A few years ago, I was contacted by an executive who was a previous customer and who had recently taken a leadership position at a new company. Our conversation lasted only twenty minutes, but covered the following:
- He had a large group of sales and presales people who were generating “somewhat acceptable” results using traditional practices, but he needed a twenty percent improvement in both new and recurring revenues to meet his objectives. He said, “You know the problem: Their discovery skills are thin, their demos are Harbor Tours, and we won’t make our numbers without changing their practices.”
- He wanted to have them all trained in Great Demo! and Doing Discovery methodologies in a timeframe that would enable improved results for the second half of his fiscal year.
- He listed several members of his team he wanted me to contact to get the details, including his direct reports (regional sales and presales managers, and members of his enablement team), plus a few folks in other departments.
- He asked me for rough pricing so he could allocate the budget.
- Finally, we invested a few minutes at the end of the call to “catch up.”
This brief conversation yielded one of the most extensive and successful implementations of Great Demo! and Doing Discovery to date!
Intriguingly, this experience wasn’t unique! I’ve had this same conversation with several different executives, yielding very similar results.
Another Real-life Story
A few (more) years ago, an executive leading a $30 million-per-year business unit needed software to support their manufacturing operation of semi-custom-built systems. He reached out to several vendors, based on recommendations from his team, as his personal experience with these offerings was limited.
Each call went nearly the same way