Building Powerful Demonstrations

You’ve built a successful GTM engine. AEs are doing discovery well, they are good at demonstrating but you noticed a gap. Deals are slowing down as they grow which means your Stage 2 to 3 conversion is somewhat down. There are more feature asks coming in and we are overcommitting on product. Congratulations! You need a Sales Engineer.

Hiring a great sales engineer to assist in mid-funnel conversion is an exciting step when growing a sales organization. You have reached the point where the deals are getting more sophisticated, have technical complexities as well as are larger in size. It takes a while but when you get there it’s very rewarding.

Now the challenge is delivering an exceptional demonstration. When I think about a vision statement for a demo I break it into 3 areas:

1. People - what groups are involved in the business process?

2. Process - what are the processes that need assistance?

3. Technology - what technology exists now and what is needed in the future?

I like to understand these when I am jumping in a demonstration. Give me a working understanding of how the flow of the business goes. As an SE I’ll be able to start mapping my demo to show key benefits of my solution.

This brings in the next important factor… building value. You don’t want to get into a feature click demo. Your audience won’t pay attention or they will start nitpicking things you don’t have. No one wants this. Worst - demo - ever.

Demonstrations are not feature clicking...they are telling a story. Your solution is unique in that there are MANY things we can lean on to build value. Your goal is to take all of these (based on what you know about the prospect) and build a compelling vision. I would think in these categories:

1. Time Savings - how do you reduce the effort and provide relief for strained resources?

2. Monetary Gains - if you are able to X then what does that mean to the bottom line?

3. Data Analysis - how do you measure the metrics to make sure the prior 2 points are happening?

This is why great discovery is so important. It doesn’t just help managers… It immensely helps SEs give a powerful demo. They can tie features to real value and tell a story around it that is incredibly compelling.

What sets this up well is your pitch deck as well. You should have a narrative that solves for:

1. What are the problems?

2. How do we solve this?

3. What have we done to help up to now?

4. What other companies had the same problems that we helped?

5. Why are we the best?

Then you want to “Show the Story” with a great demo. Focus on:

1. What people have what problems?

2. How does what I’m showing help that?

3. How does this fix the existing challenges?

4. How does this compound improvement across other processes?

5. What is the dream state look like once it’s fixed?

If you get a question regarding something you have shown make sure to tie it back to what you are showing. Don’t be afraid to ask for clarification as well… when you deliver the message back knowing the details it builds credibility and momentum.

“Great question, can you help me understand why you are asking this?”

Also make the demo relatable. I never liked using just a company name in my demo’s… I used a first name from a company to make the demo more compelling. Which one do you think is more powerful?

“Acme faced this same issue and solved it by building an automation rule.”

OR

“Maria from Acme faced this challenge and she was able to solve it by building an automated process to accelerate efficiency.”

As a buyer I want to know I am not alone in my problem. And another PERSON was facing the same thing but fixed it with this. Now you want to follow this up with:

“Maria from Acme faced this challenge and she was able to solve it by building an automated process to accelerate efficiency. Because this was happening 100 times a day, resulting in 5 hours of productivity loss, she was able to get that time back with this simple rule set up. Additionally this resulted in 5 customer saves per month… with your avg contract size that would be $150k of retention. She could also track her teams process here to make sure improvement was happening across the board.”

If I am a prospect then I just stating foaming at the mouth. I want in on this solution asap.

Just using the basic principles described above gives you such a powerful statement. Anyone can just answer a question… Can you paint a picture of real value? It’s not easy but once you crossover into this mindset then you’ve joined the elite.

Put it into practice and watch your deals flow to closure.