Don't demo like you're evil

Some of you might have seen the Optifye demo that YC shared on socials this week.

First, YC should have never shared it. Which really makes me wonder what value they provide to founders, because they killed a business overnight instead of coaching the founder to do something better. Bad on YC.

Then, there was the actual demo that came across as a way for a manufacturing boss to keep tabs on their sweat shops and fire people who aren’t working (AI video surveillance for manufacturers).

The demo shows your positioning. And I can tell you, it’s never a good idea to position as a tool that helps evil micro managers seek out their preys.

A slight tweak in positioning could have been “detect accidents faster,” or “figure out who’s struggling so you can help them,” or “figure out who’s doing well so you can learn from them.”

That’s how the call recording world positioned in sales in 2018, and Gong took off like crazy. If they would have said “catch your AEs making mistakes and figure out who sucks so you can fire them fast,” they would have gone nowhere.

So just make sure if you have a monitoring tool, you don’t position it as evil. Nobody will buy that. And if you’re in an accelerator, make sure they’re teaching you critical business skills like positioning and sales. If not, then seek out help through mentors, colleagues, and coaches (most accelerators like Techstars and YC just want your demo to get funded, that’s their business model. So you likely won’t get much help on the business side).

In this newsletter, I’m going to dive into dos and don’ts of demoing so you can avoid the pitfalls that happened with Optifye.

P.S. If you’re part of MicroConf Mastermind, I will be speaking on March 4th about how to run good demos, and on March 6 about how to do discovery and build a basic sales process.

Table of Contents

• Quick Notes:

• How to Structure your Demo

• Setting Context for your Demo

• Example Demo Chapters

• How to Run The Call

Quick Notes:

• THE BIGGEST MISTAKE I see founders make with demos: The demo is about them, NOT YOU. Remember this. You are showing THEM how to solve THEIR problems. You need to bring your tech into their world. If you’re showing them what you think is cool or useful, then the demo is about you. You’ll need to rewrite your script.

• DON’T show everything. Your job in sales is to understand and solve their pains. You do not need to show every detail and every feature if it’s not relevant to them. You’ll likely cause more confusion this way.

• Start at the end, then work your way towards how to achieve the end state.

• Make them imagine using your software in their business.

• A demo is not a walkthrough or a training call. This is where I see most founders fail in their demo. They’re teaching the prospect how to use the software instead of showing how the software solves their problem. A demo is structured. Think of the demo as a movie trailer designed to get bums in seats. You’re not showing the whole movie - or even worse - how the movie was made.

How to Structure your Demo

Think of your demo as chapters. Each chapter focuses on a specific pain, and you show a series of workflows that solve that pain.

Often start with the end - show them the city, then the different parts of the city. This might be a fully populated analytics dashboard. In my case at Savio, it’s the fully populated feature request list filtered by most revenue. This creates a talking point around what they’re really trying to solve with a better feature request workflow - prioritizing requests based on data not gut.

Then we work our way towards the end. So we show how to collect the data. How to triage the feedback. How to attach it to features. How to close the loop once a feature is shipped. And then we return to the feature request list.

Each chapter, in our case 3-4 depending if closing the loop is important, focuses on a specific pain and workflow. This makes it easier to really highlight the value of what these workflows are bringing to the prospect.

Make sure you break in between each chapter to ask thought provoking questions. The outcome you want from a demo is making them imagine using your software in their business, so create questions that makes them do this.

Setting Context for your Demo

A great place to really highlight your sales pitch and set you apart is right before you demo.

Give a high-level about your point of view. What insight can you share about the market? What problems do you solve? What are the voids for your prospects? What makes you different?

This helps you position your product strongly right before you show features. They’ll remember this positioning throughout.

Example Demo Chapters

Here are a couple example demo chapters.

Savio is a feature management software that helps product teams collect feedback from disparate sources, organize it in feature requests, then prioritize based on commercial viability.

LevelJump (acquired by Salesforce in 2021) was a sales enablement software that helped sales leaders onboard new sales reps faster.

How to Run The Call

Prepare for your demo by reviewing your previous calls, and making notes of the top pains and impact you’ve diagnosed. This should already be filled out in your FOUNDER methodology notes in your CRM.

For bonding and rapport, bring up anything new you’ve noticed from the prospect, or engage new stakeholders as they come in. Have 1-3 points ready for everyone that will be in the meeting, so you can immediately create bonding and rapport no matter who joins the call first. You can check out LinkedIn for this info.

Once you’re past the bonding and rapport, kickoff the structure of the call.

• Time check (make sure they’ll be there the whole time)

• People check (make sure everyone who’s planning to join are there)

• Purpose of the call

• Their ideal outcome at the end of the call

• Ask permission to discuss next steps

Once you’re done with your kickoff, summarize the Facts, Objectives and Pains obtained during your diagnosis. You can create a slide for this if you prefer.

Share a story, or context setting, for what they’re about to see. You can use 1-3 slides for this if you prefer. I would make sure you present your demo in chapters, and let them know what chapters they’re about to cover.

When you switch to your demo, do a quick overview of the layout so they know what they’re looking at, and don’t have to wonder. Without this, they’ll be looking everywhere when you’re trying to explain how you’ll solve their pain. They’ll miss your point.

Try setting up a tab-based demo in which every tab of your browser acts as a “slide.” Avoid clicking places where it will refresh or load a new page. This makes for a clunky demo, which will make it look like the client experience is poor.

Compartmentalize each section by making one point at a time, no more than 3-5 minutes each. Start each section by explaining what problem you’re solving, then say “Let me show you how…”

Demo 1 should show how to solve the biggest pain point you’ve identified. Try to show usage, so they can see how we’ll solve their pain.

Q: At the end of each point, ask an engaging question that makes them think or puts them inside the situation. Good examples are:

This will keep them engaged. If you take too long to get through your demo, and don’t have them participate with an engaging question, then they will lose interest, start doing email, and only emerge for the recap.

Demo 2 should show the second biggest pain point you’ve identified.

Demo 3 should show the third biggest pain point you’ve identified, or should show them a “delighter” they haven’t even thought of. Sometimes this is referred to as demo candy :) Make sure the demo candy is relevant to their situation, or it won’t resonate.

Once you’re done showing the demo (20-30 minute conversation, maximum!!! You need time for other stuff), recap the points you’ve made earlier in the call, then move on to the close.

Here’s an example:

The answers you’ll get here will open up further discovery around the decision process, decision criteria, financial process, legal process, cast of characters, and timelines.

Make sure you leave enough time in your demo to have this thorough conversation, or you’ll be chasing next steps.

Next step, in most cases, should be proposal review. They might need more education, which is OK, but try to make it a “if we do this, can we review a proposal?” exchange.

Book the proposal review call.

Here’s a visual that displays the progression of a demo call:

I’d love to hear from you! Hit reply and let me know what other topics you’d like to learn about.

For more practical early-stage sales tips, connect with me on LinkedIn.

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