24 moves to master your DISCO dance

I invite you to join us as we perform Discovery and Demo dance together successfully!

DISCO = Discovery and Demo

The basics

Engagement with customers is successful when you understand their needs, help them become successful with your solution within their organization, and help them achieve more. In order to accomplish this, you need to get to know them, their problems, issues, plans and who should be involved, and discovery is a key component of doing so.

The reality

We are all very busy, back to back meetings, tasks and projects we are working on, and when we join calls with prospects, there may not be enough discovery information before the call, but you know that discovery is important and critical. However, how will you perform discovery successfully, and provide your customer with the right messaging and information in the shortest amount of time, resonating with them and giving them what they need?

The following article provides 24 tips on giving a demo, answering questions from your customers, and delivering results that everyone appreciates while performing (dance) discovery.

Discovery without being discovered

Discovery, can and should be done before talking to prospects

1. Check their LinkedIn profile and history activities
2. Use tools like Zoominfo and other?
3. Google their company name and or the people you’re going to meet?
4. Google dorking?
5. Watch webinars or videos about your prospect

Expectations is everything

• Knowing what the prospect expect will help you deliver better message.

Fitting yourself to them, versus fitting them to you

• Deliver message that resonate customers.

Setting up agenda?

• You should begin the call by describing your agenda and your expectations. Make sure you ask the customer if what you said made sense and if anything else was expected from the meeting.

Be open and honest with your purpose before asking any discovery questions

• For example, you can say that to make sure their time is invested appropriately, you would like to start with 2-3 basic questions so that the next 20-30 minutes meet their needs.

Your product

• The first few minutes of a conversation are crucial for customers to learn about your product. Introduce it to them as soon as possible. You're competing for their attention, whether it's through phone notifications or emails. Once you've described your solution briefly, you can discuss the pain, industry, features, etc.

Educate?

• If this is your audience's first time hearing about your industry or solution, educate them. In the case that they already use similar tools or are experts in the industry, trying to teach them won't work since they will lose interest.

Don’t ask direct questions. Who likes to be interrogated?

Give first and then get?

• For example, what you see in the industry, how their competitors operate, recent trends.?

Be open and honest

Ask questions along the way while presenting - DISMOS

• As an example, if you described some processes, ask them if they use the same process; if not, they will be willing to share why. This can help you understand their pain and also help with success criteria.

Don’t use all of your scripted questions.

You should end a meeting with some pain points that the customers have so you can develop success criteria from them. Give examples from other customers as well and ask if that is what they are thinking about.

Ask open/ended questions and not just yes/no.

Speak less and listen more. Let your prospect speak, listen to their answers and be curious.

Don't ask why questions, ask how and what questions instead.

Ask them who might feel left out if they don't receive the summary of the meeting. By doing this, you'll find out who else should be involved.

Ask them what the most desirable outcome or how a successful engagement looks.

Nothing will surprise you! Be prepared for different scenarios, use cases and know how to navigate them, for example

• In case a client wants to learn only about the industry, you can provide that information
• If a customer wants to see a demo right away, you have it
• The decision maker may only have 15 minutes, but the rest of the team may stay longer, you know what to do
• If your demo stops working, you have a backup like a gif image or multiple pictures

Always keep your camera on!

Targeted, focused questions do.? Use your time wisely.

As a summary

• Whether you like them or not, discovery is mandatory, but do it wisely and you will learn much more than you expected.
• The prospect doesn't have time - do a quick discovery, then demo, make sure they get what they need and want.
• Dance the DISMOS - discovery while giving demo.

What is your tips for successful demo?

Till next time,

Menachem.

Cover pic credit