I got a question from an AE recently:
“It feels like buyers used to be totally fine going through a drawn-out process – discovery, demo, second demo, alignment call, business case, closing call, etc. Now it feels like they’d rather live with the pain of the problem than go through that again.
Have you noticed this shift? And what does the ideal buying process look like now?”
Short answer: yes – it’s shifted. And if your process isn’t adapting, you are more likely to piss off potential buyers than close deals.
This shows up in a few ways:
1) Just give me pricing (we covered this last week – you can read it here)
2) Just show me a demo (covering this week)
3) Just give me a trial account (covering next week)
Here are some risks a buyer faces when they buy a product:
- Will it work as expected?
- If it works, will it drive expected ROI?
- Will it add way more value than a cheaper solution?
And sitting through discovery calls with sellers doesn’t address any of those risks. So it’s no wonder that buyers will push early:
“Can I see a demo?”
It’s not just because they don’t trust you (although that’s part of it). It’s because the early part of the sales process usually only serves the seller. Answering your discovery questions isn’t addressing anything they care about.
So now we have a dilemma: We can’t do a custom demo without understanding the buyer’s world.
But if we hold firm on “No, you don’t get anything you want until you give me everything I need” your buyer is jumping off your Zoom and asking your competitor for a demo instead.
So here’s my (potentially controversial) advice for most* sellers:
When someone says, “I really need to see a demo” just SHOW THEM A DEMO.
Lovers of legacy sales process and sales consultants will lose their mind at this advice:
“When I was selling Oracle we wouldn’t do a demo until we’d had AT LEAST 15 calls and sign-off on the business case from the CFO!”
Ok.
Times have changed – buyers can get TONS of information about providers and products without talking to a salesperson. So if your go-to approach when they finally talk to you is to intentionally withhold information, you may not like the results.
But I’m not telling you to just roll over and do whatever your prospect asks (we aren’t order takers): You can give the prospect what they are looking for and still get what you need.
Start by saying something like:
“Sure, happy to. There’s a lot that I don’t know about your business/goals yet that would help us make the demo more specific, but seeing the product will give you some helpful context and you can help me fill in the gaps.”
Then, pull up your favorite demo environment, and go to your favorite “aha” moment.
Then, ask: “I’m about to show you how we handle [use case] – can you give me a quick idea of how you handle it today?” [discovery question to uncover current state]
Looks – magic. You gave your buyer exactly what they want. They see product on your screen. It’s a demo. They are happy.
And, before you even show anything, you are right back into discovery! As a bonus, you are doing discovery with a happy prospect because they got what they want (humans are simple creatures).
This flow comfortably continues: After they answer how they handle the key use case, you show them how you handle it.
Then you ask, “How would this approach change your workflow?” or “Would what I just showed you be an improvement?” [discovery question to validate desired after state].
We can keep going with discovery with a question like: “How would you measure the success of improving this workflow?” [discovery question to uncover positive business outcomes].
Repeat this for the strongest 2-3 differentiators in your product, and you’ve probably run a pretty successful call:
Your prospect got what they wanted from the call, which already differentiates you from most sellers they talk to that act like a demo is something prospects need to earn.
You understand current state + desired after state + positive business outcomes for 2-3 key use cases.
And you’ve earned the right to ask for more time for deeper discovery. End the call with something like:
“Seems like we may be able to improve a few areas for your team. Before we could build out a custom demonstration to completely validate the impact, there are a few areas I need to better understand. Can we schedule 45 minutes to go deeper into [areas that require further discovery]?”
Who do you think is more likely to schedule a second call? The prospect that asked for a demo that you proceeded to grill for 30 minutes so they could “earn” a demo?
Or the prospect that got a demo, and still answered most of your discovery questions?
Maybe your product is so complex this just isn’t possible. If so, disregard this email. But I’ve seen this work with very complex products – you just need to know your product + personas well enough to be audible ready to “tease” a few features while running more discovery. Then, you’ll earn the right to do deeper discovery and loop in your SE team for the “real” demo.
Next we’ll cover how to handle another common request that comes early in the sales process: “Can I just have a trial account?”
Kyle
