Sales Pitch or Demo of the platform? or both?

In 2013, I was presenting a Software Solution to a well-known foundation and I was there in their office to convince them to buy our software. It was a sales pitch and the lady representing the foundation started asking so many questions in between. You can say that for every step she had questions. While answering the questions, I got a bit irritated and there was a change in my body language. I tried a lot to pretend as if I was enjoying the questions and answering them.

After the presentation, the CEO of the foundation called me aside and said "Sateesh, you have to be empathetic and listen to the customers during the sales pitch. You are here to solve our problem". He had read my mind and observed the subtle change in my body language. I came to know that the CEO of the foundation was a global sales leader and worked across several countries in the sales functions of a US bank. His suggestion was an eye-opener for me and I will never forget the suggestion made by the CEO. The second thing I learned is that people can read your mind and our actions send many cues to the person who is talking to us and people can understand our real emotions.

Why this story today?

A few days back, one company that is into assessments gave a presentation to me. In fact, I was exploring whether the solution offered by them really suits our requirements or not. The representative started the presentation with a sales pitch that had more than 25 slides, and after thirty minutes of a monotonous sales pitch, he started to show the platform and its features for another half an hour. It tried to intervene and tried to ask specific questions, but he wanted to go by the process of showing the slides and a complete walk-through of the platform.

Being sellers, we will be very eager to sell and start conveying everything we know about the platform during the demo.

Even I did that. I completely understand the sellers since I have also traversed that path of either showing tons of slides or explaining all the features of the platform without a break.

Why am I telling this?

We prepare some slides and always pitch the same thing to every customer and show the platform from end to end. Because that is the process followed by our bosses, and that is what we learned. Especially in Software Selling, we used to prepare 25 slides and start presenting the same. Then comes the platform and features.

You may ask me a question, "Hey Sateesh, what's wrong with it?'.

There is nothing wrong. But using the same slides, and using the same walkthrough of the platform, you can make the demo more effective.

Then the question is how to do it?

There is no silver bullet answer to this question. It depends on your product, customers, and context.

I never believed in playbooks.

One of the answers would be, set the tone according to the situation, context and the person attending the demo.

First of all, we have to understand the context and background of the person sitting on the other side. Always the decision-maker will not be sitting on the other side, and the person who is attending the demo has to internally sell the product value to the decision-maker. If the person has to sell the value internally, he/she should be convinced and should be enabled.

Yes. The word enabled is important.

That is why I said, the first step is to understand who is sitting on the other side of the table. (The other side in the zoom is a proper sentence).

If the person who is attending the demo is a decision-maker, it is always better to talk about the ROI and the possibilities of transformation of the organization. The pitch has to be more about how the solution can solve major problems related to his role.

In this case, showing the platform can be either glimpses or even slides will also work since the decision-maker is more interested in the larger objectives of the organization.

Let me give some examples.

1) We are selling an eLearning Software to University and VC (Vice-Chancellor) is in the demo. The tone of the sales pitch has to be more about placements, NAAC accreditations, and learning outcomes.

2) Let us assume that you are selling a software tool to manage sugar cane procurement from farmers to the CEO of a sugar factory. The pitch has to be more about efficiency and how sugar cane procurement software can help them to increase daily cane input and sugar production. If you used data from his factory during the demo, then that would be more effective. I am not saying that the CEO of the factory will not check the platform, but his KRA is a profit of the factory and will be more interested in the numbers than how the software functions.

2) Let us assume that we are presenting a demo of the same software (procurement of cane) to the Sales Officer of the same sugar factory. He is the person who manages the day-to-day sugar cane procurement and manages many field sales executives. He is interested in increasing sugar output, but he is more interested in how software can help him manage his team and increase his efficiency.

His questions will be more practical and he is more interested in various functionalities of the software. In this case, we have to show the demo in detail and explain how it will help him to achieve his KRAs. Ensure that he is convinced. Then he has to take it to the CEO and internally sell it. He is sure that he can manage his sales team with the software and he will convey the same thing to his CEO.

If you send him a document with details of ROI, and the numbers, he can convince the CEO more effectively.

Balancing both demo and platform walk-through.

Weaving the sales pitch and walk-through of the platform is really an art and when you start the demo, you start giving them context and talking about the value propositions. When you switch to the walk-through of the platform, you reinforce the important value propositions and stress the pain points mentioned in the demo.

This can create an "aha" moment during the presentation.

We have to understand one important thing here.

1) In the slides, you talk about benefits.

2) In the walk-through of the platform you can show the features to the customers.

Remeber, clients are interested in benefits.

Now, let us come to my first learning (with reference to the first paragraph). A very important aspect of the demo is 'Empathy'. As sellers, we present the platform to thousands of customers, it is very easy for us to understand the features and benefits. However, for the customer, it is the first time and he/she wants to ask many questions.

A conversational demo is always better as compared to a monotonous sales pitch.

We have to understand that the real hero of our presentation is our customer and not us.