It’s here! Welcome to Season One, Episode One of our new Sales Hacker series, Demo-litions, where real reps giving real sales demos are reviewed by two sales experts.
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Full Disclosure: We don’t have anything to disclose. Nobody in this video paid to be in it, and we didn’t trade any services either. This is just our honest appraisal of a real sales demo from a real rep!
Let’s dive in!
Setting the Stage
In this first pilot episode, we dive into a demo provided to us by Shane Todhunter (shout-out to Shane for being our first guest!). Shane is from an awesome organization called Klue, a competitive intelligence SAAS company, and he’s demoing his software to another great org, OpenGov.
In Episode 1, we look at the first quarter of Shane’s demo: Discovery and Introduction of the product. In this episode, DaveI will evaluate Shane on his ability to:
- Build rapport
- Set an agenda
- Introduce the product and the pain points it addresses
Rapport-Building: 5/5
Shane, the seller, seems to have a natural ability to find common ground quickly and in a natural way. His tonality and cadence make the prospect immediately feel at ease.
In Chris Voss’ book Never Split the Difference, he talks about putting on a “Late Night DJ Voice.” Shane has this voice nailed, and we think he used it to full effect in his sales demo.
Keep doing you, Shane! You’re a rapport king!
Agenda-Setting: 4/5
Shane set a pretty loose agenda, so there is certainly a little room for improvement in this area. We would have liked to see him take more control from the beginning so she knows what she’s getting herself into.
Still, the agenda was clear, which is the most important part.
Introduction / Discovery: 3/5
Shane spends a little too much time on the intro slides for our liking. Nobody likes watching a Powerpoint deck, and typically prospects are itching to check out the actual platform.
We also would have liked to see Shane asking a few more questions up front, so he could better tailor the demo to the prospect’s specific needs.
Key Takeaways
- Reiterate their pain up front.
- Be firm in your agenda setting.
- Ask more discovery questions up front.
- When talking customer use-cases, tailor it to their use-case and not a generic one.
- Use “close-probs” like the seller does (i.e., “Is that how you look at things too?”).
- Watch for buzzwords.
- Copy Shane’s calming “late night DJ voice.”
Quote of the Episode
“Get them to talk about their headache and then hand them the Tylenol.”