If you’re in Sales or PreSales in an education technology company, you know all about the importance of securing the “technical win.” Accomplishing this step means you are over a significant hurdle in every sales process. However, the longer it takes to ensure the technical win due to complicated demos, complex-looking software, or a lack of buyer consensus, the more likely the sales process stalls or even dies. You can prevent that from happening through skilled demo techniques and by leveraging video. This article will focus exclusively on how you can use video before, during, and after your main demo to accelerate your technical win.
Before the Demo
Too many demonstrators spend excessive time on the initial navigation and design of the software before they get to the most compelling elements of the solution. That doesn’t have to be the case. Instead, use a video platform like Vidyard’s to record these necessary but time and energy eating demos on video and send them to the stakeholders in the buying process before your live demo. Your formula for the recording is relatively simple. The video opens with your face on the camera. Introduce yourself (with energy!), and set the context for your overview. Next, you switch to a full-screen of your software and provide your demo. Lastly, conclude the demo by going back on camera and summarize what they saw and the benefit to your navigation and architecture. This demo is a short video. No longer than three minutes. When you go live with your demo (online or in-person), you’ll find a halo effect with the stakeholders. They’ll say things like, “Hey, you’re the person on the video that you sent. Nice job!” As you advance in your demo recording skills and tools, you’ll learn that you can record the ”perfect” overview and then add a personalized opening and closing to each video, saving you time and ensuring a consistently winning demo.
During the Demo
Today’s demanding stakeholders often make requests (sometimes demands) that start with “can you show us…?” I’m not going to discuss (at length) the strategies of whether or not you perform “discovery-on-the-fly” or set aside their request. Assume, for the moment, it is a high-ranking executive, and you consent to their request. Here’s the rub. You don’t have the software configured to show this standard functionality because you weren’t anticipating this request. Here’s a great solution! Pre-record these demos and upload them to Vidyard. During the demo, you perform a quick find in Vidyard, locate the video, change your screen-share to optimize for video, inform the executive that you have a video of that functionality, set up the context of the video, and finish the video with a personalized benefit. Executives love that kind of agility and responsiveness!
After the Demo
Often, you can’t answer or demo every request made during the event. They become follow-up items. Instead of sending a long email that explains the results of your research (that few if any stakeholders will read), or spending days or weeks trying to gather everyone again for a follow-up demo, record the follow-up, upload the video to Vidyard and share a link to the video to the stakeholders. You can front-end the follow-up recording with a personalized introduction that provides the context to the follow-up and catches their attention using a GIF that gets embedded in your email.
Accelerate your path to the technical win. Make it a high-speed train to success by leveraging video before, during, and after a demo for a trifecta that will pay great winnings!
About the author
Bob founded 2Win! on the simple concept that if we focus on more than best practices and correct our bad practices (as Bob calls them “crimes”) then we separate ourselves from the competition. Bob is a thoughtful, practical senior executive with a keen mind.
