How do you balance technical depth and business value in your presales demos and presentations?

You're looking for a partner, not a customer. Dig into the value proposition over anything else at pre-sales level. What problem are you solving, show you've listened to the problem and show how you can solve the problem.

My experience is on the buying side for large corporations. So I will share from that perspective. Understand who is driving the engagement. The users or the gatekeepers (generally procurement, or IT partners or innovation groups) Depending on that you have to tailor the demo. If users, do you understand their pain points enough to tailor the demo? If gatekeepers, give equal weightage to their pain points as well as to users pain points. Also try to do a demo separately focused on users once you do a demo to the gatekeepers. Let the gatekeepers guide you but make sure you gather user pain points from users directly.

It can be tempting for those working for tech companies to dive into the technology too quickly. We are typically enthusiastic about the features and can forget that there has to be a business reason, with clear benefits before a customer will progress. Listening and understanding the business aims and objectives sounds obvious but can be easily overlooked when we are eager to evangelise the tech.

I generally try and keep demonstrations applicable to a wide range of stakeholders. I tend to focus on value drivers and will hit and technical details throughout the presentation. Then I schedule technical deep dives as follow-up sessions with the relevant audience.

1. Work closely with your AE to understand your audience. 2. Ensure that your presentation contains an explicit value arc. 3. This value arc should connect a) benefits to functional users, b) positive impact on their department's KPIs, and c) how it enables the company to make/save money or minimize risk 4. If presenting to senior stakeholders, explicitly focus on how your solution helps reduce resources and spend. Do this within the first few minutes. 5. If demoing to functional audiences, try to separate "technical users" from "business users" in order to maximize relevance and minimize boredom. 6. Share pre-recorded demos so you can maximize discussion time.

In my experiences, stories and scenarios are powerful with customers. Resist the urge to "show up and throw up" powerpoint slides. Knowing your audience and sending pre-read material ahead of time is greatly appreciated by customers. Another effective technique is to whiteboard with the customer and get them moving around vs sitting at a table. Capturing their goals and pain points on the board first and then diving into possible solutions will help earn trust. Customers dont want to be pitched to but will listen to an authentic individual that can connect the dots between where help is needed and possible solutions.

Customer stories are your MOST powerful tool in striking a balance between tech depth and value. They help you - form an emotional connection by humanizing the problem - establish relevance - preemptively handle some objections - differentiate your offering AND your sales approach from the competition Practice storytelling with your presales team and with your AEs. Use simple frameworks such as CONTEXT > CONFLICT > RESOLUTION > TRANSFORMATION. When presenting to a Director or above, tell stories of how your solution helped their peers at other companies achieve lower spend, do more with a team, etc. When presenting to a practitioner, tell a story that helps them understand how their peers are able to do X faster or easier. Have fun!

One of the easiest way I have found to create a story is to use news headlines that relate to the company and can relate to the problem for them that you are trying to solve. This lends credence to the story and makes it personally impactful.

Post-discovery, when you have confidence you know what to present, how to present really matters. Prepare as if you are making a movie. Create a small number of "scenes" within your story telling thread. Each scene explains what you are about to show, then shows, then summarises what was shown to gain concensus of comprehension. Only then should you move to the next scene.

I believe doing a POC based on customer use case is best way showcasing a demo. As it means you have done your ground study about their business and also made effort to do a customized demo rather than a default flow. Use more pictures and media to gain more attention and as it attracts human interest and makes them imagine things rather than you depicting a story alone.

Industry experience really matters in such scenarios. Presentations using business terminology (supported by real experience and not just buzzwords) immediately resonate with stakeholders and give them a confidence that we understand their industry and challenges. If you’re new, then a bit of research can help prepare for better engagement as it shows the effort made to create a successful pitch.

This can be one of the more difficult things to accomplish and master. Although there is language in every industry or niche industry, often times client will still have their own version of the that language. Listen carefully during discovery for these terms and utilize them appropriately.

I find it valuable to research the people I am meeting and the business in relation to its vertical sector. You can then try and empathise with what they are trying to do, such that you think like them and therefore can help them. You must validate your thinking and get them talking about business and personal goals. It is all to easy to just talk about and display what your organisation can do - it is only relevant if they can connect your capabilities to their goals. Utilising something like DISC profiles helps you talk in their language and style so makes it easier to build rapport - they need to like you to trust you.

If you have different departments in the meeting i.e. tech and functional then don’t be afraid to acknowledge that. You could stick with a single meeting but tell people this is more relevant for the tech or function audience ie make it easy for them to know when to re-engage. Alternatively just propose 2 seperate meetings in the first place. Ideally you would know the audience before the meeting and have discussed this challenge with your interval champion!

- sounds bizarre, but I’ve had extremely consistent success by arriving with craft brew that I made as a gift and then I explain I have some slides or environment to show but would rather have a discussion about their specific business and how I can help them. Usually extremely efficient conversations and I’ve only had to show a presentation once after, which was mostly because we had time to kill and they enjoyed the brews while seeing the slide validation of what we discussed. I even got best presentation of the day once without showing anything. Didn’t even open my laptop bag. When you know how to ask the right questions and understand your customers answers and why they matter, there’s really no need for demo.