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.
Stunningly Awful Demo Strategy: Set-up vs. Daily Use Modes
Most traditional demos follow an illogical pathway to show vendor offerings – they spend far too much showing "Set-up" mode vs. "Daily Use" situations....
The Best Demo Is: No Demo!
A demo is, generally speaking, a form of proof or vision generation. Our objective in sales is to secure the order using the...
Competitive Differentiation – Why Did They Buy From You?
The best sales teams go back to their customers well after the sale has been completed and ask, "So, what made you choose us...
The Insufficiency of “So What?”
A number of sales methodologies have done a good job at helping sales and presales people move from talking about features to discussing the...
Stunningly Awful vs. Truly Terrific Competitive Differentiation – What, When, and How
Competitive Differentiation: vendors want to differentiate, vendors try to differentiate, but most vendors fail to meaningfully and successfully differentiate, in the opinion of...
Database/Toolkit Software and Vision Generation: Ingredients vs. Finished Product
Database and similar "toolkit" software are wonderful in that they can do so many things. The corresponding challenge is that database and toolkit...
End-to-End Integrated Overview Full Suite Demo – Analogies and a Few Solutions
The Situation: Management wants the presales team to show an "end-to-end overview integrated demo of our full suite…" as a part of a typical "introductory"...
“All You Can Eat” Buffet / Smorgasbord – and Price
Showing too many capabilities (that the customer does not perceive they will use) can cause vendors to "buy it back" when it is time...
Surprisingly Delectable Demos – Delightful Dining Analogies
What could we possibly learn from the realm of restaurants and food that we can apply to the wonderful world of demos? Much...
Another Terrific Metric to Track Salesperson Effectiveness
One of the biggest challenges for presales staff can be working with sales people who don't "get it" with respect to the need to...
Why Don’t Customers Remember My Demos?
We typically encounter about 3000 interruption-based marketing messages every day – in the form of web/email/magazine/newspaper/radio/TV ads and commercials, billboards, other signage, and even...
Situation Slides – Three Options for Delivery
In Great Demo! Workshops we teach the idea of using a Situation Slide to start demo meetings, especially for Technical Proof demos, with Situation...
Discovery: Unique, But Part of a Group
People (and companies) perceive themselves as unique, particularly with respect to their situations – but they also want to feel that they are not...
Mixed Face-to-Face and Remote Demos – 3 Good Practices
What should you do when find yourself in a demo where part of the audience is face-to-face with you in a conference room and...
“Demo Days” Are Becoming More Important
A common complaint amongst presales folks is that they rarely get a chance to see one another's demos. Individuals form habits and fall...
Discovery Questions – Vision of the Solution Ongoing
Discovery questions can and should not only include discussion of the desired solution as visualized for initial deployment, but might also explore looking further...
Demos – And Grocery Lists
I am constantly amazed at how vendors, in their demos, expect audiences to retain and remember the (often) enormous number of features and functions...
Stunningly Awful Demos – Two Words to Avoid
Name two words that strike fear and terror into the hearts of customers watching a software demonstration – two words that lengthen demos and...
Discovery Documents – As Questions, Topics or ?
A number of people have asked about how to draft Discovery Documents – should one use full-length questions or something shorter, for example? One starting...
Discovery Documents – For New Product Launches
I can visualize folks in marketing cogitating over plans for a new product launch… "Ok, let's see… We have our checklist for our upcoming...