Preparing for a Scheduled Demo

Yesterday, after talking about preparing for a sales call, the next part of our workshop was focused on preparing for a scheduled demo. A scheduled demo is the first real phase in our sales process, usually takes an hour, and is conducted with the phone and GoToMeeting for screen sharing. Depending on the product line being sold, my sales people came up with the following items to do in preparation for a scheduled product demo:

• Send a demo confirmation email 24 hours in advance
• Read the Wikipedia page on the organization, if present
• Read the three most recent press releases on the organization’s website
• Research everyone who will be present on the call, their job titles, roles, and responsibilities
• Develop a list of questions to ask to understand pain points and BANT (budget, authority, need, and timeline)
• Find a reference customer in the same industry or geographic region to mention

These items are generally common sense but they are an important part of the sales process. Web demos with a screen sharing program have significantly reduced the cost of sales for many companies and I’m a big advocate of them.