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B2B Sales

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Need to improve your trade show demos? Here are four tips that will improve your demos and trade show success rate.

Stop doing “Drop off” Demos

Drop off demos are where the sales person walks up to the demo guide and says: “Joe from Amalgamated wants to see a demo”, then wanders away leaving the sales engineer alone with the prospect.

Sales should be asking qualifying questions before they initiate a demo.

By asking simple types of questions like:

  • What do you hope to accomplish with this product?
  • Do you have something you use for this today?
  • What types of functionality are important to you? Why?

Armed with the answers to questions like these, sales can make a smooth and productive introduction to the sales engineer. Using the information from the intro, the sales engineer can focus on specifics and not waste time trying to cover everything.

Do a quick sanity check

Review the items they want to see, make sure you are in sync with the prospect. This is also a good time to provide a brief menu of other things they may want to see.

Qualify more deeply during the demo

The introduction from sales was a great help in understanding what the prospect wanted to see, now it’s your job to find out more. As you do the demo, ask probing questions like:

  • How would this work in your environment
  • How do you do this today
  • What would be the value in terms of time, money saved…?

As you drill down, you can uncover more needs and more fully understand the prospect’s situation.

Maximize the conversation

As you do the demo it may become clear that the prospect is not a good fit. Maybe sales didn’t get a chance to fully qualify them. That’s OK, you can still get useful information and maybe make a contact in the process. Here are a couple of things to try:

  • Ask if they know of someone who would be a fit in their company, also ask if it’s OK to use their name–this works remarkable well at trade shows.
  • If they don’t use your type of product or handle things another way, ask about it. This is great information for the marketing department.
  • Try to help. If you know of a company or product that can help, suggest it. Pass the name along to the other company’s sales staff; giving leads is the best way to get leads.

If you would like to learn more about how we can help improve your trade show demos, please visit our demo training workshop page.

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Web Demos–Winning Sales in Your Pajamas or Flying Blind?

February 16, 2010
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Remote web demos are great.
You don’t need to travel or tote around heavy equipment. You can work from your office with all the resources and support you need at your fingertips. Some lucky people can even do them from the comfort of their own home.
With all this Internet demo goodness, what are some of the [...]

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Face to Face Demonstrations–Tips for Success

February 15, 2010
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For big ticket complex product sales, the face-to-face demo is the big hammer in your sales toolkit.

On-site live product demos act as a rallying point for decision makers; in fact, the demo may be the only chance you get to meet some busy decision makers.
Doing an on-site demonstration affords you with the opportunity to [...]

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Software Demos

February 6, 2010
Software Demo Training

“Get some toothpicks for your eyes and a case of Red Bull, were gonna do a software demo!”

Software demos are the cornerstone of technology sales. Here’s 4 tips to make your next software demo better:

Keep Software Demos Short
Use the  Right Approach for the Medium
Encourage Questions
Don’t Pounce

Short Software Demos are Best
Our demos are too [...]

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B2B Web Marketing 101- a Ten-Part Series

July 8, 2009
B2B Web Marketing

This tutorial is designed to help you close more customers as a result of your B2B Web Marketing efforts. It covers things you need to do, as well as things you should avoid.
We’ll show you how to target professionals making complex purchase decisions involving multiple people, large budgets and that often have a broad impact [...]

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B2B Web Marketing Goals

July 8, 2009
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Improving your site takes time and effort. Anyone who promises big gains overnight is not being honest lying.
This series outlines a safe, long-term Web Marketing approach that gets results and avoids tricks that might get your site dropped from Google.
What can you expect from this series
I suspect you either want to learn how [...]

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Avoid B2B Web Problems that Cost You Sales

June 26, 2009
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Web Issues Costing you Traffic and Sales – a Checklist

The first thing I do when working with a new company on their Web Marketing is to review their site to see what we can quickly fix. In this post, I discuss many of the issues that can cost you Web traffic and sales:
Unreliable Site Hosting

Problem [...]

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Demo Data Dumps – Do You Have This Common Problem?

May 22, 2009

You Might Be Giving LBTPDs
Long Boring Technology Product Demos (LBTPD) are way more common than you might think. Avoiding Demo Data Dumps is a key demonstration skill that you must master to help you avoid them.
Find Out if You Have a Demo Dumping Problem
To see if you are guilty of giving a LBTPD, due to [...]

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