B2B sales demos should spend 80% of time on what makes you different, not what everyone has. Focus on unique features or what you do better, back each with customer stories, and briefly acknowledge the commodity stuff your competitors also offer.
80% of the features that you're covering in your product demonstrations are also offered by your competition. If you spend most of your demonstration covering those features, at best you're going to be in a race to the bottom for price. Or more likely, you're going to lose because your buyer is going to see you as being the same as everybody else. I'm big on buyer psychology. Throughout the sales cycle, the demo is a perfect place to observe some behavior. When your buyer is watching the demo and the first few features they're seeing look very similar to the competition, they tune out. They assume that everything is the same, and now they're going to be purchasing based solely on price. And it makes sense that a lot of what you offer is the same as your competition. Companies build solutions that meet what their market needs. What the market needs usually has a lot of commonalities, which means common features that solve those problems. So that's not necessarily a bad thing that your product is largely similar to the competition. What matters, though, is how you present it. The shift I Recommend is spend 20% of your demo covering the 80% of your product that is similar to your competition. When you're doing this, call it out. Don't act like it's some amazing functionality. Say, hey, look, I know you've seen this before. Everybody does this because it's essential for success and are in our space. I just want you to see that we have it so you know that we're capable to help in these basic areas. Then spend 80% of your time covering the 20% of your product that is differentiated from the competition, explaining why it's different, why it matters, and how other customers have had success. By having access to these pieces of your solution. This helps you stand out. This helps you look different. This helps you differentiate by not just what you're offering, but how you're showing what you're offering. So let's talk a little bit about how to identify the 20% of differentiators that matter to your customers. First, understand there are a couple different kinds of differentiators. There's unique and there's comparative. Unique differentiators are features or products that only your company offers. For whatever reason, your company chose a different route to solving a problem and your competition has either chosen not to build it or or is lagging and has not built it yet. Then there's comparative differentiators. These are features that are similar to your competition, but you do it better. So when you're identifying the 20% differentiators first for each one understand. Is this unique or is it comparative? If it's unique you need to make sure you can articulate and defend why your company took a different approach than everybody else. Why did you build something different? Why does it matter for your customers? And then what customer stories do you have that support that this feature is valuable for? Comparative you need to be able to defend why it is better if it is better why that difference actually matters to the customers. And then similar to the first one, what customer stories can you bring to show that this differentiated feature actually adds value? The idea here is that you're leaving the demo with your prospect thinking about your unique differentiators they can't live without instead of wondering why they would pay more money for a solution that looks just like the competition. Hope this is helpful. If you like frameworks like this please consider subscribing to my YouTube channel. You can also head over to salesintroverts.com for the best of my frameworks.
