The Fear of missing Features during your Software Demo & losing the Deal

The single biggest mistake in software demos is the urge to show every single feature. And leave your client behind with a diluted message and nothing but confusion.

The explanation for this behaviour is fairly simple: it is the fear of missing a feature that might be of relevance to your customer – or has eventually been demonstrated by your competitors.

This is what I call ?Feature FOMO“. It is the uncomfortable feeling of knowingly missing out on some features that could eventually become the decisive factor.

In this article, we are going to extract the downsides of this approach and provide you with a simple tool to overcome your anxiety. No worries - this uncomfortable feeling is totally legit and has caused me a headache for quite some time.

But as a result, many presales consultants and solution engineers tend to overload their software demos with tons of features and little gimmicks. Do not get me wrong. I bet most of these features do have their right to exist and are super important for the big picture ??

But in 98.3% of all software demos, they are not!

Getting lost in tiny little details will have a huge negative impact on your sales cycle and probability of closing the deal. It is the worst you can do for several reasons:

• Message dilution: you want to enable your audience to understand how you can solve their business issue and pain points. Usually, these are three topics max. Therefore, you got to focus on two or three core features that will help your clients figure out how to overcome their challenges. This is your value proposition and positioning. Two or three topics max and nothing else. But once you start diving into tiny little details and drift off into less relevant features, your value proposition is going to dilute. You want your audience to take away why you are their best fit to solve their business issue. What you do not want is to shift their focus from the bigger picture to the bells and whistles which are only loosely connected to the core message.
• Getting off track: Once you have opened Pandora′s box, it is often too late to get back on track. Giving too much detail provides your audience with a big target on your head. Instead of discussing their business issue and how to solve it, you are going to be caught in an endless back and forth arguing about tiny little features which add nothing to the bigger picture. We want to discuss value on a strategic level – so be careful with what you show and try to avoid more operational features. It is up to you whether you like to hold that target over your head or remain focused to accelerate your sales cycle with more purposeful discussions.
• Attention span & receptiveness: our attention span is at an all time low. Some say it is less than two minutes due to the likes of Netflix, Youtube and Instagram. On-demand content and media has changed the way we consume and process information. Dumping an endless set of features onto our clients is quickly going to overwhelm their brain with too much input. As a result, they automatically tune out of your demo and start doing something different. You got to be specific and you got to be on point. Or you will lose your audience within the blink of an eye. And guess what – firing the feature shotgun is not what is going to make you message stick with them.

So, lots of problems here, you might think. But how can I finally overcome my fear of missing out on all those ingenious features?

The solution is surprisingly simple! What has helped me to overcome my Feature FOMO was a single slide depicting all the features our solution provides. I used to show that slide either at the beginning (mostly) or at the end of my demo.

That slide looked as follows: a plain and easy cluster of features

Based on the pre-qualification and information we had gathered prior to the demo, all I had to do was highlight the core features I was going to show during my demo.

Those few features that were critical to solve my client′s pain.

The soundtrack was like that:

“Here you can see a slide summarizing all the features our software solution provides. For the sake of today′s demo and to better focus on your core topics, we are only going to take a look at the features coloured in green. Please be ensured that our software goes far beyond what you are going to see today and if there is anything missing, I′m more than happy to revisit additional features with you at any time!”

Done.

This approach made me much more confident my client understands the full potential of our solution. And simultaneously, manages their expectations of what they are (not!) going to see.

Using this approach and slide has been a critical success factor for me. It has significantly sharpened my messaging and retention and made me feel much more comfortable when demoing our software.

In return, I was able to talk business rather than arguing about nullities, which increased my demo closing rate to more than 80%.

Feature FOMO is one of the biggest challenges in software demos. Just use a simple slide to overcome your fear of missing an eventually important feature and become much more confident in your demos.

If you have any other idea how to overcome “Feature FOMO”, please feel free to respond to this post and share your experience ??