We all know that we need to gain a sufficient understanding of our customers’ needs and specific situations before proposing solutions – and before presenting most demos. Here’s an additional reason to do this:

Miller Heiman, Inc. reports in their Executive Summary of their 2009 Sales Best Practice Study that 93% of “World Class” vendors vs. 50% of “All” vendors do “Clearly understand our customers’ issues before we propose a solution”. “World Class” organizations achieved stronger results in five areas measured:

- Average account billing
- Sales force quota attainment
- Number of qualified opportunities/leads
- Customer retention
- Forecast accuracy

Not surprising…!

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/.