Demonstrating responsiveness: selling to specific use cases and how that makes your case for you. (And how SmartCue can achieve this in minutes)
We've all been there. The client is looking at his phone. You're saying all the right things, using buzzwords that normally work, and telling cute little anecdotes as you try to power through your demo. But… it's dead in the water. The client sits there, multi-tasking the whole time, using their phone without interest.
What went wrong?
It's always more than just one reason, but in my experience, relevance always tops the list.
The easiest way to lose an audience, whether you're a sales rep or a politician, is relevance.
If you aren't talking about something that is important to your audience, and if you don't have a solution for a problem that bugs them, they're not interested and you can't win them over.
The good news is that if you have a product, then you have use cases that solve specific customer issues and pain points. In plain English, you have solutions.
The question then remains: is your solution the solution for this customer?
If you aren't relevant to the customer's needs, it points to a failure in your pre-sales process.
For most of us, the pre-sales process looks something like this:
Prospecting and qualifying leads
Product research
Market research
Data and customer analysis
Identifying solutions to customer pain points
Crafting a unique selling proposition
Managing deal qualification and proposals
For you to have the ability to present your solution, overcome objections, and close the sale, the most important steps of the pre-sales process are steps 4, 5, and 6.
You need to understand the customer's business and how they position themselves, you need to know their pain points, and you need to know how to position your solution, in a way that makes sense to the customer and everyone in between.
My Go-To Solution
Research is great, but nothing compares to asking your customer about what's troubling them. This is where a lot of sales teams hesitate. They fear looking incompetent, when in fact, the customer is waiting for someone to just ask them!
I've always asked, and it has always helped me go into sales conversations with more confidence and prep and I recommend everyone the same.
Here are the questions that have worked really well for me.
What isn't working about your current solution to this problem?
What is the biggest challenge you face in your business?
What would you change about your business (if anything)?
What takes the most time in your day that you would like to streamline?
The Hard Part
Now, once you have the answers, please, don't go in for a stock demo. Don't just outsource it to your sales engineer. Talk to your product teams, and listen when you do so.
If you don't understand what they're talking about, that tells you something about your (lack of) familiarity with your own product. Own it. Fix it. Then, work with the sales engineer to craft the demo of your product.
I know what you're thinking: who has the time, right?
Agreed.
This is where having the right tools comes in: ask around for tools that help you and your sales engineer cut back on the drudge work in creating demos. I can talk to you about SmartCue, which is my baby. I designed it to automate huge chunks of the demo creation process (happy sales engineer, happy demo!), and also to help you change topics smoothly when the customer asks you an unrelated question. Yup, I designed it to be non-linear (because I've been there). You don't need to go back and forth on a presentation or struggle with knowing what to say when you go off-script. It cues you in, smartly. It's in the name: SmartCue. Get it? Okay, back to the main story.
Work with your sales engineer to design a custom demo around the customer's specific pain points (which you know about since you asked them!). It's a great way to build customer confidence, and ultimately, win the deal. It is also a great way to tune your sales engineer to your particular demo style.
When you work closely with your engineer, they understand how you 'flow', and can design demos that feel less choppy. It also humanizes you, and maybe, just maybe, they begin to see you as more than just another pesky rep who wants yet another custom demo!
Find ways to make this task easier, faster, and simpler; find ways to leverage your library of demos, and find ways to endear yourself to your sales engineer. Because, practically speaking, it's the custom demo that gets the worm!
