The steps buyers must go through are clear, and in no-way locked to antiquated sales-stages. Buyers are the only ones that can move to the next stage, and each participant or ‘stakeholder’ will remain in their own specific place along that journey until they’re confident enough to move on. Don’t forget there are 4.8 stakeholders on average per deal, and you could have up to 16 different people to coach through these stages (data from the 2022 Sales Engineering Compensation & Workload report).
What’s rather scary, is seldom do you get to meet all these stakeholders; some have massive hidden influence and addressing their needs is hard. Really hard.
These stakeholders could be investors, CXO, the board, directors, managers or individuals, working in sales, sales ops, marketing, presales, sales enablement, IT/Security, corporate strategy team or your own colleagues. Uncovering these using viral stakeholder discovery is made far easier by using Intelligent Demo Automation, and the Buyer Matrix we use at Consensus.
This graphic is reproduced here courtesy of Kevin Davis from A Sales Manager’s Guide to Greatness and also available in Garin Hess’ book Selling is Hard, Buying is Harder.
Navigating these steps is hard for buyers because they do it so in-frequently. It’s your job to help them – after all, you do this all the time, right? So as they move through these stages, how can we help them?
Well, I’ve faced this challenge numerous times, so let’s take a look at where I’ve seen Intelligent Demo Automation help:
Presales Activity Gap (what our presales people do)
As a finite resource, presales individuals can only meet a certain part of the buying journey. Usually this is once buyers have an understanding of what they want to change and want to see which vendor can provide these things – the ‘Comparison’ stage as seen in section 4 of the graphic above. Buyers do want a demo in the ‘Research’ stage as well, but do you want presales consultants spending every waking hour demoing generalistic overviews? Not at that cost…
As a massively authentic source of knowledge, presales can help buyers earlier in the buying journey (Change & Discontent), and later too by helping close deals (Fear & Commitment).
But there’s not enough people – hence the gap in what you need, and what you can provide. Intelligent Demo Automation helps by letting presales consultants record their demos, tuned to the exact stage each buyer is experiencing in their change journey.
What’s more, now presales have time for additional valuable activities they can demo not just the main software, but also 3rd party products, professional services, upsell functionality, go through documents, quotes, customer references and a multitude of other activities – all which can be recorded and served up instantly.
Come see how easy buying can be.
Presales Demand Gap (How much our presales people are asked to do)
“In a recent trip to London, I met a presales consultant recently who demo’d the same thing, 6 times a day, 5 days a week. He was not happy – he knew the buyers wanted something more useful, but there was no time to spend going off-piste.”
By recording the overview demo and have sales serve it up before the meeting, the champion was able to judge the engagement and qualification of the deal, and the stakeholders could learn the basics before arriving at the live meeting. The presales rep was then able to offer a more customized service to the buyers when they had specific questions. They got to watch the demo multiple times, and whenever suited them. Plus, with multiple stakeholders involved with different requirements, they were able to pick what mattered most to them. How pleasant!
Now buyers get that demo instantly – unlike when they ask your old-school competitors:
“If you were buying software and a vendor provided all the info you needed, instantly, plus a more engaging meeting when you did get together, and the other vendors didn’t, which would you prefer?”
Shorten buying cycle (Time from Need to change, to Change happens)
Getting everyone ‘on the same page’ is massively difficult, especially with the buying group growing; some buying groups have as many as 16 people in, so no-wonder purchases take ages to complete – each day adds to the cost of not changing too. So discovering your champion, all the other stakeholders for change, uncovering their needs, equipping them with personalized content really helps make creating change a fast activity for any buyer.
By using #IntelligentDemoAutomation, discovery of these stakeholders becomes a viral activity kicked-off by your champion. Tracking the activities of these stakeholders across your buyer’s business in a Stakeholder Matrix is a huge source of valuable insight for helping them through their buying journey.
Buy with conviction (Step forward with confidence)
Increasing close rates might be a vital task for winning at selling, but remember, the game’s changed. So how do we help buyers do so with conviction? That assured confidence and a full understanding of the risks involved – knowing they will succeed in their change mission?
Well imagine you’d seen 7 different vendor’s proposals, 4 different days of demos, 2 final demos and 1 selected vendor meeting to discuss next steps. Apart from being absolutely exhausted, how confident would you be that something you saw 5 weeks ago was actually part of the final choice? Your ability to serve up that authentic demo from the experienced, industry-hardened presales rep at a moments notice is absolutely invaluable here.
Maintain consistent messaging (Deliver on promises of change)
Have you ever been to a restaurant with beautiful menu photos only to find what arrives at your table is somewhat a disappointment? Sometimes buying software is just the same. Making sure your carefully crafted marketing messaging rings true all the way through to go-live and beyond is essential to maintain buyer confidence, thus creating happy onwards journey with your company. So keep that thread of your unique ‘why’ proposition echoing through each step of the buyer journey. By having presales record both early-stage, and late-stage demos in the buying journey this becomes far easier.
The only person that can ring your success bell is your buyer.
