You're trying to do too much with your demo
You're trying to do too much with your demo
Most software buyers don't want a playground where they can do anything. Find out what they need before demoing, then recommend what to do. Read: "Everything Starts Out Looking Like a Toy" #134
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Hi, I’m Greg 👋! I write essays on product development. Some key topics for me are system “handshakes”, the expectations for workflow, and the jobs we expect data to do. This all started when I tried to define What is Data Operations?
This week’s toy: an Instagram account where all of the incredibly realistic merch from a pop-art “Creep Mart” is invented by AI. Edition 134 of this newsletter is here - it’s February 27, 2023.
The Big Idea
A short long-form essay about data things
⚙️ You’re trying to do too much with your demo
The goal of most software sales – after you know what the prospect wants – is to present them with an engaging demonstration that helps them learn the capabilities of your solution in the least amount of time. In the best-case scenario, the prospect recognizes something that matters to them and you move forward with further evaluation. If you’re doing your job right, you make it easier for the prospect to imagine success.
When you land a demo, you’re pretty excited. (They want to know more about us!) At the beginning of the demo, you might expect it to go this way:
But it doesn’t always go as expected. When you are misaligned, you end up with a response like this instead:
Why does this happen, and what’s the root cause of being misaligned when you get to the demo stage? One reason is not understanding the core motivations of your prospects. Asking for a demo of your app doesn’t mean they’ve figured out why they wanted to see that demo.
The software demo is tricky because you’re trying to create a “Goldilocks” situation. The work being shown needs to appear easy enough for the prospect to do in the time allotted, without being too far away from the actual ground truth to leave them frustrated when they try to do it themselves. (Because some of them have no intentions of doing it themselves.)
What else could be going on here?
Re-orienting the process from the view of the prospect
How do you avoid doing too much with your demos? One way is to think about the motivation of the prospect. How much effort are they willing to make, and how much time will they invest in this effort before giving up?
Here are a few things that prospects might try, organized roughly by the level of effort and time to evaluate:
They start their journey by identifying a deficiency they want to fix. Or maybe a general problem they want to solve. Or perhaps they just want to investigate your solution because it piqued their interest. There might or might not be a deadline or a specific project.
Once they get to your website, the buyer’s journey gets really fragmented. Because you don’t know what they need (and they don’t know either), their next step might lead them to nurture content, a free trial, or perhaps to fill out a demo form. Filling out the form doesn’t make them qualified for a demo, even though that’s probably the next step.
Where do we go from here?
At this point in the demo process, the prospect wants to talk to a person instead of engaging with your content machine or your software. There may be multiple streams like this going on at the same time, or the prospect may be just starting some research with very little time or effort available to solve the problem.
At the core of the process, you are helping the prospect to maximize the level of effort they want to make to evaluate your product while also minimizing the time they need to get to that result.
The conversations we have with these prospects often sound like the following questions or problem statements. Identifying each of these buyers and tailoring the process to them will help you to land in a place where the buyer feels like they have made enough progress to be ready to talk to the sales team.
What does it sound like for each one of these typical prospects?
“Yes, I’d like to learn more about your product”
This buyer sounds like (and is often) a good prospect. They are in the process of investigating a solution and arrive wanting a particular piece of information based on something they read or saw elsewhere. Wanting to learn more is a great signal. However, this prospect probably does not know enough to know what they need to learn.
What they need:
strong discovery to find the use case
help to state the actual problem they want to solve
nurture content may help convince them to find a problem statement that makes sense
Items that distract them:
slideware that is focused on features or capabilities they haven’t asked about
a product demo that is different than what they need
Should this be a demo? Maybe. This buyer needs a persuasive story that is going to help them understand whether they want to learn more. They may not have a particular need in mind, so getting them to tell their own story is key.
“There are too many ways to learn - can you cut to the chase?”
This buyer has either gotten overwhelmed by the content that’s available or wants to know the exact answer to their question … right now. There are a variety of reasons this might be happening. Perhaps the problem has several potential solutions, or existing case studies or videos don’t solve this exact problem.
What they need:
a very focused demo or example requiring a limited attention span
a customer testimonial that speaks to their needs
a closed-question discussion to drive them to a Sales-engineer-led demo
Items that distract them:
a self-service demo
videos or content that is unrelated to their question
Should this be a demo? Yes! A confused prospect is asking you to deliver the goods and if you can present the product or the solution in a compelling way, they want to be directed.
“I’d prefer to start - can you give me access so I can try it out?”
YES! Someone who is interested in getting involved in the product and trying it out to see what happens. A demo may give them some things to think about so that when they try it out in the real product they can get some work done. But there is a potential pitfall here. Just because they try some stuff doesn’t mean they are going to have a positive outcome to their trial.
What they need:
a demo they can do in the trial that doesn’t require too much preparation
a cookbook of steps to follow to replicate the demo so they can achieve success when they try to do it themselves
access to a sandbox or trial environment
Items that distract them:
fancy demos they can’t do themselves in a trial environment
features available in the demo that are hard to use in the trial
Should this be a demo? Use caution. Showing someone a demo at this point may be helpful if they’re asking for direction, but may also put off someone who legitimately wants to poke around first and learn before having a formal demo.
“I still haven’t found what I’m looking for”
While you might be tempted to put on this U2 music video from a very long time ago to illustrate those prospects who don’t know what they want, playing the video won’t solve their problem. (For the record, it’s still a good song.)
A person who is looking for something at the time they reach the demo and has already seen a lot of your content can be a confusing signal. They could be one explanation away from understanding if your product solves their need. And they could also be many explanations away from understanding what they want.
What they need:
a clear value proposition and a very directed conversation
a demo that represents your best guess of what they need
Items that distract them:
another explanation of the product that seems like the content they’ve seen
a new use case that sends them on another exploration
Should this be a demo? A demo probably won’t get you to a positive outcome unless the conversation naturally leads there. If the prospect is still confused, the best possible outcome for them is to realize whether you can or cannot solve their problem.
“I found a relevant use case for me. Can you do this?”
The Goldilocks answer from a Goldilocks prospect: we’d all like to have this one. A prospect arrives and already knows the relevant use case for the problem they’d like to solve. Your job is to not lose them, and also to find out whether the use case they want to solve is a good one to solve.
Another way that this person can show up is that they found nurture content or a video that exactly matches what they need. (Make sure you’re familiar with why they are here.)
What they need:
a no b.s. answer to whether you can solve their problem
a suggestion for solving their problem if you can’t do it
Items that distract them:
talking about use cases they didn’t bring up
sending them to irrelevant nurture content
Should this be a demo? Heck yeah. But be careful to make it relevant to them.
Starting the conversation at the right time
What did you notice about the fictionalized (and familiar) conversations above? It’s easy to think when you get to the demo stage that the prospect always knows what they want and can help guide you to the use cases they need to be solved. Yet even more often, they are still figuring out if there’s a fit and using the demo as a process to help them match their requirements, knowledge, and effort invested to the answers they need.
Arriving at a demo is an important step for a prospect, but may not always be a qualified step. (Yes, even when you qualified them well before.) The key to great (demo) conversations is understanding the breadth and depth of teaching materials you have available. Then it’s a lot easier to match the prospect’s need with the things they want.
What’s the takeaway? A demo is one element of the buyer conversation, and may not be appropriate for all prospects. The most important element here is isolating the buyer’s intent and matching that to what you can do. It’s better to tell the prospect “not yet” and then exceed their expectations later than to promise the moon and fail to deliver.
Links for Reading and Sharing
These are links that caught my 👀
1/ AI can design socks - Ok, so this isn’t all that surprising. What’s neat about Janelle Shane’s post on novelty socks designed by AI is the progress these models are making at abstract human inventions, like humor. Novelty socks are a great example of weird taste that might defy rules. These aren’t quite there, but they are in the ballpark for weird socks I’d expect to see at the store.
2/ Electrical noise and location - TIL that you can make a pretty good guess at someone’s location in a sound recording by analyzing the background electrical noise in the sound. Whoa. I’m not sure that this works everywhere but that’s another reminder that we emit a lot more digital exhaust than we think.
3/ The best engineering projects involve hidden work - James Stanier’s elegant essay on removing uncertainty in engineering projects makes a simple, yet elusive point. Most of the work that’s done to make projects “successful” or “easy” is hidden from the rest of the organization. The next time you are asking yourself whether to have an alignment meeting with your team, the answer is: “yes, it’s probably needed to keep the whole team aligned.”
What to do next
Hit reply if you’ve got links to share, data stories, or want to say hello.
Want more essays? Read on Data Operations or other writings at gregmeyer.com.
The next big thing always starts out being dismissed as a “toy.” - Chris Dixon