Transcript
Intro:
Hi, everyone. I'm Ben Wright, successful entrepreneur, corporate leader and expert sales coach to some of the most talented people our amazing planet has to offer. You're listening to the Stronger Sales Teams podcast, where we bring together and simplify the complex world of B2B sales management to help the millions of sales managers worldwide build, motivate, and keep together highly effective sales teams…teams who grow revenue and make their businesses actual profits.
Along the journey, we also provide great insights and actionable steps to managing your personal health. A happy and productive you is not only better for your teams, but everyone around you. So, if you're an ambitious Sales Leader who wants to build the highest performing and engaged teams, Stronger Sales Teams is right where you need to be.
Ben Wright:
Welcome back to Stronger Sales Teams, the place where we provide real world and practical advice to help you develop super powered sales teams. Wow. This year has moved so quickly and not just from a personal point of view for me, but from a business point of view. There has just been so much happening that I’m amazed to now turn around and realise we are about to hit August. And by the time this has aired, I suspect we will be into August. And gee, for me it’s a great time when years move quickly because often that means there’s a lot of cool stuff happening, but also invariably what can result from that rapid speed in particularly in business is that a lot of the things that you’d like to get done as a team, as a business, as an individual haven’t happened. And that’s because you’ve had so much on that all the intent in the world that you created earlier in the year has just not resulted in action.
So, as I’m going through topics in the podcast, we’ve spoken plenty about strategic planning and growth. I also like to make sure we’re balancing that type of focus and theory, if you like, around some of the shorter-term things that we can do to really make a positive impact on our sales team, on our business, and of course, on our customers around us.
So today we’re going to focus on just one of those things and it’s a very tactical and specific approach to how we would do a product or a service demonstration. Most businesses that I deal with, and I’m going to be bold and say just about every business that I’ve ever dealt with and this should apply to just about every business out there will have a product or service that is demo-able. And what I mean by that has some form of working product or model or sandbox where we can show to our customers exactly what our product can do for them. Now, I say to those listening, if you immediately say, no, we’ll not ask, we don’t have that, then my first challenge to you is going to be we’ll find something. Find something that you can share with customers that will allow them to see exactly how your product or service works for everyone else. I think the reason that many will identify that demonstrations are really important is because it builds engagement into whatever our product or service is. There’s absolutely no shortage of data there that shows why cars, when you’re buying cars, why there’s a real focus on driving the car when you are buying anything that has a level of personal usage, like clothes, that you have the opportunity to try the clothes on. This is all about building a form of connection with, at the very least, the product or service, but of course, sometimes the business as well. And we know that the quicker that we can build that connection and the deeper we can make that connection, the more likely a sale is going to happen. In fact, I’m seeing with cars now, and this has been around for a little while too, is that people are actually allowing, or dealerships are actually allowing you to take the cars home for a whole weekend, right? So, you’re driving that car, you’re getting used to it across the weekend, your family’s in and out of it, whatever you use your cars for on the weekend. So, the thought of handing that back on Monday just then, all of a sudden feels foreign, right? The car’s slotted very nicely into your way of life.
So, without doubt the same goes in business. The more we can get our customers exposed to the great sides of our business, that is, to get them to indoctrinate the usage of our product or service into their daily business lives, then the greater our chances are of success. And for me, if you’re a SaaS product, right, having a live demonstration, one where people can, on demand, go and have a demonstration, really, really powerful. I know we’re doing that with Icana at the moment. We’re working on launching a simulator where you’re actually going to be able to try the product right then, right there at any point in time that you’d like. If you’re selling a product, right, it’s not always possible. If you’re in the business of selling machinery or equipment or product that needs to be installed on site, it’s not always possible to have an extended demonstration. But certainly, being able to provide a short form demonstration can be really, really impactful. In the lighting business, we used to take the lights with us. In the solar industry, we’d take a solar panel or a part of that solar panel. In fact, in almost anything FMCG, everywhere I’ve worked, we’ve been able to do this.
So, today’s topic is going to be how to deliver an effective demo. Lots and lots of content on this globally and lots and lots of ideas and thoughts. So, what I’m going to do today is present an angle of about six or seven different things that you can consider using when you’re doing your own demonstrations that can help you get greater impact from them. Because whilst I’ll talk about the impact of a positive demonstration, the impact of getting a demonstration wrong can be equally as destructive to the relationship or the potential of a sale. And I want you to think about that for a moment is when we get a demonstration, right, and it’s engaging, it shows our products working, it allows the customer to touch and feel, right? This can be really, really impactful around their positive feelings towards that product or service. But on the flip side, when we run a demonstration or when we take customers out to a reference site, right, for me, that’s pretty close to a demonstration and the experience isn’t enjoyable. We’re going to have the corresponding negative impact to our chances of a sale. So, you take someone out to see the customer using a piece of equipment that’s similar, right? You go to their site, the site’s messy, their staff don’t know how to use it properly, they’re swearing or they’re talking negatively about the equipment, right? That’s not going to work well for you. You do a demonstration of a product and you don’t know how to use it, right? Whoever’s demonstrating it doesn’t know how to use it, so they can’t show the customer, that’s going to impact negatively. The demonstration’s dry, boring or doesn’t engage the customer, that’s going to impact negatively. So, whilst I know I’m super pro on the power of doing demonstrations, I’m equally as focused on making sure that if we’re going to do it, it’s got to be done well. We have to make the customer feel welcome. We do it at a time that works for them. We pick locations that are convenient. If we can’t get to them or they can’t get to us, we do forms of video demonstrations, right? If we can do a demonstration of a service online or the customer gets to play with that service or that product themselves, again, really empowering.
So, for me today’s all about how do we deliver an effective demo, because if we don’t do it well, we’re better to not do it. So, let’s swing into this. I’m going to go through. I said six or seven. I’m going to go through six key areas where I see demonstrations done really, really well. And I will say, before I get into this, I have an enormous amount of experience with this across dozens and dozens and dozens, if not towards hundreds of businesses over the last 10 years in seeing demonstrations done well. So, we’ll draw on that experience and share with you what I’ve seen be really, really impactful.
Okay. So typically, when we start a demonstration, the temptation is to go straight into the features and benefits of a product. Here is your light, here is your solar panel, as I referenced before. Here’s your piece of machinery, here’s the accounting software they’re going to roll out for you, whatever it may be, right? Bang, bang, bang. Features and benefits.
Where I’ve seen it be even more impactful with a demonstration is that we start with the key problem we’re solving or the opportunity that we’re going to capitalise on. This piece of accounting software is going to reduce your manual input by 20%, saving x hours a week. Or this forklift is going to allow your team to pick at X percent faster, 10% faster than your previous machinery. This car is going to give you. This electric car is going to give you another hundred kilometres per charge, allowing you to get to the snow, if that’s your thing. Whatever the product is, when we talk about the problem it’s going to solve or the opportunity it will capitalise on first, then straight away we have our customer thinking about how it can apply to their business. And yes, it’s a very small pivot versus saying this battery allows you to get 100 km further right, than your existing car versus it will get you 100 kilometres further. And here’s what it means to you, right? They’re very small pivots. But when we can focus really heavily on the key outcome for the customer, we’ve got their attention straight away. And look, this is probably the biggest point of the six, when we talk about an effective demonstration is to start with the outcome. Is it going to reduce onboarding? Is it going to increase sales metrics by X percent? Are you going to spend less time thinking about compliance? Is it going to save you money? Is it going to give you more money to spend on other pieces of equipment? These are all outcomes for the customer rather than features or benefits of the product.
So, I would really, really encourage you to think about how do we get attention early? Lead with your best lines, lead with your best features and benefits, so that once we’ve got them across to the customer, the rest of the demonstration is spent confirming that we’re the right choice, rather than deciding if it’s us or someone else or not doing anything at all. So, I can’t be more bullish about this. Lead with the outcomes for the customers and our demonstration will be off to a great start.
The second piece is to personalise, really personalise that demonstration. So, if we’re taking a customer to a site and we’re showing them how someone else has installed some building equipment, how someone else has rolled out some HR software for their team, right? Whatever the product may be, make sure that as we’re talking through that we are leaning or we’re pivoting to the side to say, hey, this is how Bravo Business has used our great HR onboarding tools to reduce the time that it takes to get their team on board. However, we know with you that because you have a slightly larger team, we’re going to need to have a slightly broader dashboard, right. And a few more options across the different divisions that you have within your business right now. That’s an example. But what we really want to be focusing on here is how we personalise a demonstration to be all about the customer that we’re looking to work with, how a new kitchen installation for a restaurant, how a new process that you’re going to roll out if you’re a consultant for a team, how it’s very specifically going to apply to that business then and there and where they’re at. So, in this instance, not only have we shown the outcome straight away, but. But we’ve also started to roll into the very personal approaches of our product or service for the customers we’re talking to.
Okay? So, we’ve worked through outcomes, we’ve personalised that demonstration. The next piece for me is to let the product or service do the talking. So, what I really like here is that we’ve gone through the specificities around outcomes and personalisation, but then we just start to let the product work. So, if it’s a car, and cars are great examples with demonstrations, right, we get the customer driving the car and using it, showing them different features, right? Allowing them to use it and try and practice it themselves. If it’s a piece of software that we’re demonstrating, right, we’re giving the customer the keyboard or the mouse or whatever the type of equipment we have to control that system is and letting them have a go. If we’re selling heavy duty equipment, printers, anything where it’s hard for a customer to use it themselves, right. We allow the machine to operate and show them the quality of printing, the CRI index of what’s being printed out on the paper, the speed at which the piece of equipment can produce whatever it needs to produce. The effectiveness of our team, if we’re a legal practice, the effectiveness of our team in terms of how we solved other problems. Legal practices, absolutely. You can do demonstrations as well, right. Talk through case studies, get other customers on the phone and talk through how you’ve helped them with certain problems. But where we let our service or our product do the talking, that can be really impactful because customers get to see it and use it themselves.
So, you can see here that all of these first three points are very much customer focused. The outcomes for them, how we personalise it to their needs, how we let the product do the talking, but particularly with an element of control for that customer themselves. And you’ll see so far, haven’t spoken about talking about features and benefits. I haven’t spoken about taking a product or a service and just talking through from A to Z all the cool things that it does. This is all about tailoring it specifically to the customer. Okay? So, we’re halfway through outcomes, personalisation. And the third piece here being letting the product do the work. So, letting it talk for itself.
The fourth piece for me is where we start to use numbers to back up the claims we’re making. Numbers generally are really impactful because certainly in my experience in the teams I’ve worked with, they have a greater level of defendability than arbitrary claims. Right. For example, upgrading all of your office chairs is going to give everyone a more comfortable experience at work. Two, upgrading your office chairs has shown to have a 10% reduction in lower back pain. Right? Now, if you can claim it with your chairs, right? All of your data here, it needs to be real and realistic. But whatever you have, if you can claim it through numbers, through statistics, through proven outcomes, that is by far the most impactful in a compelling demonstration. So, we want to be talking here about things like return on investment. We want to be talking about savings that it’s going to make for a business. We want to be talking about increasing productivity, right? Efficiency gains, really specific numbers. And I used a forklift earlier today, right? If you’re selling a forklift, how much quicker it’s going to be to pick versus a different type of machinery. We want to be talking about warranties around servicing, about expected lifetimes, about uptime, about performance degradation, anything that has a number or statistic behind it that can provide some evidence to the claims that we make. Successful claims, success rates of cases, accuracy of data, all of these things are really impactful when we can drill into facts, right? So, I really implore everyone to think about when you’re doing those demonstrations, run numbers through that demonstration. And you can really, you can run numbers as a theme or all the way through these six pieces that I’m talking about. You can run them through outcomes, you can run them through personalisation, you can run them through letting the product or service do the talking, right? And of course, you can have a point in time where you actually just talk numbers where you just get a little bit heavier in terms of the data and validation of a project. And before I move on, I don’t forget, anytime we have external claims that support our data, testing, independent evidence, customer outcomes, testimonials, case studies, stories that can validate that they’re not just numbers that we’re throwing out, but numbers that others have experienced too well, that’s when this gets really powerful.
Okay, so that’s point four done. Fifth point here in the six steps that I see to a great demo is where we try and really proactively work through objections. So of course, over a 20-year period, I’ve seen the best demonstrations. Ask for questions often throughout that demonstration because they really show a level of engagement. But where we can be thinking about objections before that demonstration starts, that is price, that is time it will take to deliver, that is one type of benefit or one type of product or another, right? We’re building a garden and we want to talk about different types of soil or retaining walls or it’s a pool. And are we doing vinyl drop in or are we doing concrete? We’re talking about heating systems and are we covering our conduit or are we leaving it open? We’re talking about windows, single glazed or double glazed, cost versus benefit, right? We’re talking about from a service point of view as an accountant or a lawyer, we’re talking about hourly rates of ourselves versus others. We’re talking about paying qualified versus unqualified staff. We’re talking about having services delivered in person versus remotely. Anywhere that we can think about getting ahead of objections and answering them through our demonstration, we’re going to do something really impactful and that’s stop our customers mind wandering towards their very specific questions, right? The things that pop up in your mind when others are talking and not everyone will write them down. A lot of people say, all right, I’ve got three points I need to remember. Black, red, blue, right? And then by the time when you get to your three points, you’ve spent so much time remembering the black, the red, and the blue that you actually haven’t paid attention to what others around you are saying, right? You’ve zoned out. The more that we can answer the questions around the black, the red, and the blue as we’re going through our demonstration, right, the more we’re going to keep our customers or our prospects on track. Because we want people in the moment, right? And of course, we can often keep people really engaged by getting them to do something. We call it giving the customer a job in the form of a demonstration. We can also get people really focused around staying in touch with that demonstration by getting them to do something. Right? Now, even if we’re doing a virtual demonstration, right, even if we’re demonstrating our product, someone’s got a video, we’ve got some headphones in, we’re talking through it, we can still be giving our customer a job. Okay? What I’d really like you to do is very specifically watch how I do this formation with our car or how I do this formation with a piece of machinery, and just have a think and let me know in a moment how this can apply to you. So, you’re asking the customer to specifically focus on something that you’re running through a product, a feature, a benefit, an outcome, whatever it may be, so where we can get ahead of the curve and start focusing on objections that we know are likely to come up during our demonstration, right? Then we’re keeping our customers focused. Small thing, but unbelievably impactful when we get it right. Because if we can hold someone’s attention for longer, we’re building their sense of comfort. We’re building that emotion of this is how we can use the product.
So, number one was all about in a demonstration, starting with the outcomes for the customer. Number two was all about personalising it. Number three was letting your product do the talking, your product or service do the talking. Number four was using numbers, right, as facts to support these claims you’re making. And number five was trying to get ahead of objections. Super, super important because often when you get objections handled at the end, if you don’t handle them well, and let’s face it, right, we’re all human we don’t always do everything perfectly, but when objections come up the end if we don’t handle them well, it can really put a downer on that demonstration.
Okay, last but not least, we talk about the first point, the first bookend around outcomes for customers being important. And look, I would say we should always repeat these outcomes throughout the demo. But the last bookend for me is about painting life with your product or service, right? Talking through customers and even asking questions about what their business life or their personal life is going to look like. Once the pool’s installed, once they’ve moved across to your legal firm, once they’re using your medical devices, your mental health services, once they’ve installed your equipment, be it a car, be it a printer, be it a pallet jack, be it racking, right, Office equipment, right? Once they’ve used your product, your landscape services, your roofing services, right? When they’ve employed you as an electrician, how few problems they’re going to have with lighting that’s failed or air conditioning that’s not working, right, what roofs that are no longer leaking or that last longer mean, what a safer work site with all the bollards and equipment that you’ve put up are going to do to them. What we really want to visualise for a customer, what life looks like for them once they use our product or service. And for me, the most effective way I’ve seen teams do this is to ask questions around what it would mean once that product or service is completed. Once we install this battery system, there’s a boom in Australia around battery storage right now. But once we install that battery system, what does that mean for your energy usage? Are you going to be able to run the heater more in winter or the air conditioner more in summer? Does that make your home more comfortable? Once you’re using our outsourced services to go and find the key electricians and plumbers and builders and roofers that you need, how much time is that going to save for your business? What will you be able to focus on instead. When we’ve rolled out our new piece of machinery, whatever that machinery is to your business, what does that free up capital for your business to do? What does the improved efficiency, the improved speed of picking orders, the safer environment, what does that mean for your business? How do we look in 12 months’ time when we’ve got this in right now? I’m giving lots of examples here because it’s so impactful. In my example, when we can talk about delivering great sales consultancy services, what does it mean to you as a leader when in 6 to 12 months’ time you have more confidence that your team will deliver without you needing to be across every deal? Right now, I know the answer here. For many sales leaders, it’s relief. For other sales leaders, it’s the ability to focus on more strategic items or simply have family or work life balance. And even in extreme cases, it’s to have some confidence that they’ve still got their job and the business is growing. For business leaders, when your product or service is really critical for them, how can we talk about how it’s going to change their business life? The difference between succeeding and failing is often marginal. Right. Anything we can be doing to be helping our customers visualise life once they’ve rolled out our product or service is super, super impactful.
Okay, so there are six parts of our demonstration. Number one, make it all about the outcome, the problem we’re solving or the opportunity we’re capitalising on. Number two, personalise our demonstration to be about our customer. Number three is let the product or service do the talking. Number four is support with facts, evidence, case studies, stories, customer testimonials. Number five is try and handle objections before they come up. And number six is have the customer visualise how that product or service looks once it’s in their business. Right. Because from there, asking for the business becomes easier and easier and easier.
Okay, so nice compact piece. Six things around product demonstrations, around how you can really nail them. There will be something in there for anyone that has listened. I’ve worked with huge numbers of sales teams over a very long period of time and generally know when a topic’s going to have some benefit for anyone that’s listening. Having gone through everything in that demonstration, my challenge is to find at least one thing that you can do better. Because small improvements each and every day we know have magnificent impacts on our performance over the long term.
Okay, so there we go. Demonstrations sorted. If you want any more information you need to catch up about them, please give me a buzz before we leave today. Love talking about personal health and mindset. I haven’t done it in a little while because we’ve had so many guests, but something for me that particularly at the moment when it’s a little bit colder, Right? Yes. I live in a very warm part of Australia, but still cold. It was seven degrees this morning. Sometimes getting up and out of bed and motivating yourself to stay fit and healthy, to go for the walk, to spend time with your family, you’d all rather stay under the blankets for a little bit longer. But sometimes doing that can be really difficult. So, for me, some ways I’ve seen really successful people get on top of this is look, yes, they keep really strong routines, they get out of bed at the similar times every day. But for me, Monday morning is the key here and it’s about setting yourself up with something that you have to do Monday morning that’s in line with those health and fitness goals and making it happen. For me, it’s 5:15am in the pool every Monday morning. That is the piece I focus on. I hate it, I hate getting out of there that first thing in the morning. But gee, once I’m out of the pool, I’ve done my 4 or 5Ks, I’ve done, I’m at my desk, I’m firing for that day and I’d encourage you to have a think about where you can roll that into your working weeks.
Okay, so that’s it from us this week. Please enjoy the rest of the week. Keep living in a world of possibility and you’ll be amazed by what you can achieve. Bye for now.
6 Steps to Demonstrations Proven to Grow Sales Fast
