“A demo is how you show up to your customers. It is the first impression that you make. It is what you are actually selling to them. And so it’s very important that it’s got a lot of thought and care put into it.” – Evan Powell in today’s Tip 1540
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Transcript
Scott Ingram: You’re listening to the Daily Sales Tips podcast and I’m your host, Scott Ingram. Today’s tip comes from Evan Powell. Evan is a Co-Founder and Head of Operations at Reprise. His background building and scaling SaaS companies spans positions with Glasswing Ventures, F-Prime Capital, and InsightSquared. Evan studied International Finance at Tufts University and received his MBA from the MIT Sloan School of Management. Here he is:
Evan Powell: Don’t let their demo be a hot potato. I see this way too many times. It’s because it’s hard. So sometimes the demo will be owned by the engineering team, sometimes it’s by the product team, by the sales engineering team, and everyone’s throwing it back and forth as to who’s responsible for actually making something that will be shown to prospects in a sales engagement. And here’s the thing, right? It is one of the most important assets that any go-to-market organization has. A demo is how you show up to your customers. It is the first impression that you make. It is what you are actually selling to them. And so it’s very important that it’s got a lot of thought and care put into it. And so any organization that doesn’t have a clear owner of their demo, it’s really important that they designate who that is and make that a serious part of their job. I mean, we’re seeing companies more and more bring on dedicated demo engineers or demo engineering teams. And that is a good practice because it is critically important, especially in the current economic environment where it is harder and harder for buyers to actually make purchases.
They’re looking for reasons to qualify you out. And that first demo, that first interaction they have with you, and by the way, any subsequent demos that they do, are opportunities to be filtered out of the funnel. And so we recommend that you have someone who is focused on thinking about your demo, thinking about how to make sure that it’s relevant, thinking about how your demo tells a story. And that’s really important as well. A lot of times people think that a demo is good enough if it just shows off the features. But your demo needs to be able to tell a story and actually show the way that your buyers will be getting ROI out of your product. I think if I have one tip going forward it’s that companies really focus on having a dedicated owner for the demo who is thinking about how that demo is being used as an asset all throughout the go-to-market.
Scott Ingram: For links to connect with Evan, just click over to DailySales.Tips/1540. Once you’ve been over there, be sure to come right back here for another great sales tip. Thanks for listening!