XYZ Inc were evaluating IT Process Automation solutions and had asked three vendors to conduct a Proof of Concept (POC), all at the same time. Our Presales specialist Kris went onsite, by himself, to install and configure the software. The other two vendors each had small teams of 2 or 3 people working on their POCs.
Over the course of the week, Kris took the time to visit the competitor teams in their rooms. He had short chats with them, exuded confidence and made sure to tell them how smoothly he was progressing. When the customer stakeholder visited for a status update, Kris leaned back in his chair and put his feet up on the desk. “All done”, he said.
You may be thinking that Kris was acting a little too cocky. While that is true, I love this story as an example of one of my maxims for Presales: Make it look easy.
In Presales, our core role is to sell a technical solution, with emphasis on the word “sell”. Technical solutions can be complex and that’s why companies have people like us on the team. Presales bring technical depth and credibility to the company through our expertise and our customer interactions.
However, where we can sometimes trip ourselves up (from a sales perspective) is when we go into too much detail, confuse the customer with complexity, or show something that makes our solution look difficult to use. As Presales professionals, we need to consciously consider how we communicate, both verbally and non-verbally, and what we can do to make our solution look simple to deploy and use. We need to make it look easy.
To be clear, I’m not suggesting that our job is to be deceptive. Integrity and credibility are important and once the customer does buy, I want Presales to maintain a connection with them (my second maxim for Presales: “Build a relationship”) and make them successful users of our product. For the customer to choose our solution over the competitor, I need to build their confidence in our capabilities and ease of use. If I make it look hard, then I haven’t done my job properly.
Here are 5 practical ways to make it look easy:
- Minimise clicks. Less is more. You might be intimately familiar with navigating around your tool’s interface, but the customer is not. In a demo, show only those screens, capabilities or features that support the use case and your value story. There is no need to show every possible thing that your product can do.
- Fewer faces. Lots of people in the room for the presentation or POC? “Gee, it must be complex”, thinks the customer. If you need to hire a bus to take the team onsite, that’s too many people. If you do need support from specialists, try to get remote assistance or only have one extra person onsite with you at a time.
- Tell stories about outcomes. Stories help you connect with people and case studies provide great examples of your solution in action. When asked a question, answer with a simple story about what another customer achieved. Focus on the results, rather than the detailed steps of how they got there.
- Rough and Ready POCs. Our job in a POC is not to deliver a production-ready system, so it’s ok to resort to a bit of “smoke-and-mirrors”. We need to showcase our solution in a way that persuades the customer that we are the best choice, and we need to do it fast. So don’t spend unneccesary time on things like robust exception handling or integrations. Use scripts, flat files or manual actions to simulate external systems.
- Simplify Installation. This will not be an issue in the world of SaaS, but one thing that can make a solution appear complex in a POC is the installation process. Use a pre-installed virtual machine, a “POC-in-a-box” Docker image or a cloud-based service. Worst case, try and encourage the customer to go and enjoy a coffee while you run the install script.
What techniques do you use to make it look easy?
Thoughtful Presales 