Philosophy

An ineffective demo can slow your sales cycle drastically.

It may even break a deal, because a bad demo leaves the customer wondering about your ability to perform.

A successful demo, on the other hand, is like a magic wand that moves things along. A power demo will not only transfer your enthusiasm to the audience but will motivate them to take action. It will move the sales cycle to the next step more quickly.

With The Demo Coach on your side, you will take your team's demonstration skills to the next level. Whether you are preparing for DEMOfall 08 or an investor meeting, or whether you want to improve the performance of your sales force, The Demo Coach is here to help.

Here are just a few things you will learn from The Demo Coach:

Get people's attention by solving their number one issue immediately

When you show your customer upfront how your product will solve their number one issue, you will get their attention and they want to know more. That's the time to get into more details. Start out with on the highest level of abstraction and then dig deeper based on your prospects reaction and questions asked.

Repetition is key to memory

How do you ensure your key message and your most beneficial features will be remembered by your audience? A sure way is to repeat those key messages throughout the demo, as repetition is the basis for retention.

Show only what's important to your customer

The most horrific demos are the ones where the presenter seems to have an urge to present each and every option available. Typically, your prospect has a only a few pressing issues that lead them to look around for a solution. Make sure you fully understand what your customer really is looking for and tailor your demo to highlight how your product can solve those pressing issues.

Use exciting language

Your level of enthusiasm for your product is shown two-fold: by the adjectives you use to describe the elements of your product and by the inflection of your voice. Be careful though: don't sprinkle your demo with useless filler terms and buzz words that will turn your audience off.

Involve your audience

Ask questions. Ask questions that need a direct answer by one of the audience members; or questions that require to be answered mentally. Demos during sales meetings and trade shows benefit greatly when they become conversational instead of one long monologue. During online demos, it's especially important to constantly involve your audience, as you won't be able to get any visual feedback to calibrate and fine-tune your approach.

Respect Time

Time - the one thing we all have true equality. We all get 24 hours each and every day, it doesn't matter what world view, financial situation, or shoe size we have. But time is also very limited... Many people would love to get an extra hour or two to simply catch up with things. This is why good demonstrators always start and finish on time and great demonstrators finish early. Give the gift of time to your prospects. They will love you for an extra ten minutes in their schedule.

You don't know your product well enough to go in unscripted

Going into a demo unprepared is a recipe for disaster. You don't need to write your demo script word by word (unless you're presenting on stage and every single word and move needs to be well rehearsed), but you owe it to yourself to create a bullet list in the sequence you want to cover -- or a mind map, which will be especially helpful during preparation.

Use stories that lead your audience with their heart

Whenever we listen to somebody speak, we create mental imagery that helps us give meaning to the words we hear. Stories add context and emotion to those mental images. Telling stories will allow your audience to follow with their heart and understand with their mind.

Make it personal

Behind every demo, there is a person. One of the problems in business is that we think about these persons as "prospect", "client", or the "ACME company". We generalize this way for practical reasons, but there is some danger in this: we often lose track of the fact that we are really dealing with persons; business becomes impersonal. For a demo to be most effective, you must always appeal to the person on the other side. Find out their motivation for looking at your product (What will make them feel good about purchasing it) and then deliver your demo in that context.