Boost Your SaaS Sales Success: The Art of Creating Impactful Demos

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What up everybody? Welcome to another episode of the live Better Sell Better podcast. This is your host Kevin Dorsey, AKA KD with with an extra good raspy DJ voice today as I'm recovering a little bit from God knows what. But on that note, I am pumped for today's topic and guest because in a world of thought leadership and tips and tricks and books and courses, everything seems to focus on prospecting. Book the meeting, land the demo, get people on that call, run discovery and no one's talking about how do you actually run an engaging value adding demo? How do you make somebody want what you have? We've lost sight of this in SaaS too often it's about trying to tell people what we do and we're not making people want it. And that is why I'm so excited to have Jonathan Mahan on the show with me today. Co Founder at Practice Lab. Something else I'm very passionate about, which is practice to talk about. How do you run a great demo, how do you pull people in, how do you get them engaged, and how do you make them want what you have. Jonathan, my friend, welcome to the show.

Thanks for having me on, man. Definitely excited to unpack this topic. This is something that's very needed.

Yeah, let's dive in because you actually. You did a topic switch on me, right? We were going to talk about something else, and then you're like, wait, I want to talk about this. Why? Why was this so top of mind for you?

You know, it's interesting. Demos is something that, as you've mentioned, tends to not get a lot of attention, and that seems a little weird to me because how much work, how much time, how much effort and how much money goes into getting people on this call, sifting through a sea of potential prospects to find the one or two in a stack of 100 who, you know, have some interest in what you're offering, feel the pain, and are willing to take the time to talk to you. Tremendous amount of energy goes into that. And then, of course, you got to run a good discovery call. Right. A lot of effort and energy goes into that. And then you finally get them to that moment where they've agreed, yes, I have a problem. Yes, I'm in the market for a solution. And now is your chance to get them excited, bought in, and inspired to move forward. This seems to be the chance where everyone just kind of falls flat at the finish line. Right. So I've been taking a handful of demos lately, and this has been top of mind. We also just came off an engagement with Speckit and we're working with their team on demos. So it's been top of mind as well as we've been working with them. So I figured, yeah, what the heck, let's save some of the topics for another day and just dive in. Specifically to how do you make your demos really leave your buyers feeling motivated, inspired to take action and make a change, rather than just leaving your buyers feeling like, oh, yeah, that is a pretty cool product, but then ultimately just getting stuck right where they are. So excited to dive in here and, you know, I got some thoughts to share, but I'm sure you'll also have things to share as well, so. Looking forward to your take, too.

Oh, yeah, well, this is. This is your show today, baby, not mine. Right. So I'm excited to get your. Your thoughts on this. Right, so let's start with the. The classic, what are you seeing people doing wrong? Then we'll get into how to do it right. But what are the things that you're seeing people do wrong when they start to run these demos?

Yeah, I think a good place to start is like even the intention and purpose of the call. You know, I'm not really sure what sellers would describe is what they think their intended purpose is, but if you watch the recordings and you watch the calls and the demos, it's pretty clear what they're really working to accomplish. And it seems to be most demos are focused on either, you know, on the worst demos, just convincing the buyer that the product is really cool and really powerful. Right. Usually better demos is about convincing the buyer that your product is better than your competition's product. Or maybe sometimes you're focused on trying to convince the seller that using this product, it's a better way of doing things than the way they're doing things now. Right. Maybe the focus of the demo is trying to convince the buyer that this product checks all their boxes and meets all the requirements of their decision criteria that you uncovered. And all of those things, to be fair, have to happen. Right. They're probably not going to make the buy if they don't agree it's better than the way they're doing it now. But that's not enough to get someone to actually take action. And as evidence of this, just look back through your own list of closed loss opportunities and ask yourself, how many of these closed loss opportunities did the buyer agree my product was better than the way they're doing things now? Did they agree my product satisfied the requirements? Did they agree they liked it better than the competition? And yet they still ended up saying no decision? They still ended up ghosting you. They still ended up saying, hey, you're going to have to try us again in six months. It's not the right time right now. We're too busy. We have other priorities. We don't have budget. Right. So I think the place that most people get wrong is they think the purpose of the demo is to convince the buyer my product's better than status quo, or my product's better competitors, or my product meets all the solutions. And again, those things have to happen. They're requirements, but they aren't the purpose, they aren't the point, they aren't the aim I of the demo. I think that's where people go off.

So, yeah, I would agree. You know, too often I'm sitting there and like just being talked at. Too often the demo has nothing to do with the discovery at all. It's like, you made me sit through this discovery and now the demo is nothing. The questions I get asked are just atrocious. So let's start Getting into. Right. Kind of, as you said, as the purpose and then how to execute a great demo. So start at the beginning. How do you set that proper purpose and intention? And then let's build from there.

Yeah. So I think the first thing is to shift your mindset around what you're trying to accomplish in that call because again, all those stuff I previously mentioned, it's like table stakes. That's not actually going to win you the deal. The purpose of the demo, what really wins the deal is when the buyer can draw the connections between what your product offers and the things that matter most to them in their world, the metrics they pay the most attention to, the OKRs. They've been tasked with, the problems that have been plaguing them, the day to day headaches that they experience. Right when they can say, hey, this is a cool product that meets all the requirements. More importantly, here's how this connects back to what we talk about in our leadership meetings. And here's how this is going to make this part of our job a heck of a lot easier. And here's how this is going to remove a barrier that's been holding us back from accomplishing our strategic goals as a company. When they can draw those connections clearly and precisely between what you offer and the things that matter most to them, it suddenly becomes very difficult for them to get squirrely and say, ah, let's wait six months. Because by saying let's wait six months on your product, they're saying, let's wait six months on my biggest problems being taken care of, on my okrs being achieved. Right. And that's a lot harder to do. So that becomes your focus for the demo is I'm not here to show them what it does and convince them that it's better than what they're doing. Now. I'm not here to show them what it does and make sure it checks all the boxes. I'm here to help them go through that mental process of mapping this back to their world. It's almost like you're an interpreter. Right. As a salesperson. Here's the facts of my products and solution. Here's the facts of your world, here's how they connect. And that becomes the purpose of the demo is to make sure every buyer leaves that conversation with a clear understanding of how to connect the dots between what you offer and what they care about.

There you go. That's what we call it internally, I call it ctd. Connect the dots. Right, like connect the dots back to what they want. Right. Discovery to Me is all about understanding the problems of the now, but also the better future that they desire, right? Yes, there's the problems of now, but what is the better future they desire? The demo is all about connecting the dots back to that, right? I've matured in my days, right? I used to call it stfw. Now I call it connect the dots, but it used to be stfw, Right? So the F what you're showing them this slide. So the F what you're showing them the show the F what and the what has to be back to what they wanted. Right. Doing going through that. So let's keep going down this path. So let's assume I did discovery the right way and now I know my intention.

Right.

Is to connect it back to what they want, the problem that they're solving and where they're trying to go, go deeper on that. How do you actually do that? How do you make sure they actually do? See how that should work?

Yeah. So the cool thing here is that while there's a lot you can do to make a perfect, amazing killer demo, and truthly, kd, there's people out there who are better experts on me at the all encompassing how to make a perfect demo. What we found though is that you can get like 80% of the change you're wanting just by focusing on 20% of the time in the demo. Because typically when a rep is explaining what a feature does and how it's used, most reps actually do a pretty good job of explaining what it does and how it's used. Again, you don't have to overhaul the whole thing. What we found can make a huge difference is what happens before you show a feature and what happens after you show a feature. Because before you show a feature is the perfect moment to do some priming, prime the buyer's mind for what they're about to receive so that when they see it, it clicks. They get it and they go, oh, I know why that matters. I know why that's such a big deal. It seems like such a simple thing. But as sellers, we're equipped, going into the demo with all of that context and backstory, so we know why this feature matters so much. But the buyer doesn't have that. So before you show part a solution, it's good to prime the buyer's mind for what they're about to see. So maybe this is referencing challenges they mentioned earlier saying, hey, earlier you mentioned you were looking for XYZ and that this was a challenge. Then you can show the solution or other times if they didn't mention it. This is where you can kind of prime the pump by talking about challenges. Say, hey, a lot of leaders in your space say they deal with X, Y and Z and that often that results in this. Now you've kind of set the stage, so to speak. So now that you've got them thinking about that problem, now you can show the solution. Another way to prime their mind is not just with statements like I just used, but even with questions. If you can get your buyer talking about gaps in their process or problems, they have the moment before you show them the solution that's going to make that solution hit home so much harder. And honestly, these questions, a lot of times are questions that you should be asking in Discovery but maybe didn't have a chance to on the demo is a perfect good time to ask them. And in some ways it's even a better time to ask them. Right? If I'm going to ask somebody, hey, what's wrong with your process for onboarding? It's actually better to ask them what's wrong with your process for onboarding, right before I show them a better way to onboard compared to asking them that last week. You at them talking about it last week and then hoping they remember that when I show them the better way to onboard. So some of the Discovery questions that you wish your team was asking in Discovery might honestly be better to have them ask on the demo. If you can get your buyer talking about the headaches, the problems, the limitations, immediately before you show the solution, it's going to hit home so much harder. So that's one moment is priming. How do you prime the mind for what they're about to see? And we can kind of dive it down a lot further if you want. But, but next touch on processing moment, because I think that's just as important, probably even more important, because processing is where you show them a solution and then you give them the space and the time and a little guidance to process what they just saw and figure out who would use that, when would we use it, where do we use it, how would that be better? What problems would that solve? What would the benefits be? And then what would the strategic value of solving those problems and experiencing those benefits be? Right? This is where you start mapping it back to company wide strategic initiatives, company wide okrs, company wide problems. So there's like this multi layer process after you've shown a feature to figure out how it's used, figure out the service level value, figure out the strategic level Value. And that actually takes some time to really think through that. It takes the space to think through that. Sometimes it even takes a little bit of guidance and a little bit of help from a seller to think through that. Sellers aren't just going to see your little widget and then, boom, immediately draw all those connections on their own. And sellers sure as hell don't have the time after your demo to sit there for another hour puzzling out for themselves how those connections are made. The truth is, if you don't take the time as a seller in the demo to help the buyer process what they just saw, they're really not going to take the time to process what they just saw and make those connections and map it back to their world. Which means, again, your opportunity, your chances of closing the sale go down quite a bit because now you're just a cool tool who does some cool stuff. You're not the key to us achieving our objectives this quarter. Right. So you need to give them the space, process what they've just seen.

Yes. All so much. Yes to this right now. So it's very similar to the frameworks that I take my team through. We'll talk about the priming. We call it the educate. Right? The framework that I teach my team is educate, demonstrate, connect the dots, buy it. Educate, demonstrate, connect the dots, buy it. Right. It's okay, Prime. Why are we even talking about this thing? Educate. Right. Because I agree with you 100%. There are so many discovery questions that get asked in discovery that I think should have been saved for the demo.

Yeah, save it for the demo because.

That makes it more engaging. Right. So next we're going to talk about whatever email deliverability. So talk to me about this right now.

Where is your deliverability?

It makes the demo so much more engaging as you go through it, then you get to show it. Then it's that connect the dots and then it's that key is that processing is to help them process, but also then understand how they're processing it.

Right.

So let's keep going down this process. What types of questions should I ask at these certain points? Because you know this, I'm sure it happened in the demos you were in. Almost always the question is, does that make sense? Does that make sense? Any questions? Like, that's all they ask.

Right?

So what are some good questions to keep it going?

Yeah, yeah, no, there's, there's, there's three types of questions that we teach that are beautiful for this moment. One is not the most powerful question, but it's really nice, because they're questions that you can easily think of even under pressure, when your brain is a little bit scrambled because it's a demo. And we call these undirected questions. And this is simply your way of handing the microphone over to your buyer and getting them to share whatever's going through their mind. You're not directing their attention to one area or another. This is basically a replacement for any questions that. Does that make sense? So that can sound like, so what was going through your mind as I was sharing that with you? Or how are you feeling about this so far? Or what about that stood out to you? Right? So not the most powerful questions in the world, but they get the buyer talking, they get the microphone in their hands, and they buy you, as a seller, some time to think about maybe what question you want to ask next. So undirected questions, literally, if all a seller ever did was replace any questions with what was going through your mind as I shared that, they'd be in great shape. Like that simple change, really easy to make. That'll be a good thing. The next category of question we teach are called process questions. We call these anchor questions. We call it a process anchor. And this is your chance to get them thinking about very specifically how what they just saw would show up in their world. So it's not, hey, this tool can be used for these types of projects, and then you're done. It's describe the feature how it can be used, and then say, now, when you're thinking about your calendar over the next six months, what projects do you have coming coming up, where this might come in handy now it's real. Or you'd say, hey, you know, which of your leadership team would spend the most time looking at these reports and looking at these analytics? Right? Or, hey, you have any recurring meetings on your calendar where these insights might be something you want to take to that meeting? It's basically the software salesperson equivalent of like making a customer hold a product in a retail environment. Right. When I sold cell phones, one of the things we do with a case is instead of having a case up on the wall and saying, hey, do you like that case? We'd take it off the wall. We'd take it out of the packaging, we'd put it on their phone, and we'd have them hold it and say, do you like that case? Because suddenly you just took the theoretical, sparkly pink case on the wall and turned it into a very tangible, very real, my phone, my case, my hands. That's what you want to accomplish with these process questions. So it's not a really wide open question like how would you use this? That's okay, but it's usually not great. You want to zoom into the specifics. Where in your day would this fit in? Who would use it? When would you use it? Of the three modules I showed you, which module would you start with? First of all, the integrations on this page, what is integration do you think is most important to you? So those are process oriented anchors.

Yeah. No, love it. Because that's funny, man. We teach a lot of the same things, just differently. I literally call them make them hold it questions. I'm a simple guy, right? Like process question, make them hold it.

Make.

Make them hold it. It's how we levels, how can you get them? Where would you use this? How would you use this? Where would you put this? What would you apply this to? Who would you connect with this? What would this do for you? Would this do anything for you? Like make them hold it.

Right.

And a bonus on this, and I still don't think nearly enough people do. If you can get the demo to be interactive, give the screen over to me and make me click on things like let me actually hold it. That's when it goes next level. Because now there is no way to zone out. There is no way to disconnect. It's not like I'm in that.

Right?

But those questions are so important because when you ask it, salespeople write down the answers because these are going to be your reasons at the end to actually ask for something, to do something with it. Right? So we set the intention, we are walking them through it. We're getting good questions, right? Where do we go from there? Right. Like, you know, now what? All right, I've been doing this, I've been getting like those questions asked, like, do I just close them? Like, how do I close them? This is a multi deal process. Like how do I go from there? What does this set you up for at the end of the call?

Yeah, so before we get to the end of the call, there's a third type of question which I think really is kind of a segue because you're right, there is a gap between Fred would use this and you know, I'd bring this up in my week leadership meetings, right? Making them hold it stuff. There is a gap between that and sure, let's fork out $50,000 and buy this thing. And that gap is helping them get clear on exactly what the value to them would be of using it in that way. It's great to know that Fred would use it, but we should prompt them a bit further and say, hey, what would having this ability allow Fred to do differently in his job? Right. It's great to know that senior leaders would look at these reports during their monthly calls. But let's think about what could those insights on these reports allow the leaders to do differently? What decisions could they make better that they can't make today? Again, what are the priorities the senior leadership team is focusing on right now that this would clear away a roadblock for them? So there's still some processing left to be done. Even after you've gotten them talking about exactly how they'd use it, you've got to help them figure out what exactly is the value of that. So these we call value oriented anchors, right? So this is where you're asking things like, okay, great, if you use it in that way, how much time would you save? Or if your team was actually doing this, what do you imagine the ripple effects of that would be? Or if that problem was gone, what would that free up the rest of the organization to start doing now? And sometimes you can go kind of for surface level value, but it's good to start there. So you can just simply ask, how would this benefit your team? Right. Really, really high level. Or just simply ask, how much time would this save you? Or what impact do you think this would make on close rates? But other times you want to dig a little bit deeper, get to that strategic level value where you say, okay, this would increase close rates, great. But what does increasing close rates mean for your ability to move up market? Right. What does your increasing close rates mean for your ability to outpace competition? Who I know just got funding, right? It's really taking that service level value of, oh, yeah, this would give me two hours back in my week and moving that more into the strategic level of, hey, what priorities and focuses of the business would suddenly be empowered because you have a higher close rate or because you have two hours back in your week? So there's almost like four levels. We teach it three different types of questions, right? The undirected questions, the process questions, the value questions. But truth to those value questions, there's almost two flavors. There's like asking about the surface level value, and then it's figuring out once that surface level value is realized, what is the bigger picture? What's that mean for the business? And again, this is where you get to the point where your champion has a much easier time getting this approved by their cfo. Because no longer is it, hey, this is a cool prospecting tool. I think it'll make our team more efficient. It's, hey, look, we've been trying to move into this vertical and having a really hard time moving into this vertical, which has been limiting our growth as a company. I think this tool will unlock our SDR teams to more effectively break into that vertical, therefore unlocking more growth as a company. Now, suddenly your tool is part of a bigger vision, a bigger purpose, and this is where you're teeing yourself up. Nice for that kind of close at the end of the demo, right? Typically, what we teach is after you've done these anchor questions, helping them process for each individual feature. That's your opportunity to move at the end of the demo to kind of some higher level anchor questions to get them reflecting on the whole solution they just saw, right? So this is when you might close and say, okay, great, I think those are the most important features to share. Then you ask a question like, of what you've seen, how confident are you this will solve those problems you mentioned in our discovery call A, B and C, right? Or hey, if you guys rolled out everything you saw today, what might be different in six months? Or even one of my favorite questions near the end of a demo is to say, all right, great, now you've seen what we can do. What else do you think you could do that might improve your results even better than what you just looked at, right? What else could you focus your attention on to get the outcomes you want even more quickly and effectively than what we just saw? Because of course, if they say, no, nothing, actually, this is the shortest path to what we want, then you're in a great position for a close. However, if they say, you know, I bet you we focus on this other thing, we'd actually get there quicker. That's your opportunity to say, okay, let's slow down here, because we clearly don't have as good a deal as I thought we had. But these, like, these kind of anchoring questions can be used for each feature, but they can also be used right at the end of the demo to get them reflecting on the value of the whole solution. And that's when once they say to you, yes, I can see the solving our problems, then it says, great, well, would it make sense for me to set a proposal over, set up a proof of concept, talk to your boss, right, Whatever that next step is. But you, you earn the permission to confidently ask for that next step that you need by closing out the whole demo with one of these anchor questions that gets them talking about the value of everything they've seen. But truthfully, at that point, it's almost a formality, because if every step of the way they've been telling you, this solves my biggest challenges, this would unlock growth for us. It's almost a formality to asking for the next step because you've established about the entire demo that this is what they need, and here's how it helps them. So of course they're gonna wanna take that next step, right?

Yeah, well, and that's where it makes it fun, right? Is like, if you think about it, you know, all this is building up. So at the end is when you get to say back, so you told me it would X, Y, Z. And you told me it would do this, this, and this. Because you do need to remind people of what they've said, because they'll say it in the moment, but then they'll get distracted by something else.

Right?

So it's like you remind them of what they said. But where I love to set up, you know, right. Before asking for anything is, you know, again, simple, simple guy. Over here, we call it the do you want it? Question. Right? Because all of those things can be true, right? Like, yeah, this will save me time.

Yeah.

Like, that would allow us to X, Y, Z. It doesn't mean they actually want it yet.

Right.

And you need confirmation that they want it because we can justify things all the time, right?

Right.

Like, well, yeah, like, if I went for a run every day, yes, I'd have more energy and, yeah, my clothes might fit better and, yeah, I'd have more confidence and, yeah, I'd probably live longer and. Yeah, but a lot of people don't wake up and go run because they don't want to. Right? And so we do the want question first. So, hey, so before we talk next steps, I mean, you told me this. You told me this. You tell me this. Like, do you want this? Like, is this something that you would want to move forward with?

Not bias.

It's just even something you want. Because if you don't want, it doesn't matter if your boss does or not. Like, we don't have to go there. So we asked the want question. Because once you have the want, now all the next steps are to help you get what you want. Right? All right, well, okay. So, yeah, no, I do want it. Great. What stood out to you? That's when we go one layer deeper. What stood out to you? What was the biggest. What do you think really is going to make an impact. What is that? Because now everything is about helping you get what you want. Well, the best way, Jonathan, to get you what you want, which is to get this rolling, is to get, you know, Sarah, your CFO on the call next week so we can go through it together. How can we do that? Now everything's about getting you what you want has actually nothing to do with me. So we love that want question. What are your thoughts there?

Yeah, no, my version of that question usually sounds something like. So, obviously there's a lot of variables here, but if it was just up to you, would you want to see us working together in the future or would you want to implement this and roll it out? And the reason that I love that question so much is that the moment you ask it and they answer, yeah, if it was up to me, we would do this. Suddenly the dynamic shifts and you're both on the same side of the table together, collaborating on the same project together, which is, how do we get your boss on board? How do we get your CFO on board? How do we get the end users and teammates on board? And now the two of you are working together on a shared goal, which, honestly, I can't imagine handling the back end of the sales process without that dynamic in place of you and the champion working together on a shared goal of making this happen. So the way you get from the dynamic in the first half, which is like, I'm not sure, convince me to suddenly, yes, I'm on board. Let's do this together, is with that magic question of, this was just up to you. How would you want the story to end? Right. And once you get them to say, I want to work together, then you're right. It totally shifts the whole dynamic. And now it's you and them working as a team. And without asking that question, you're never quite sure, and it still feels like you're still convincing them and you're trying to pull them along versus the two of you working together. So, yeah, I love that question.

Too often sellers confuse like and too often sellers confuse ROI with want, and they're not the same.

Yeah, no, I like this.

I like a lot of things that I don't have.

Right.

Because I don't want them enough to go get them. Right. That want, that desire is everything, and then it drives it from there. Now, what do you do if the prospect is derailing the demo? Right. So, like, you know, I'm sure people are listening. Yeah. Katie, John, all this sounds great, but, like, I Work in a technical field or blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And they ask questions that go down rabbit holes. How do you navigate that when the demo starts to go a path that either is not advantageous or is not going to drive the deal forward, but it's what the prospect is asking for.

Yeah, that's interesting. As it relates to these behaviors, I can say that that often is a concern people bring up where they're like, well, I barely get through my demo now and I'm doing 80% of the talking. There's not a whole lot of my demo I feel comfortable cutting out. So where do we make the time for the buyer to suddenly start doing all this talking? Right. Answering all these questions that you're asking them, and that's a very legitimate concern. And first off, it does mean that you'll probably have to trim the demo a bit and figure out what are the three or four most important features rather than hitting them with, you know, all 12 features. But even then you're right that there are some long winded buyers where if you hand them the microphone or the wide open question like what's going through your mind? They will just go and go and be talking for five minutes and only a shred of it will be relevant to what you're talking about. The rest of it you'll be like, why are you sharing this? So when you feel like you got that kind of buyer on the line, it's actually good to go against more traditional sales wisdom and actually close your questions down. So rather than the wide open questions, how would you use this? Be more specific. What meetings do you have where you bring this insights? Short answer. Which team member would use this? Short answer. Right. Which of these three modules is the most important to you? Even, even yes or no can have a place here. Right. They're not great questions, but if you got a talkative buyer who goes off, you might just want to ask yes or no. Do you see this solving your problem? Do you agree this is going to help? Is this something you'd use for your onboarding? Great. So while generally speaking in sales, open ended questions are better, if you got that talkative buyer who likes going off the rails, it might be good to use more close ended questions so that you get shorter answers for sure.

No, that it's key. Like I think too often things get taught, you know, with good intentions but not great execution. Right. Like, oh, ask open ended questions.

Okay.

Right. Like what do you think? Well, that's, that's an open ended question. But you have no Idea where that's going to go. And it can go off the deep end in so many ways. And so for sure, like asking shorter questions. I really like there when I run into this, it's when I almost always do the pause and let's back up where it's like, actually, okay, real quick, pause. We can go down this path, but it doesn't have a lot to do with what you told me you were trying to solve for. So we can go down this path and I can show that to you, or we can talk about more of the things that will directly impact. Right. Directly impact what you're trying to solve for and achieve. And then we can get to that at a later time. Because if you don't think it'll solve the big things, this little thing isn't going to matter. Right. So I pull it back and bring them back to the idea of why are you talking today? Because sellers, please, I'm begging you. You are losing deals over parts of your product that had nothing to do with what the prospect was trying to solve for. But you went down the rabbit hole or you went there with them. It had nothing to do with. It had nothing to do with the problems that they were trying to solve. I talked about this at a conference, guys, was four or five years ago now, where I was like, stop selling your whole product. You're losing deals over things your prospect doesn't care about. But you brought it up. And because of that, now the deal's dead. Because they didn't like your whatever, gizmo gadget API connection. And that had nothing to do with them ramping up their reps faster. But you went down that rabbit hole. And here we go. So, like, I always pull it back to that problem they were trying to solve as well.

Yeah, Something. I don't know if it'll be helpful to listeners or not, but it's been helpful for me in sales is I used to think of, like, convincing prospects to buy something, particularly during the demo, as this, like, cumulative effect where every time I showed them something, I added a little bit more weight to my side of the scale. So therefore, the more things you can show them, the more weight you can add to your side of the scale. Right. So therefore, the more is always better because, again, you're kind of cumulatively trying to build a case. What I realized, though, is that during the experience of the demo, they decide how good of a fit you are, not based on the cumulative. Based on the average. The average fit they saw, the average emotional experience. So you'll actually be better off to pick your three features which have the best bang for the buck, the most value, get them feeling the most excited because that'll mean throughout the whole conversation, their average emotional feelings, their average amount of conviction that this is it is going to be really high compared to if you show them some of the great fits, some of the low fits, some of the great fits, some of the low fits, their average level of conviction will actually be kind of low because the average got pulled down. So it's not about cumulative adding up. It's about what is the average experience of being on this call. Do they feel like this is a 9 out of 10 slam dunk throughout the whole time, or do they oscillate from feeling like it's a great fit to feeling like it's a marginal fit?

Yes. And also too, y' all always remember, people remember the beginning. They remember the end. I remember beginning. Like end on good end on something that's like, yes, that's impactful. Right? But hear me here, beginning and end. Too often I talk with sellers like, yeah, save the best for last. Well, if you lost me in the first five minutes of the demo, there is no best at the end. I'm already gone. I'm already checked out. So book end it right. Like, what will be big and impactful? Cover the things, but also big and impactful. Or at least tie it back to the thing that they said they really liked. Bring it back up one more time. So before we wrap on this, my friend. Right? One, any parting demo tips that we didn't touch on yet. And then I got to ask you the live better sell better question.

Right?

But any parting demo tips before we wrap?

While it's, you know, a big topic that could be its own episode someday, I think the important thing to realize here is that getting your team to the point where they intellectually understand this, where they believe it and buy into it and want to demo this way is a very, very, very different thing than getting your team to actually do this. You could have every member on your team listen to this episode, give them an assessment afterwards to make sure they were paying attention, taking notes. They could agree wholeheartedly with everything Katie and I have said. And yet, in the moment, they're not going to change their behavior. And there's some real brain science behind that of, like, during moments of pressure and emotion and tension, such as most sales calls end up being, the brain can't really access everything it knows. All the brain can access in those moments of tension are the most deeply embedded grooves, the most well established patterns. Those are available at all times. All that new stuff that was layered onto the surface, locked away somewhere the brain can't access in the moment. So if you want your team to actually change how they behave and how they perform, that's where the practice piece comes in. That, of course, UKD are a huge fan of. But it is illogical to assume teaching your reps a better way of demoing will have any sort of impact on the way they actually demo. It may come as bad news or it may come as a relief, but we just spent the last three months working with Speckit on their demos and of course their demos looked like what we described. Right. Show and tell with a lot of any questions. Does that make sense? Sprinkled in like everyone's do. And they're now at the point where we're seeing very regularly these priming behaviors and these processing behaviors showing up in their real calls and they're having really interesting, rich conversations with their buyers. So the good news is that there's hope it can change. The bad news is it took us two and a half months to get here. We're not even done yet, right? We're just starting to see that shift now. It's like a young tree sapling that's finally sprouted. But it's still not well established. They're going to be working for another month or two on reinforcing and continuing this process to get the reps to the point where they can kind of step away, focus on something else and the behavior will stick. So change is possible, but it's going to take some time. It took us three months of regular weekly practice, and there's probably again another month still pending of regular weekly practice before these ideas, these theories get embedded into your reps brains. And it's so cool when you start to see that, because we started to see that where it's now so embedded in reps brains they almost can't go back to the old way of doing it right. Even when they're not instructed to, they'll find themselves following the right behaviors because it just feels weird and wrong to not do that. Even if it's not part of the particular exercise we're doing at the moment, they'll still do it the right way because it just feels wrong to do it. Or they'll rewatch their past calls and almost vomit in their mouth when they see themselves because it's so deeply embedded in their brain to always prime before you present a new feature and always help people process what they've seen, that when they don't do it, their body just reacts and in a really strong way, like, oh, God, that's terrible. So the good news is it can happen. You can bring about change. The bad news is it'll take longer than you want it to. Right. Those areas, just priming and processing, those are pretty small things, right? Again, we didn't overhaul their whole demo for them. We just focus on getting these behaviors to show up and it takes three months to make it happen. But again, once it happens, then the behavior is there, then the behaviors change. You can focus your attention elsewhere, and you've seen real growth on your team. And again, the quality of conversations they're having now, it's just, you know, night and day difference in what they used to have because they're getting to that point of mapping back the value right there in their conversations rather than leaving the buyer to do that on their own. So don't forget the practice element is that final note there.

I love it. I love it. Right? And y', all, if you want to take it from three months, you know, down to two, practice daily. I have my team right now are practicing daily on the new language and literally daily. I'm not exaggerating on that. Fifteen minutes a day, every day, either with self, peer or manager, they are practicing the opener, practicing it every single day. That's the amount of repetitions it takes to get good at something. So awesome. My man. Well, Jonathan, where can people learn more about you? Where are you putting out more content? What is Practice Lab up to nowadays? Where can people get more of what you're putting out right now?

Yeah. So our website is thepracticelab.co. so it's not.com, it's not co. So you can learn about us, what we do there. We got some free offerings for individuals. We got some stuff for teams. Check that out. I'm Fairly active on LinkedIn. I'm sure that link will be in the show notes. You can go find me there. And if you've been hearing about this whole practice idea and curious to learn about it a little more, reach out to us at hello, thepracticelab.co. we certainly can talk with you and share more about demo practice. Additionally, though, if you just want to try this practice thing on for size, even outside the context of demos, we have a kind of practice in the box kit, a do it yourself blueprint, so to speak, for a practice session, you can run with your team around how they respond to objections, responding to them in a way that really lowers the buyer's defenses, gets the buyer to open up their mind more, and ultimately ensures the conversation continues long enough that you have a chance to find a way to, you know, save the deal. And that's something that we've been doing for years now. It's a really popular exercise and we finally now figured out how to do it without us even being there. So you can just email us. Say, hey, loved your episode of kd. Interested in trying out that practice blueprint? We'll send you this digital kit that you can use to run a practice session with your own teams just to see how that feels. But again, if additionally, if you want to dive more into this demos topic and pick our brain on demos and whatnot, we can also respond to you via that same email address. Hello, the Practice Lab co. Love it.

Well, well, awesome. My man. I loved the topic switch here. I think this is something very important and valuable for people to do. And if y' all aren't following here, get to practicing. That is the key to it all. Jonathan Oman, thanks again for everything.

Yeah, thanks for having me on.