You’ve been asked to put together the content for an automated or recorded demo – where do you start? What should be included?
Peter Cohan from Great Demo! guides presales professionals on improving their demo skills for both live and automated presentations.
This blog is derived from several excerpts from Peter Cohan’s eBook on Automated Demo Content – Getting It Right. To download the full eBook, go here.
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Goals and Objectives
Your first step in determining content is to be clear on the goals for the recording.
You’ll need answers to the following questions:
- What are our goals with respect to scaling and/or compressing our sales or presales processes?
- What are our goals regarding enabling our buyers for their processes?
- Who is the target audience?
- What is the desired outcome?
- What is the stage of the sales/buying process (i.e., which Use Cases above)?
- What action do we want the prospect to take?
We’ll harvest and use the answers to these questions a bit later…Your next step is to match the type of demo to the five Use Cases.
The Five Prospect Use Cases:
- I’m just browsing and simply want to get an idea of what is possible for the future.
- I’m early in an active buying process and need to understand which vendors to explore.
- I need to get a deeper understanding of each vendors’ offerings.
- I’ve seen an overview and now have questions about specific capabilities.
- I’m championing this effort and need something to help me communicate and sell internally.
Each of these represent opportunities to automate. But before you do, let’s examine your goals and objectives for this effort, in parallel with your prospects’.
Types of Demos
There are two types of demos that can be automated or recorded:
1. Vision Generation Demos: To communicate what is possible.
Vision Generation Demos are delivered prior to doing discovery. They are the crisp replacement for traditional (and ineffective) “overview” demos. Vision Generation Demos must be targeted to the needs and interests of individual Job Titles.
Vision Generation Demos are aimed at Use Cases 1 and 2, in particular, and for some applications of Use Case 5 as well. They are designed to run just a few minutes, making them perfect for many automated demo platforms.
2. Technical Proof Demos: To prove specific capabilities.
Technical Proof Demos are delivered after sufficient discovery has been completed (as defined by a reasonably complete Great Demo! Situation Slide for a specific Job Title). Technical Proof Demos address specific questions and proof points for prospects: “Can it do this?” “How do you do that?” “How long does it take to complete this?”
Technical Proof Demos are the solution for Use Cases 3 and 4, along with some instances of Use Case 5. Technical Proof Demos are designed to run exactly as long as needed to address the prospect’s questions and confirm proof of capabilities. They are precise and focus on the specific solution desired by the Job Title in question. Accordingly, their length can vary from a minute or two to several minutes for each solution or portion of a solution.
These demo definitions make it easy for us to determine what is needed for our prospects.
Another Important Dimension – Just Browsing vs Active Buying Process
Before going deeper, let’s examine the two types of prospects and their interests:
“Just Browsing” Prospects
Prospects who are Just Browsing are not (yet) in an Active Buying Process. They may be researching problem and solution sets, they may be setting plans for the future, or they may be simply trying to understand if solutions even exist for problems they are exploring.
Just Browsing prospects typically want to get a high-level understanding of what is possible in terms of potential solutions: This is Use Case 1. They are often defining their problem set and only have a vague understanding or vision of solution options. Automated Vision Generation Demos are a terrific way to shed light on what’s possible…!
Many Just Browsing prospects are “qualified out” in traditional sales processes. An advantage of automated Vision Generation Demos is that they can satisfy these prospects and encourage them to return to you when they enter an Active Buying Process, without any live interactions!
Importantly, traditional overview demos often deliver too much information to these prospects, overwhelming them with a broad (and sometimes deep!) range of features and functions. Just Browsing prospects can become confused and avoid moving into an Active Buying Process when they perceive vendor offerings as “too complicated”, “too detailed”, or “difficult to understand.”
I once heard a prospect comment, “I asked for a simple picture of what’s possible, but the vendor sent me the full movie, with prequel and sequel add-ons!”
“Active Buying Process” Prospects
These are prospects who are in an Active Buying Process. They have a plan to solve their problem(s). They have likely allocated budget and other resources to purchase and implement a solution. A Buying Committee is probably in place and they have defined their problem space reasonably well. They are actively seeking vendors that can provide solutions.
Active Buying Process prospects want to understand how vendor offerings match their needs and wants. In many cases, they also rely upon vendors to help define the solution space, as their visibility into solutions can be limited. “I had no idea that was possible!” is a frequent exclamation heard in discovery conversations. Ultimately, Active Buying Process prospects want to see exactly what capabilities are required for their solutions and how they work.
Active Buying Process prospects may move through several stages in their buying processes, starting with seeking an understanding of solutions at a high level (Use Case 2), then grilling vendors on the specific details of reporting, alerting, and operating workflows (Use Cases 3 and 4). These prospects will often start with requests for Vision Generation Demos (“What’s possible?” – Use Case 1) and then ask for Technical Proof Demos to provide details on “How does this work?” and “Can you do this other thing?” (Use Cases 3 and 4).
The transition from Vision Generation to Technical Proof takes place when discovery is complete, which is defined as the point in time when both parties feel the vendor has a sufficient understanding of the prospect’s situation, needs, wants, and constraints.
Prospect champions may want help convincing their colleagues to pursue a particular vendor’s solution. They can use both types of demos, depending on their needs and situation: Vision Generation Demos provide your champion’s coworkers with crisp, easily consumable examples of what’s possible; Technical Proof Demos share particulars on specific capabilities of interest.
The Menu Approach – Choose Your Own Adventure
(How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time… But please don’t: The elephant won’t be very happy when you start to nibble on its knee!)
Intelligent automated demos start by asking the prospect for the receiver’s job title. Alternatively, you can determine the prospect’s job title through traditional pathways.
In either case, this approach is key! It enables the entire balance of the demo to focus on the goals, problems, capabilities desired, and value elements for that specific job title.
Here is an example of The Menu Approach in practice. The first “Menu” presents a list of job titles and asks the viewer to choose. This could be done within the automated demo tool itself, if the capability exists (Consensus has done an outstanding job with this) or delivered in a manual or semi-automated fashion by sending out job title-oriented demos individually.
Let’s assume our tool supports “slicing” by job title.
A Final Word
“Conversation”.
A pundit (OK, me) once noted that “You cannot have a conversation with a book”. The same is generally true for Automated Demo tools. As these tools improve and evolve, I would bias my choice of tools towards those that enable some forms of asynchronous conversations. The “Choose Your Own Adventure” approach (e.g., Consensus) and tools that offer feedback mechanisms are preferred, accordingly! When you want to have a conversation during a demo, set up a live meeting to enable the conversation to take place. Note that you can apply a hybrid approach, where an automated demo is shared, and a live vendor representative is available for human-to-human interactions. Your sales and presales playbooks and motions should provide guidelines as to when to apply a tech-touch, low-touch or hightouch tactic, accordingly. It is also likely that AI integration into Automated Demo tools will begin to offer conversations soon, as well! In summary, for Just Browsing and early Active Buying Process prospects (Use Cases 1 and 2, in particular), Automated Demos provide prospects with simple, low-risk methods of exploring possible solutions. For Active Buying Process prospects who are in further into their journeys, (Use Cases 3, 4, and 5) Automated Demos offer options to address specific questions, sell internally, and compress cycles. Now it’s up to you. Reach out to the Automated Demo vendors and see if they “drink their own champagne”, using their own tools to engage…!
