“Not Yet

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Very often, presales managers are asked to qualify sales opportunities before assigning a presales resource for a demo. This often takes the form of reviewing the information entered into a CRM system by a sales person or submitted by that sales person on an internal form. There are typically only two answers:

“Yes” – you have provided enough information/the opportunity is sufficiently qualified (or senior management has decreed that it is…!) and yes, we’ll schedule a presales resource for your demo.

“No” – the opportunity is insufficiently documented; no demo resource for you. [“No soup for you…!” – my apologies for the Seinfield reference…]

“No” answers often cause trauma in the organization. Sales people may run to their managers to complain, etc.etc. Here’s a wonderful alternative to consider: “Not yet”.

“Not Yet” – you don’t have enough information yet; please go back and do a more complete effort of qualification/discovery. Here are a few questions we need answered – then we should be able to provide you with a demo resource…

A wonderfully gentle, but firm way of accomplishing the same objective!

Copyright © 2009 The Second Derivative – All Rights Reserved.

For more tips and articles on demonstration effectiveness skills and methods, email me at [email protected] or visit our website at www.SecondDerivative.com. For demo tips, best practices, tools and techniques, join the DemoGurus Community Website at www.DemoGurus.com or explore our blog at http://greatdemo.blogspot.com/.

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.

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