96. Demos with Mike Kavanagh

Mike and Cory dig into sales demos with a bunch of actionable takeaways in this short episode. 

Transcript

Sales Management

Speaker 1 0:01

Welcome to the Sales Management Podcast , your source for actionable sales management strategies and tactics . I'm your host Coach , CRM Co-Founder , Corey Gray . No long intros , no long ads . Let's go Part two of two . Second time we've ever done this before , because we have interesting topics to talk about . Mike Cavanaugh is here with me and we're looking at . Should account executives , salespeople , closers , should they demo during the sales process ? Mike , how are you ?

Speaker 2 0:31

I'm great . I think this is a really important topic . By the way , this is , it's a passion aggravation . It's all of the above for me .

Speaker 1 0:40

I love it . The emotions are flowing and it's going to be fun because him and I are going to agree and disagree at the same time on this topic , which is going to be mind have been identified and can be tied back to capabilities within the solution .

Speaker 2 1:10

I don't want to see this show up and throw up demo anymore . It makes me want to bang my head against the wall .

Speaker 1 1:16

I agree with everything you just said . The thing where we might disagree is I think they should be able to demo inside and out and go as deep and wide as the product will allow them to .

Speaker 2 1:27

Oh , okay , I think that depends on the product , though . Okay , so- .

Speaker 1 1:33

Okay , not SAP not .

Speaker 2 1:34

SAP . Okay Well , sap Salesforce .

Speaker 1 1:38

Yeah , yeah , but even then they're assigned to a tech . Nobody's selling Salesforce as a broad solution right ?

Speaker 2 1:43

No , they're not selling the 2,700 SKUs at Salesforce .

Speaker 1 1:45

Yeah , You're selling sales cloud . You're selling marketing cloud , whatever . So if you're selling marketing cloud at Salesforce , I think you should know every aspect . Yeah , Okay .

Speaker 2 1:52

That's fair , yeah , and I mean the more the more , the more specific the solution . And if you're an industry specific , absolutely . I work for a company , true Context . We did a lot in field service automation and I to this day , could probably still do a demo because I knew the product inside and out and I think that made me a better seller . But every demo I did was tailored to the conversation we had during the discovery .

Speaker 2 2:27

And this is the problem I see a lot with , especially with young ladies who are still learning . They get trained really well on the product , which is awesome . I love that . That's great . And they're so proud of the product they want to just show it and they want to show 2,700 features . I saw it and I was at Zendesk for two and a half years . Zendesk is an incredibly powerful platform . It can do a ton of stuff , but the buyers are coming to us . They don't need all 2,700 features . They need to know how you're going to solve the problem that came to you for and I think that's where I see the overload of demos it's death by demo sometimes .

Speaker 1 2:59

I agree . And then they start showing stuff before they uncover the next pain point .

Speaker 2 3:04

Yeah , and and because and this is the other part because they're trying to squeeze it in or the and this is where I think sellers need to learn to push back and the buyer signs up and this is again changing behavior . But the buyer shows up , they speak to an SDR or BDR and don't get me started on like the SDR role and like me answering questions of a 23 year old if I'm buying Salesforce for the third time like please stop , please , just I'm begging you . But they've answered those questions . Now they've been promised a demo , but the AEs this is where setting the right expectations through the process need to come in , like the BDR or the SDR or whatever needs to say hey , this call isn't going to be a demo or , if it is a demo , it's going to be very brief . They're going to ask you questions because they really want to understand and tailor it to you . I think that's where a lot of the bad experiences happen is the expectations I've said correctly .

Speaker 1 3:55

Well , it starts on the website with the marketing team , because it says book a demo .

Speaker 2 3:57

Yeah , yeah .

Speaker 1 4:00

And then marketing wants to book a demo because book a demo is going to convert at a higher rate than talk to sales . So then the marketing KPIs and the board meeting are higher . And then the SDR they want to promise a demo because that's going to convert higher than do you want to talk to another salesperson verbally ? Because that's going to convert higher .

Speaker 2 4:14

All right , I'll let marketing have the book . A demo . Fine , it bypasses the SDR . Use Calendly , use Chili and I'm not getting paid by Calendly or Chili Piper or any of the 1700 other solutions to do this . But , like if somebody is that interested in seeing a demo , there's so many ways to have a prerecorded like Harbor Shows those highlight features , right Like there's tools out there now that they can do that .

Speaker 1 4:34

Yes .

Speaker 2 4:34

You know , set the right expectations for the buyer . Buyers don't have . I've been a buyer of software many times . If I come to your website and I say I want to see a demo , I've done my research already Right , I I'm looking to see something , or I have a specific question . I want to see a specific thing , Right , that's . That's where I think the problems come up and A's are being taught to just demo the whole thing and that's where the that's what drives me crazy in this , in this current environment .

Speaker 1 4:58

Right , cause when you're a buyer , one of the few things is happening Either you used to use it like we've all bought things several times , hey , what's new ? So I want to know what's new . Cause I'm curious , like , what am I ? What do I do ? No , what do I not know ? What have I been missing ? Or you say , hey , I've got a specific problem to solve , like , can you solve it ? And do I actually believe that you can solve it ? Cause that's all demo really is . It's just information , asymmetry cure . Buyer thinks this , seller thinks this and we got to get them on the same page .

Speaker 2 5:25

Yeah , I think it again to your point . Right , like somebody who's coming to your website and raising their hand and saying I have this problem . They know they have a problem . I've never gone to a website and signed up for a demo because I have 30 minutes to kill . Right , like I don't do that . Right , I'm coming because I've identified a challenge in my business . The job as a salesperson is to really hone in and help . You know , maybe them unpack that problem and really under you know , maybe they yeah , they know the problem , but what's the deeper levels of the impact of that problem ? Not doing something right ? So they create urgency and all those things , and that's where I think no one's ever won a sale because they did a great demo .

Speaker 2 6:05

Yeah , it's a good part of it , but it's not the reason someone packs a piece of software or buys anything .

Speaker 1 6:10

Well , and then people throw you for a wrench sometime and they'll say , hey , I just want to see a demo , just show me what you got , and the best salespeople can flip up a screen and do the same exact discovery they were going to do . I think I call it demo brain , where people just feel like , oh my gosh , now I'm in presentation mode . You're not in presentation mode , you're not giving a keynote speech , you're just doing discovery with something on your screen .

Speaker 2 6:30

Yeah , I mean . So you know . I think it comes down to like okay , well , let me , let me walk you through a common scenario that I , a lot of our customers , buy this solution for . Right , like that's how you can start . And then you start to ask questions like , hey , is this relevant to how you do things today , or how does this differ from how you do things today ? Right , yeah , the demo becomes like a PowerPoint presentation . I'm like , please , god , no .

Speaker 1 6:54

Choose your own adventure . Yeah , so yeah , I'll start off and be like look , our product does a lot of things . Either people are concerned about ramping people in their organization . Concerned about ramping people in their organization , they're anxious that their sellers don't have the skillset that they need to have , or they're worried they don't have any visibility into how performance ties to their enablement activity . Like where do you want to start ?

Speaker 2 7:11

Yeah .

Speaker 1 7:12

And they just they're telling me where they want to start and then they're opting into whatever pain question . Just ask them . And then I'm like , okay , cool , I just did discovery .

Speaker 2 7:19

Whoa , let's go . It's exactly . And learning being good at demo , I think , is it's a hard skill . There's a lot of hard skills in sales . I think running a good demo is definitely up there .

Speaker 2 7:32

For me , it's you know , getting really good at doing discovery throughout the sales process . And then the other thing when I talk to AAs , it's about forecasting , but demo is probably depending on what you're selling is , that is that , you know be just another tool in the arsenal for how , like discovering the pain , really figuring out how big is this ? Like an annoying problem , or the house is on fire and if we don't fix it , we're going to be homeless , right Like that's . That's the issue . That's how a demo should be an aid to doing better discovery .

Speaker 1 7:59

Exactly . And when you , when you build out your discovery questions , one of the things that we always have people do is tie it to features . So the exercise I'll verbally articulate this it's in a sales playbooks , the builder's toolkit , one of our books that we wrote . If anybody wants a free hard copy of sales playbooks builder's toolkit , shoot me a note . Free stuff at coachCRMcom . Free stuff at coachCRMcom . I'll flip it over to you . So the framework is you start with the feature and then you say , for each feature , what are all the benefits of the feature ? And at this point people like Mike start freaking out . He's like , oh , my God , Corey's going to talk about features and benefits . Well , you know , we're going to talk about them for a second , Then we're going to throw away one of those columns . So we say here's the feature , here's all the benefits of the benefit . And then we say , okay , what personas have that pain ? What market segments have that pain ? What's the impact of solving that pain , and how well are we positioned to win ? So is it something we uniquely ?

Speaker 2 8:51

do . Is this really our wheelhouse or are we kind of on the edge case where we can do it but it's not perfect ?

Speaker 1 8:58

Exactly so . Now we've got this prioritized list of pain points that tie to personas and market segments , so we can ignore that features and benefits piece . We've just got this really core discovery document that we can integrate conversationally . But then when we find something , we say oh gee , whiz , we found these three pain points . How are we going to orchestrate our demo ? Boom , boom , boom , boom , boom , boom . So we're working forward , then we're working backwards and it's all in one thing that , yeah , I mean , that's the skills that are really good .

Speaker 2 9:27

If you're fortunate to have great sales engineers in your organization , that's what great sales engineers do , and if you can distill that down into a consumable way for AEs , it's going to make them much better .

Speaker 1 9:36

But if it's my choice .

Speaker 2 9:38

They should be able to do demo , but if they can't do it effectively , then I'll stop it and we'll rip it out . We'll have somebody else do the demo if we have to .

Speaker 1 9:46

Yeah , yeah , yeah , you got to give the ball to Jordan , as they say .

Speaker 2 9:49

Exactly , exactly .

Speaker 1 9:51

So , yeah , love it .

Speaker 2 9:53

Um one quick . I have one question for you . Where do you stand on like doing demo certification for AEs ?

Speaker 1 9:59

I'm very big on all types of certification .

Speaker 2 10:02

You're an enablement ? Yeah , of course . No I think it's important .

Effective Demo Certification Practices

Speaker 2 10:07

I think the thing I see when I see a lot of demo certifications in companies is like it's testing them on the features and not testing them on how they tell the story . And again it's go back to the story right , like they're testing can you demo this feature ? Can you do this feature , this , this , this and this . I want to see how they , how they handle a situational demonstration .

Speaker 1 10:26

Well , that's dumb way of doing it . A lot of companies do the enablement dumb ways . I don't know what to tell you . I know they do Cause they don't understand . They think a demo like I'll do I mean , in our product we actually built a demo role play scorecard because people want to do a demo role place and you can do them well . So if they're , if they're keyed up well and you do them well , sure they're fine . Right , and I've there's like three people I've worked with sales leaders internally that we'll do them with , cause they actually know how to run them . Everyone else is a disaster . So when I think about certification , there's there's two , there's two pieces and then there's three layers to the second piece .

Speaker 1 10:57

Let me just quickly so knowledge and action . So do you know it and can you do it ? So do you know it . So do you know what all the features are ? Do you know what pain points the feature solved ? Do you know what personas they solved them for ? Do you know what market segments ? If you don't know something , you can't do it and that's you know we're talking about golf in our last episode .

Speaker 2 11:21

If you don't know , you keep to . You got to know all those things .

Speaker 1 11:23

So there's 15 things you need to know in a golf swing and they become unconscious competence over time . But if you don't really know them , they're conscious competence . You have to think about them before you do them . So it's the same thing with doing a demo Okay , so do we know the stuff ? And then can we do it ? Okay , three levels to do it . Do it , do it well . Do it well under pressure . Well , do it . You and I can sit here and do a little role play . You're like hey , corey , show me this feature . I'm like okay , mike , so you're a VP of sales and you're struggling with us . Here's what we do . What are you ? And I ask you an opening question . What are how questions get you talking ? Cool , fine , but do it well under pressure . I'm in a room with four people , two of them I've never met before . Wow , no , that's good . I think that .

Speaker 2 12:14

I think that's a great way to do it . I I um . Very early in my career , I had the unfortunate experience of having to do a certification uh in with my SE and his boss , who just happened to be my mom and my mom , which you want to talk about . You want to talk about a high pressure situation That'll put you on your toes right there .

Speaker 1 12:30

Oh wow , that's great .

Speaker 2 12:35

Yeah , and she went harder at me than she did anyone else on my sales team . I was like this is unnecessary now . Now you're just , you don't need to play favorites , but you don't need to personally call me out , but but yeah .

Speaker 1 12:46

Sounds like it worked out for you , though .

Speaker 2 12:48

It did , it did . I left the company six months later , though I was like this has been fun , but I'm going to go do my own thing for a while .

Speaker 1 12:55

Yeah , yeah , fly away a little bit . Yeah , no , that's it Okay . So we , we generally agree on that . Yeah , the , the , the , the silly certifications are no good , and I think that the more and I'll I'll say this cause we actually agree on this I thought we were going to get a little debate a little more .

Speaker 2 13:10

I think we I mean enablement one . We had more disagreement , this one , I think everybody aligns pretty well .

Speaker 1 13:14

I had a guy I had a guy on a previous episode where I couldn't find anybody that could credibly debate the other side , so him and I just yelled at the clouds like Homer Simpson's dad . So the ? Uh , the thing I was going to say is that if people don't know the product inside and out , they don't know what questions to ask to uncover the pain that would be solved by the product .

Speaker 2 13:34

Yeah , Well , they can't lay those trap questions right . They can't figure out the the . They can't lay those questions that they know are going to get other either . Uncover the real pain that they helped solve . And if they can't find it , if there's not real pain , then they know there's not a real opportunity . But they have to know what the product does and how it does it to be able to lay those kinds of questions out for people .

Speaker 1 13:54

Yeah for sure , All right . Well , this is fun . Ae's demo . Learn the product inside and out , Learn the pain points . If you want to dig into that framework that we've got , shoot me a note . Freestuffatcoachdmcom . Mike , anything to plug or wrap us up with ?

Speaker 2 14:15

No , I'm all set . This has been a lot of fun and , like I said before , I'm excited about this next phase of sales . I think everybody's going to get the opportunity to sharpen their skills and learn .

Speaker 1 14:21

I agree , and I have changed my tune about this I don't think AI is going to replace us in the next 10 years . I've really come around on this in the last week or two . I thought it was going to happen in the next five to 10 years . I don't think it is and we can dig into that in a future episode .

Speaker 2 14:35

Yeah , I'd love to talk about that one . That's , I'm not convinced . I convinced I can still tell when AI writes me an email . So I think my job is safe for now .

Speaker 1 14:45

I love it . Thanks , mike , all right , everybody else . Thank you , corey , next time .