I’ve seen a million sales demonstrations. Really … at least a million. Off the top of my head, I estimate that 60% are immemorable or bad, 35% are ok, and about 5% are very good. However, there was one demo that I saw about 13 years ago that was over-the-top great – and there is one reason that I remember it so vividly today.
It was 2007 and I was the VP of Sales for a security manufacturer. We made many things – thermal imagers, radars, explosive sensors, video management software, etc. This demo was for a seven-figure opportunity brought to us by one of our channel partners. The end-user had narrowed down the search to two manufacturers of thermal imagers and it was all coming down to this performance. The salesperson responsible for the account obviously brought help – a sales engineer, our VP of Engineering, and me. However, he took control of the entire meeting and pulled off a stunt that no one but a seasoned pro should try.
We had a weakness against our competitor. Our cctv camera that complemented the thermal imager in a dual housing wasn’t as crisp at long distances as our competition. We knew it. Our potential customer knew it. And our competition knew it. I had seen our competition set us up multiple times to fail. They’d tell potential customers to mention the weaker camera and completely fluster our salespeople to a point where they weren’t focusing on the thing that mattered – the thermal imager. Then they’d try to sell themselves out of it, which was as effective as trying to put toothpaste back in the tube.
Not this time. Our salesperson this time was prepared to use a technique that couldn’t fail – as long as it didn’t fail.
In the opening, he mentioned that there was one weakness that we had in comparison to our competition and he called out the cctv. He then said that he’d address it after the demo. He stated again that the purpose of the demo was to compare the thermal cameras, but he asked them to also pay attention to the cctv. He actually asked them to pay attention to our weakness.
After walking through every need they had, illustrating how our thermal imager was perfect for each need, and encouraging their positive input, he then admitted: “Here’s the only place we lose. At distances further than a about a mile, our cctv camera isn’t as strong as our competition. While we’re here, can you please let us know how this will impact the use of the system, if at all?”
For about five seconds, there was silence. Then someone said, “I don’t think we’ll use that past a half mile during the day.” Someone else exclaimed “Hell, that thing cost like 2% of the night camera anyway, doesn’t it? Who cares.” Finally, after a few more supportive comments, the main influencer ended the discussion with: “Yeah, that’s the only weakness you have. The night vision is the best I’ve ever seen. The regular camera isn’t a factor.”
Bam! Done. Within two weeks, we had an order.
Our sales professional inspired the audience to defend our weakness and to talk about how much better the rest of our solution was than our competition. He actually got them to do the selling for him. He was silent for probably six or seven minutes while they gushed over our product’s greatness. It was the best demo I had ever seen. He simply showed the system and then led the potential customer to do the selling for him. It was like a jedi-mind trick. It was amazing … and it also became a strategy that I ran with.
Tune in next Friday for my next post about how to do this – the things you have to do to get your audience to start bragging about you and your solution. And don’t try this until you read our next post.
