Product Demonstration Best Practices

Product Demonstrations via a virtual room or face to face with customers is a finite resource in all opportunities, and is often the critical bottleneck. This article highlights a collection of some of the best practices that you can use.

To Start off, have the following checklist ready:

 I actually have a checklist ready before you start off the demonstration.

1. Prepare the questions to the pain points that the client is facing 
2. Have a plan to build rapport at the outset – emotional leadership – O.K./not O.K.

3. Integrate in a story to increase your personal appeal, to add some humor, and to demonstrate your competence.

4. Use a technical checklist

1. Use a white board and use PowerPoint sparingly : Less PowerPoint’ and more real-time use of the product leads to greater knowledge transfer - remember to keep it simple.

2. For a face to face interaction remember to stand up : Remember you give up control of the presentation and your audience if you give your demo sitting down.

3. Don't move too fast on the screen : Avoid screen flipping. Sometimes it’s better to answer verbally or by drawing on the white board."

4. Keep the spontaneity: Originality, spontaneity attracts attention. Before your next presentation, prepare a couple illustrative stories or analogies that might be useful. Just sit down and write about five interesting things that have happened to you.

5. Make every presentation and demo a two-way dialogue : Keep in mind that the goal of a customer meeting is NOT to dispense product knowledge. It is to ADVANCE THE SALE. Often times these goals get confused

6. Plan to stay high-level for executives : The worst impression you can make with executives is that you wasted their time, so don't go technical with them.

7. When under attack, fall back : If people attack during the presentation, the two most frequent responses are: a. You try to brush over it as quickly as possible. b. As they fire salvos at you, you try to defend and justify the solution you are presenting. Don’t fight alone. Get help. Let them fight. They have to get to consensus before they can decide on any course of action.

8. Get the audience talking early : Start every presentation with pre-planned questions to get the audience talking early. It relaxes you, and it makes them more comfortable and receptive. It also helps you locate the target and then hit it.

9. Start with the customer and work back to your solution : Presenters quickly launch a demonstration losing the audience about two slides into the mandatory corporate backgrounder that no one cares about but us. Instead, help your audience understand the context of the demonstration and how it relates to them. Remember to customize every presentation as much as possible. I strongly suggest not taking a laptop on the first call. If you get invited in to present, I also suggest you find out who is going to be there and try to speak to each of them one-on-one prior to the presentation, to make your presentation as useful for them as possible. When you do present, it should be tailored to address the pain, fear and gain you uncovered. Start with a recap and confirmation of the business problems you are addressing. Revisit and ‘reheat’ the pain. Get them emotionally involved. Then show how you will fix the problems.


If you want some perspective on how you or  your company needs to enhance their Sales/Client Management Capabilities, please email me at shubhanjan.saha@gmail.com 

Conceptualizing the value of a Product/Service

To make an effective sales presentation one needs to be able to quantify the benefits attached to a product  to be able to portray the benefits of the product in an organized manner. This often includes certain activities which involve in interacting with the Marketing & the Technical people in-order to accurately build an effective Sales Business Case.

There are certain steps involved to get this framework up & ready.

1. Pain Point Identification : These are succinct statements of the clients issues that the product or the service solves.

2. Value Proposition : These are the aims that the product/service claims to achieve. They can be further broken down into three key elements such as :

a. The IT process or business function which is being addressed

b. The business objective i.e. Is the aim to minimize cost, mitigate risk, improve revenue, improve time to value

c. How the objective is quantified

3. Benefit Quantification Process : This usually describes how the benefit will be quantified. This is typically done in one of two ways:

1. Describing a process and set of activities which are made more efficient by the deployment of the solution

2.Defining a set of key metrics which will be improved by the solution. i.e. % reduction in training time, % improvement in customer retention, % reduction in SLA penalties.

4. Benefit Summary Efficiency Percentage : This particular concept would allow you to give the client a ballpark figure on the amount that you would be saving for the client eg -  i.e. 50% less time (labor saving) is required to do reporting with the product/service

If you want some perspective on how you or  your company needs to enhance their Sales/Client Management Capabilities, please email me at shubhanjan.saha@gmail.com

Collateral Creation

A Collateral / White paper is a distinct type of guide and report piece that is basically used for educational purposes. In the field of marketing and business, collateral often refer to as alternative documents for compilation of marketing tools and other business-related essentials. 

A basic collateral is organized in the following manner :

Basic Introduction - Provides you with an insight of the paper without stating the whole conclusion. Try not to make it longer than a paragraph, as sometimes clients read the introductory part and the conclusion, so its always advisable to keep material that gives them a reason to keep on reading.

Pain Points - Provide readers with general information that helps them understand facts about certain issues and to identify themselves with the problem described.

Solution : Propose your solution to the pain points in question, advise how the software works in general. Given enough information, readers can make their own decisions about the usefulness of the proposed solution.

Advertise : Advise the readers about your product or services after convincing them of the truths of your argument. Explaining your solution is the best available in the market while providing supporting evidence.

Conclusion : write a one paragraph summary of why your solution is the best. Emphasize the advantage of using this product as well as the disadvantage of not using it. Try not to forget to mention the works cited and the hyperlink sources you used. Give the reader details about how you can be contacted. Visit your site? Contact your company?

There are certain tips that you could use while writing a white paper.

1. Knowing your Audience : Your target readers must be able to have the perspective that can compromise well with your business’ standpoint effectively. Draw the line between the subjective and objective aspect from your white paper’s content. In order to gain immeasurable attention from your audience, make use of catchy yet ingenuous terminologies in your paper’s first paragraph.

2. Statements pertaining to the pain points that your product or service intends to address : The description however, must be clearly explained in detail. Give emphasis on the coverage of the sales functions of the product.

3. No complex terms : Avoid using jargons or other words that are not standardized by the English language –especially if your target readers are business professionals.

4. Use realistic examples if possible : Write a short description that exemplifies the other existing companies who have previously benefited from your product or service.

5. Make it Illustrative : Use charts or graphs if you’re going to provide statistical reports containing your products’ sales progress, try to make use of graphs in terms of presenting figures, initially acquired from paragraphs of previous reports.

6. Balance your focus on self-interest and the readers’ interest : Your self-interest must be within your priorities in presenting your product and not of your “more personal” agenda.

If you want some perspective on how you or  your company needs to enhance their Sales/Client Management Capabilities, please email me at shubhanjan.saha@gmail.com

Basic Business Case Components

1. Project Overview : The Overview page usually highlights the people in the customer's company who have provided the inputs & the tools used (if any).

2. Executive Summary : The executive summary is a top level view & basically highlights the key points in the business case. These include the cumulative benefit quantified to the section head (COO, CTO, CFO) & also important benefits while mentioning the return on investment.

3. Business Opportunity : The business opportunity describes the motivation for the project that the business case will propose. The business opportunity includes a definition, a statement of scope, and a discussion of objectives that the project will help the organization achieve.

4. Proposed Solution : This would give the client a basic overview of the proposed solution that we are offering.

5. Benefit & Cost Summary :  This section usually covers the benefits to costs and analyzes the value of a project as an investment . The analysis may include a cash flow statement, return on investment, net present value, internal rate of return, and payback period, remember that all business cases involve at least two alternatives: doing or not doing a project.

6. Investment Summary : Gives out a detailed overview of the investment required by laying out in a simple tabled format which can be broken down further in CapEx (Capital Expenditure) & OpEx (Operational Expenditure) 

7. ROI Analysis : This section lists out the cumulative benefits withe ROI details.

8. Sensitivity analysis :  This evaluates the probability that a project can be implemented successfully and the risks involved in undertaking the project. Risks also may result from not undertaking the project.

9. Implementation plan : This shows the basic plan & could also include the constraints for schedule, resource, budget, staffing, technical, and other limitations that may impact the success of a project.

If you want some perspective on how you or  your company needs to enhance their Sales/Client Management Capabilities, please email me at shubhanjan.saha@gmail.com