Here’s a terrific idea for training new presales staff: Teach them your discovery/qualification process before teaching how to demo your software… Why consider this approach?

- It models the principle of doing discovery/qualification before presenting your solutions.
- It teaches new hires how to put together summaries of customer-specific situations (“Situation Slides”).
- It breaks the tradition of “Here’s our standard demo script… Learn it!”

This method also helps put your software in context:
- What specific customer problems does it solve?
- What specific capabilities are needed to solve these problems?
- What customer job titles are involved, and in what specific way?

If anyone (else) is already doing this, please let me know how it has been working for you…

For more tips and articles on demonstration effectiveness skills and methods, email me at PCohan@SecondDerivative.com or visit our website at www.SecondDerivative.com. For demo tips, best practices, tools and techniques, join the DemoGurus Community Website at www.DemoGurus.com, or the Great Demo! LinkedIn Group, or explore our blog at http://greatdemo.blogspot.com/.