How To Run an Effective Intro/Demo Call

In-depth blueprint and script to guide your sales call

Author

Daniel Hebert
March 15, 2024

A lot of founders have asked me lately how to run an intro/demo call.

Here’s an in-depth blueprint with scripts to get you started.

Table of Contents

Prep

Before the call starts, find relevant events that happened for the prospect. Hiring, funding, new product launches, major updates, etc. This will serve for bonding and rapport.

Bonding & Rapport

This should be relevant to the prospect and business related. You’re trying to build a relationship quickly. No chit chatting about the weather or if they’re working remote. Use the information you found in your prep.

Here’s an example: 

Hey [[prospect_name]], I noticed your latest product launch. Looks great! What role did you play in putting this together?

Up-Front Contract

Every call starts and ends with an Up-Front-Contract. Get the logistics out of the way - time check and people check. Good pivot words to go from bonding to UFC are “OK,” or “alright.” 

Ok. Are we still good for 30 minutes? And is anyone else expected to join us?

Move on to the purpose. You want to have a strong purpose for each call. 

The purpose of this call is to get a better understanding of your feature request process to see if Savio is a good fit for you. Naturally, I’ll have some questions. Are you OK with that?

Move on to their agenda. Best way to frame it is to talk about their ideal outcome for the call. Framing it this way limits the amount of technical conversation early on in the call, and sets you up for a solid next step right away. 

What’s your ideal outcome for the call today?

Then finish off with asking for a next step conversation. 

We’ll definitely cover that today. There’s two ways this call typically ends. One, we’re not a fit and we don’t move forward. Are you comfortable with telling me no? Great. The other outcome is we can help your testing program. If so, can we reserve 5-6 minutes at the end to discuss next steps, which is typically a custom demo?

This type of UFC sets the conversation right from the start.

Facts, Objectives, and Pains

These are lay of the land questions that help you verify information and get you in the pain funnel. There’s typically a few techniques you can use here:

1. Menu Options: Here you’re presenting the most common pains we’ve solved for our customers as a question, and letting them choose which one is most important to them.

E.g. Typically, when we’re talking to Engineering leaders, they usually have one of the following challenges. They’re frustrated with X, concerned about Y, worried about Z. Are any of those relevant? Which ones? Which one do you think is most important? Oh, that’s interesting. Tell me more about that….

2. Walk me through: This is a broad question to get a situational/lay-of-the-land analysis. It’s important to keep it focused to their goals/challenges/responsibilities. You’re trying to understand process so you have an opportunity to probe deeper. 

E.g. Can you walk me through how you do [[key process/workflow]] today?

Pain Questions

This is where the meat of the conversation happens. Once you’ve assessed a bit of the situation and got a couple quick yesses or a path forward, it opens up your pain funnel. The pain funnel is a magical tool that will uncover MONEY $$$$ for you. The deeper the pain, the more they’re willing to pay. Don’t skip this. Plus side - an effective pain funnel only take 5-7 minutes to go through

I know, shocking right?  

Once you’ve identified a pain, you can use this pain funnel to go deep:

-Tell me more about that (FO)
-Can you be more specific? Can you give me an example? (FO)
-How long has that been a problem for you? (FO)
-What have you tried to do about it? (FO)
-How much do you think that’s cost the business? (UN)
-How do you feel about that? (U)
-Where do you want to be? (O)
-What’s stopping you from getting there? (FO)
-What happens if you don’t solve this in the next 6 months? (NDE)
-What’s driving you to make a change now? (NDE)

The goal with the pain funnel is to quickly get them to open up with broad business questions. There are other “generic” questions you can ask to keep them talking. 

E.g.  What else?
  Anything else?
  What do you think is the real challenge there for you? [[Good for personal pain]]

There are also gain questions that can be added to the pain funnel to probe for opportunities. Some prospects are risk-averse, and prefer to focus on mitigating risks or solving pain. Some prospects are opportunistic, and prefer to grow or gain something. It’s good to have a series of questions that cater to both so you’re hitting every angle with every prospect.

Summarize What You’ve Learned

This is where you want to pause and make sure you understand their challenge. Paraphrase using their language, and finish off with “Did I get this right?” If they say yes, this is where you can move on to sharing stories and probing for impact.

Share Your Point of View

This is your opportunity to demonstrate you can solve their problem. It’s your 30-second commercial, adapted to fit their context. We’re not necessarily looking to pitch functionality here, we are positioning solutions that solve their pain that we’ve uncovered and sharing the impact we can have.Three good elements of a story:

  1. Why? What is happening in the market (Aargh, I have a problem)

  2. How? What is the approach to solve this (AHA there’s a solution!)

  3. What? What does your company do? (WOW you’re the solution!)

Light Demo

At this point, you’ll do a light demo. Try to keep it to 10-15 minutes. Don’t show everything.

Each section of your demo should clearly explain the context, what problem you’re solving, the capabilities they gain, the features of the workflow, and the outcome they can achieve.

End the section with a conversation question, something like:

How does this compare to what you’re doing with [[name their process]]?

Reaching a Decision

Once you have them in awe, we can move on to understanding how they bring on new solutions. You can probe for cast of characters, decision process, decision criteria, timelines, budgeting/financial process, etc. Save enough time for this conversation.

Booking Next Steps

Let’s talk about next steps. You always finish a call discussing next steps.

Here’s a quick and dirty secret on setting next steps - it’s the same as an up front contract, just at the end of the call!!! If you get good at your UFC, you’ll always know how to book next steps. Time + people, purpose of next call, agenda/outcome, and suggesting next step after that.

You can use you ending from this call as your UFC for your next call, and start connecting your meetings. It’s amazing!

Here’s an example of asking for/setting solid next steps: 

 At the start of the call, we set out to solve for [[outcome]]. I believe we achieved that.  [[SILENCE! DON’T SAY A THING! Let them break the silence. If they say yes, move onto the next phase. If no, then you’ve uncovered that you missed something and ask them what you missed. Either way, it sets you up for next steps]] 

So are you ready to move forward? 

Typically, the next step is a customized demo. It’s usually 60-minutes, is that OK? And should [[character 1]] and [[character 2]] join us for this call?

Who else would feel left out? Great, we’ll add them. 

The purpose of this call is to demonstrate how we’ll solve X, Y, and Z. What’s your ideal outcome at the end of that call? Anything else you’d like to cover?  Great, let’s get that on calendar. I have mine open in front of me - does [[next 1-3 business days]] work at [[suggest the same time]]? 

I’ll send you a calendar invite and add the others to it. 

Can I ask you a favor? I’ll email you a summary of our conversation today. Can you read it over and reply back if I got it right?

Thank you. Looking forward to progressing the conversation. Thanks!

Use this script on your next call and let me know how it worked.

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

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