Peter Cohan
Peter Cohan
Have you ever seen a bad software demonstration? Peter Cohan is the founder and principal of Great Demo!, focused on helping software organizations improve the success rates of their demos. He authored Great Demo! - how to prepare and deliver surprisingly compelling software demonstrations. Peter has experience as an individual contributor, manager and senior management in marketing, sales, and business development. He has also been, and continues to be, a customer.
Problem Solvers vs. Problem Finders
The world today respects problem solvers – without question. Intriguingly, however, many senior managers are now assigning even higher value to problem finders or...
Technology Adoption Curve – And the Degree of Proof Your Customers Require
A simple way to tell where your customers are on the technology adoption curve is to assess the degree of proof they require prior...
Other Vendors’ Demos – Great Source for Learning
I’m occasionally surprised to find presales staff who have never seen another vendor’s demo – not even demos from a competitor… (So, if you...
Uses (and Cautions) of Recorded Demos
Recorded demos offer some wonderful opportunities for delivering content – but need to be used with careful regards to your objectives and customer situations....
Stunningly Awful Sales Tactics – The Future-Sales Prevention Team
Stunningly Awful Sales Tactics – The Future-Sales Prevention Team Or The Curse of the Hunter-Farmer Model Are your sales teams traditional, better or truly great?…
When the Best Solution Is NOT Your Offering
Have you ever found, when doing Discovery with a prospect, that the problem they face may not be best addressed by your offering –...
Stunningly Awful Demo Communication – Unencrispening the Demo
The higher the customer’s job title, typically, the stronger is their desire for vendors to be crisp, focused and precise in their communications. “Get...
Difficulties in Demonstrating Toolkit and Toolbox Software
Many organizations don’t describe their offerings as complete applications, but rather as toolkits or toolboxes – and very often struggle to find effective ways...
If Everyone Says Their RFP Win Rates Are Really Bad Then…
It suddenly struck me, if everyone says that their RFP win rates are really bad, then … who’s winning all those RFPs? Hmmmm… In...
Let’s Talk About Value – Uncovering the Delta
To paraphrase Mark Twain’s comment about the weather, everyone talks about value, but very few people actually do something about it. Clearly value is...
ZoomIt – Annotations When Using Lync (and other tools) for Remote Demos
While I generally recommend WebEx and GoToMeeting for Remote Demos, largely due to their imbedded annotations capabilities, there is now a viable option for...
Frightening Statistics on Doing Discovery
I’ve done some informal interviews with heads of sales and presales recently and uncovered the following, rather consistent statements: - Heads of sales and presales...
Presales Anxiety – Not Knowing All of the Answers…
Many presales people share concerns about being sufficiently deep with respect to product knowledge (and industry knowledge, and customer knowledge, and competitor knowledge, and...
Land and Expand Great Demo! Tactics
Here are a number of Great Demo! tactics that folks have reported have been working particularly well for teams doing “Land and Expand”: - ...
Implementing Methodology Training – How to Move the 40%
In most organizations, participants of any methodology or skills training tend to cluster into three groups: - ...
Skills Training and Managers – The Good, the Bad, and the Truly Ugly
See if this sounds familiar: a manager organizes skills training for his/her team and, on the day of the training, the manager kicks...
Transition Vision and Value Realization
Have you ever made a major software purchase? What happened the moment you issued that purchase order – and when was that pressure...
Twas the Night Before The Big Demo
Twas the Night Before The Big Demo (with apologies to Clement Clarke Moore) 'Twas the night 'fore the demo and all through the house Not…
Stunningly Awful Sales Kickoff Demos
Stunningly Awful Sales Kickoff Demos Selling to Your Sales Force – The Toughest Customer of All! Cries of “Who cares?”, “So what?” and...
Stunningly Awful Demo Outcomes – Why Objections Shouldn’t Need To Be Overcome
"Help me understand how to handle customer objections…" "My team needs to learn how to handle objections…" What's wrong with these requests? Many sales methodologies…