer presentation or demo just scattered around them.

It all finally came to a head last week when I sat in on a brand new demo given by a principal SE from one of my clients. The demo was a thing of beauty - tied the technology back to business benefits, injected competitive differentiators, challenged the status quo and kept everyone's attention - except ... the team used a laptop (with a power cord), a projector (with a power cord and sound cable), and yet another external device (with a power cord) . The cords snaked all over the conference room table and under the feet of the SE and the Rep. At least a half-dozen times during the meeting someone nearly tripped over a loose cable or had to move the projector connection. It was just messy! The Director of IT Operations even made a snarky comment about how the vendor was trying to kill her.

It doesn't project (poor pun) a professional image to operate that way - especially when there is mid to senior level management in the room.

Look at your power cord - see that little piece of Velcro attached to it - use it! Wrap up the loose cable.

If you have to run a power cord by where you are standing, have some painters or duct tape in your laptop bag - and tape it down.

If the connector to the projector runs across the table - keep it out of the customers way.

It's not that hard. Be professional and be safe. (Who thought practicing "safe demo" meant things like this?)

The MTS Sydney Edition

Welcome to the Australian version of the blog, live from Sydney. This is an exciting couple of weeks as I'll be down under conducting a number of dinner speeches, meetings and training workshops. That also means that the May newsletter was delayed a day because of time zone issues - it should be out 8am on Wednesday 7th May East US Time.

This months lead article is The Challenger Sales Engineer - where I give six great reasons why the Sales Engineer is the perfect person in the sales team to execute on the Challenger premise. It's something that every good SE has known for a long time, but often a lack of courage, permission and corporate culture gets in the way.

Article #2 is an update to "The Stress Free Demo" and examines a dozen things the SE can do to reduce the possibility of things going wrong in 'the big demo". It's amazing how much relates to planning and preparation!

Book Of The Month is Gerry Weinberg's Becoming A Technical Leader. It's written more from an It-problem solving point of view, but has some great insights in dealing with and motivating the "techie". And there is a varying percentage of techie in every Sales Engineer.

Also - a reminder about The SE Manager Pocket Guide if you didn't download it during April, and also that I finally released my video series "The Consultative Sales Engineer".

Good Selling!

Objections And Questions And Answers .. And Sales Engineers

I've always had a problem with the skill of "Objection Handling". Let me clarify that - not with personally handling whatever a client may ask me, but in the actual labelling of the task. Here's why.

I think "Objection Handling" is a salesperson activity. As in "I just gave a great pitch, and if I can hammer through these last few objections I'll get the deal!" It sets up the entire activity as something that is a little confrontational, maybe defensive and certainly becoming "us" (vendor) against "them" (client with money).

Sales Engineers Don't Handle Objections, They Answer Questions

What I've come to realize over the years, based on listening in to thousands of sales calls plus my own experiences in selling MTS services, is nearly 90% of the issues a customer may raise are ...  simply raised because they want an answer to a question. In fact you can turn any objection into an implicit question. Even the classic your solution costs too much (nicely handled in this Visualize Blog Post) can be reframed as "help me to understand the value of your solution and why I should care?"

I feel this approach has a few benefits.

1. It ensures that in the customer conversation you listen to understand, instead of listening to respond. A crucial part of active listening.
2. It reminds you that you have to understand why a customer is asking the question. And if you don't know - bounce it back and find out!
3. It positions you as the customers advocate and a step closer to that "Trusted Advisor" status.
4. You'd be amazed at what you can learn about a person and the company based on the questions they ask. (Hmm - think about that during your next Discovery call.)

There are some warnings too.

1. See point #2 above. If you don't know why a question is being asked - that is a danger signal in itself.
2. Make sure that you share just enough to answer the question. For many technical SE's it is viewed as an opportunity to show how smart you are. Not the purpose of the meeting! It really isn't.
3. Don't stray into other areas. Stay away from sales-type responses (for example, the standard SE response for pricing is "I Know Nothing")

So give it a try. Think "Answering Questions" (with Short Amazing Answers) instead of "Handling Objections" and see the difference it can make.
 

You Might Be Wondering ...

Yesterday I sat in, as a “dummy guest”, on a remote demonstration and presentation that my newest client had set up. As part of my Discovery process I often like to listen in on a typical sales call. This call was going wonderfully, to the point where I was wondering what I could contribute as feedback other than a few minor cosmetic changes. The team had performed an admirable job of discovery, had identified two painful key business issues of their prospect, and had tailored their pitch to solving those problems and showing the economics of their solution.

There was budget, there was pain, and there was an agreed-upon approval process. I was seeing a deal leap forward in the sales cycle towards a successful close. The pre-sales engineer executed a masterful finish and handed back to the rep.

Who then said “you might be wondering..”

Everything fell apart because the salesperson decided to answer a question that had not been asked about deployment and support. The question was NEVER going to be asked because the customer was in “lets-go-mode”. The entire atmosphere of the call changed into suspicion and uncertainty over this late revelation, and ended with the dreaded “Thanks - we’ll think it over.” Disaster. Deal gets de-committed from the quarterly forecast.

Two lessons learnt from this call.

1.       It’s not always the Pre-Sales Engineer who opens his mouth at the wrong time and supplies too much information.

2.       There is a place for a rhetorical “you might be wondering” when it logically leads onto the next topic of conversation, and it is early in the sales cycle. But never at what was essentially the solution proposal phase.

Beware.

Fun With Numbers

IDC published an updated report a few months back about the explosive nature of data growth within corporations. They had previously predicted a 44x (yes - forty-four times) increase in data in the next ten years. That projection has now been revised to a 50x increase by 2020. Amazing numbers!

The trouble is, the human mind has a big issue in dealing with large numbers or multipliers. There is no real diference between a 40x growth and a 60x growth - except that one is bigger than the other. The point is that they are both BIG, almost unimaginably big!

At least three of my clients are quoting that number in many of their presentations - but here is a better way to help humanize 50x. Imagine you are up in front of the customer using a white board. It's a standard whiteboard of 42 by 96 inches (3.5 by 8 feet ; or approx 1 by 2.5 m). Multiply the size of the board by 50 - the board turns into something the size of a full football field - and it doesn't matter if it is American or "real" football!!

NOW you get an idea of just how big the growth is. Try some other comparisons, put them into human terms, and see what happens!

New March Content

The March edition of the MTS Edge will be going out on Tuesday. To get an early view of the main content you can read about Apologies and What Goes On The Last Slide?

There seems to be some unofficial rule of speaking that you should never apologize (unless you are a public figure who has been "caught"). I'm not in agreement that its 100% correct, but I do know that we, as Sales Engineers, apologize far too often when we we shouldn't. This one-sheet deals with the pros and cons of Apologizing - and maybe I should say "Sorry" right now that it is written from a US/European point of view!

What Goes On The Last Slide looks at how we end our presentations or demos. We put a lot of thought into the start, but rarely wrap the end back around to the beginning to gain closure on a topic. Read on to see why ending with a "Thank You" or a "Q&A" slide is a really bad idea. See what works instead.

31 Tips For Webcast Best Practices

The Mastering Technical Sales site has been updated with new October content. Of special interest is a one-pager which lists 31 actionable tips to make your remote demos more watchable and to compete more effectively against people doing their email while you are presenting. If you want to learn how having a photo of a group of people on your desk, and your photo on the title slide can make a difference – read on!

This month's "Ask John" deals with the difficult salesrep. You know the one who always does his/her email at the book of the room as you do your "technical stuff". How do you get the rep to pay attention and help you to perform at your best?

The Dash To Demo

After a lot of feedback from my readers about creating a special page for advice about demos I decided the customer is always right. So ..

The art of the demo and the presentation is key to the success of a Sales Engineer. Yet is is not completely an art - there is a considerable amount of science involved in making The Perfect Pitch. Here is a collection of tips, techniques, checklists and other resources designed to help you become a Demo God. You can obtain even more detail from the book or from our classes and workshops.