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!!

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")

 

 

 

June , WTF, And Other SE Things

The monthly website refresh has happened and the June newsletter has been distributed. The main topic this month is the "WTF" Presentation - or Wonderful Technical Features pitch that almost every SE has to give multiple times every quarter.

I decided to write this (and have a little fun with my inter-dimensional reverse dynamic network backup and data regeneration feature) because I have just seen a ton of these truly terrible product-oriented decks over the past 2-3 months. There seems to be a disconnect between Product Management/Marketing and the Sales/Pre-Sales team over what is needed. As an SE, sometimes you have to talk techie and satisfy the IT gurus in the room - that's part of the job - but doing it with a boring, unstructured and almost illegible deck isn't the way to go.

 

And many of the "three-hour-tour" demos I have seen are not much better! The article lays out three quick and very simple ways to change the WTF so that it is a little more fun and memorable for everyone. If your PM group generates WTF's pass them the article - and if they don't - be thankful!!

 

We also look at harnessing The Power Of Three's (note the "three" in the WTF article) as a way to help your customer actually remember what you are showing them. If they don't remember it, they won't understand it and if they don't understand it they most certainly won't buy it.

 

We also make a quick pitch for the MTS Video Series - it's just under 2 hours of video that covers six major SE concepts and is really "The Best Of John".

 

Enjoy!

Complexification

Complexification: If it isn't a word then it should be. I'd define it as the natural tendency of technical pre-sales engineers to complicate what should be a simple topic. Aided and abetted by product marketing it is the questionable talent to transform a simple solution into a complex web of products, features and functions.

Symptoms are excessive use of bullet-points to highlight every possible capability, embedded and almost illegible screenshots, liberally sprinkled with polysyllabic explanations expounding upon flexibility, scalability and expandability. Complexification also causes three-minute answers to a simple question that just needed a Yes or a No.

If you or one of your colleagues has this disease the cure is simple.

1. Remember you are not paid by the spoken or written word - but by the deal.
2. Remember the job is to sell the customer, not educate him on how to use your solution.
3. Throw away any marketing slide with a colorful screenshot
4. Throw away any marketing slide with a bullet list of features
5. Use the whiteboard
6. Try answering questions with a Yes or a No first.

Repeat as necessary