S13 E3: The Last Thing First- Learn to Create Compelling Demonstrations
08/01/22 • 46 min
Welcome Back to Bill Murphy’s 10x Podcast. Our guest in this episode is Peter Cohan, founder and principal of The Second Derivative, author of “Great Demo!” and a savant in the sales world.
Additionally, Peter serves on the Board of Directors for Collaborative Drug Discovery, Inc., is an advisor to IN2SV, Inc., holds a degree in chemistry, and is a mentor to StartX, the Stanford University start-up accelerator.
Peter has vast experience working with senior management in marketing, sales, and business development. and has learned to discover and understand the needs of a customer. Peter’s mission is to advise organizations on the ways they can better improve their sales and marketing results through creating and executing compelling demonstrations.
In this episode, he shares with listeners his best-known method, the “Last Thing First,” which teaches you to “turn the demo upside down” and start with the end-result first.
You do not have to be in sales to benefit from Peter’s methods, his principles prove valuable to many parts of an organization
Peter hopes to inspire you to constantly seek ways to improve upon your skills and practices.
Show your customers the possibilities that will benefit the future of their business and an end- result that cannot be refused.
Tune in to learn more.
As a Chief Information Officer and Business IT Leader here are some wins you will get by listening:
4:00 There are two roles of an IT Leader: offense and defense. The defense protects the kingdom, keeps the lights on, and ensures the users are happy. The offense helps put points on the board and supports sales.
5:00 Modern IT leaders can support sales in the future by providing subject matter expertise to the sales team, enabling a demo environment, and seeking to understand where the organization needs to go and what can be done to help by providing tools and services.
6:30 The key success factor in the pre-sales process is having a structured way of communicating information.
6:40 “The Great Demo” introduces a structure called the situation slide, which is used to recommunicate key pieces of information to deliver a credible demo.
8:00 Before you call a prospect, have a conversation with the vendor and ask: What is our objective for this demo? What do we know about this prospect? What do you want me to present in this demo? What do you not want me to present in this demo?
10:00 The key element in creating any demo is understanding what specific capabilities a prospect needs to see versus everything else that is in your offering.
11:30 Find sales representatives who are highly respected and use those people as your models to learn their best practices.
12:00 Successful sales reps execute the most important part of the sales process: sufficient discovery of the customer's needs followed by communicating those discoveries with the team.
18:30 Vision generation demos spark interest and highlight what is possible.
20:30 Lead with pictures of graphs, reports, and dashboards to present complex ideas in a straightforward way. Do not bury people in complexity.
23:30 The goal of a demo is to show your customer a “menu” of your offerings. If you are offering several different modules, utilize vision generation.
27:00 In a demo, do not show a prospect a boring boat. Show them that it is a battleship driving through the heavy seas. This is the result a prospect is looking for.
28:00 The higher you go in an organization, the less they care about the process and more just the end-result. Turn the demo upside down and do that last thing first.
32:30 A successful salesperson is interested in continually improving his or her process.
Resources:
LessIsMore.com (For PowerPoint Presentations)
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Share it on your LinkedIn feed.
If you have not already, please leave us a review on iTunes.
______________________________________________________________________
About Bill Murphy
Bill Murphy is a world-renowned IT Security Expert dedicated to your success as an IT business leader. Follow Bill on
Welcome Back to Bill Murphy’s 10x Podcast. Our guest in this episode is Peter Cohan, founder and principal of The Second Derivative, author of “Great Demo!” and a savant in the sales world.
Additionally, Peter serves on the Board of Directors for Collaborative Drug Discovery, Inc., is an advisor to IN2SV, Inc., holds a degree in chemistry, and is a mentor to StartX, the Stanford University start-up accelerator.
Peter has vast experience working with senior management in marketing, sales, and business development. and has learned to discover and understand the needs of a customer. Peter’s mission is to advise organizations on the ways they can better improve their sales and marketing results through creating and executing compelling demonstrations.
In this episode, he shares with listeners his best-known method, the “Last Thing First,” which teaches you to “turn the demo upside down” and start with the end-result first.
You do not have to be in sales to benefit from Peter’s methods, his principles prove valuable to many parts of an organization
Peter hopes to inspire you to constantly seek ways to improve upon your skills and practices.
Show your customers the possibilities that will benefit the future of their business and an end- result that cannot be refused.
Tune in to learn more.
As a Chief Information Officer and Business IT Leader here are some wins you will get by listening:
4:00 There are two roles of an IT Leader: offense and defense. The defense protects the kingdom, keeps the lights on, and ensures the users are happy. The offense helps put points on the board and supports sales.
5:00 Modern IT leaders can support sales in the future by providing subject matter expertise to the sales team, enabling a demo environment, and seeking to understand where the organization needs to go and what can be done to help by providing tools and services.
6:30 The key success factor in the pre-sales process is having a structured way of communicating information.
6:40 “The Great Demo” introduces a structure called the situation slide, which is used to recommunicate key pieces of information to deliver a credible demo.
8:00 Before you call a prospect, have a conversation with the vendor and ask: What is our objective for this demo? What do we know about this prospect? What do you want me to present in this demo? What do you not want me to present in this demo?
10:00 The key element in creating any demo is understanding what specific capabilities a prospect needs to see versus everything else that is in your offering.
11:30 Find sales representatives who are highly respected and use those people as your models to learn their best practices.
12:00 Successful sales reps execute the most important part of the sales process: sufficient discovery of the customer's needs followed by communicating those discoveries with the team.
18:30 Vision generation demos spark interest and highlight what is possible.
20:30 Lead with pictures of graphs, reports, and dashboards to present complex ideas in a straightforward way. Do not bury people in complexity.
23:30 The goal of a demo is to show your customer a “menu” of your offerings. If you are offering several different modules, utilize vision generation.
27:00 In a demo, do not show a prospect a boring boat. Show them that it is a battleship driving through the heavy seas. This is the result a prospect is looking for.
28:00 The higher you go in an organization, the less they care about the process and more just the end-result. Turn the demo upside down and do that last thing first.
32:30 A successful salesperson is interested in continually improving his or her process.
Resources:
LessIsMore.com (For PowerPoint Presentations)
_____________________________________________________________________
Love this episode? Leave a Review
Share it on your LinkedIn feed.
If you have not already, please leave us a review on iTunes.
______________________________________________________________________
About Bill Murphy
Bill Murphy is a world-renowned IT Security Expert dedicated to your success as an IT business leader. Follow Bill on
Previous Episode
S13 E2: Smart Cities of the Future - Leveraging Data to Improve the Quality of Life for All Citizens Featuring Brian Chidester
Welcome Back to Bill Murphy’s 10x Podcast. Our guest in this episode is Brian Chidester, award-winning, public sector marketing executive, and expert integrated messaging strategist. Brian is currently the Industry Vice President at Genesys, an Advisor to the G20 Global Smart Cities Alliance, and a member of the Forbes Technology Council.
Today, Brian shares with listeners the benefits of developing smart cities and explains how they promote sustainable practices that will address growing urbanization challenges that cities face. By leveraging the data that smart cities provide, stewards within a community can help make better decisions on behalf of the constituents.
As a supporter of smart city evolution, Brian shares examples to describe how process efficiency, edge computing, and curb management can help advocate for the future and advancements of smart cities.
Tune in today and learn about the possibilities smart cities are providing our communities.
As a Chief Information Officer (CIO) and Business IT Leader here are some wins you will get by listening:[5:30] Brian: To be a true advisor to sales leadership, you must have a deep understanding of the market and the reason behind what you are doing.
[7:00] Brian: Anyone working in the technology sector begins to realize that everything is interconnected.
[8:00] Brian: When looking at the government space, it pulls you into an experience. The experience can be a digital experience through your mobile device, tablet, or computer, but it also evolves into smart cities.
[9:00] Brian: A smart city is a framework, an idea, that is composed of information communications technology (ICT).
[9:40] Brian: The idea behind smart cities is to develop and promote sustainable practices that help address growing and advancing urbanization challenges that cities face.
[9:55] Brian: A foundational piece of a smart city is cloud. Cloud-based IoT applications and sensors can receive, analyze, and manage data in real time to help improve the quality of life for citizens living in a city or connected community.
[10:30] Brian: The most important piece that comes from the cloud based IoT applications is the data. The data provides insights so that stewards within the community can make better decisions on behalf of the constituents.
[11:30] Brian: London pioneered the initial smart city.
[12:55] Brian: Smaller cities have the greatest innovation despite having a smaller budget because they do not have to go through policy roadblocks that stand in the way of bigger cities.
[13:50] Brian: For example, when it comes to trash removal, technology is not added to help get the trash out faster but to understand where the process slows down. Therefore, technology is used for process efficiency.
[14:35] Brian: In Buffalo, NY the city turned trash removal trucks into moving sensors by adding video cameras, leveraging AI (Artificial Intelligence), and using 5G capabilities to find potholes that need to be filled.
[15:25] Brian: Edge computing is the ability to process data at the point. An example of this is a sensor.
[16:00] Brian: Edge computing and 5G from an infrastructure perspective can allow quick reaction times to help the evolution of smart cities.
[17:00] Brian: The concerns surrounding 5G are the pockets of the broadband infrastructure. Smart cities can help with digital equity, but one of the biggest challenges is access to broadband.
[19:10] Brian: GDPR and the Europeans are ahead of the US when it comes to privacy practices and policies.
[20:14] Brian: Security of data is critical for protecting privacy. With new video footage capabilities such as speed cameras or security cameras, we must ensure this information does not fall into the wrong hands.
[21:30] Brian: Policy is always lagging behind technology. That is why the government tends to be late adopters of technology.
[24:30] Brian: There is a lot of value that data can bring to the citizen.
[24:38] Curb management is a big trend happening with smart cities because of curb real estate. The data surrounding curb management can help cities identify how to manage and optimize curb space to allow for curb demands. An example of this is DoorDash pickups and drop offs.
[26:04] Brian: A big topic that's being looked at within smart cities is how to help address climate change. How can we lower the city's carbon footprint by leveraging smart devices?
[29:07] Brian: The City of Chattanooga is looking at how they can prevent car accidents and pedestrian deaths by having a sensor speak to a vehicle which then stops it when the car gets close to a crosswalk.
[29:53] Brian: When we think of smart cities, it's an ecosystem. It's not just about a device here and there. It's a framework and policies, but it is also a complete ecosyst...
Next Episode
S13 E4: An Inside Look into the World of A CIO & Venture Capital Investor
Welcome back to Bill Murphy’s 10x Podcast. Our guest in this episode is John Arsneault, CIO at Goulston & Storrs, a venture capital investor and a startup advisor. With over 30 years in the tech industry, John is an expert strategist ensuring business growth.
John began his career repairing PCs at an after-school job before transitioning to working for a small venture capital company in Boston. Through this experience and by observing his co-workers making investment deals, he found an interest in investing.
Fast forward to today, he is now the founder of Portfolio X, a venture capital company that invests in emerging technologies. John is passionate about offering investing advice, and emphasizes the importance of betting on a person, not their ideas. John also talks about his role as CIO and strongly encourages us to be the curators of change within our organizations.
In addition to his useful advice, John tells us about his family roots in Maine, his love for baseball, and explains to us that we do not need a grand plan to be successful. Through hard work, making mistakes, and trying a couple of times, growth is achieved, and remarkable things happen.
Oh, and did someone say flying cars? Tune in and listen to the Podcast to learn more.
As a Chief Information Officer and Business IT Leader here are the wins you will get by listening:
Bill [11:12] “There is some wisdom in non-traditional paths as far as what growth opportunities it gives people.”
John [12:42] After working at a small venture capital company in Boston, John developed a strong interest in investing.
John [13:12] There are two streams of technology professionals in the world. The people that maintain technology environments for enterprise or existing businesses. Then there are people that work in the actual tech industry.
John [13:42] Realizing you could go work for a technology company and be the product itself, not just the back office necessary expenditure, was exciting because this meant that you are building an actual product while earning equity.
John [15:42] Everything a person learns is the outcome of watching, making mistakes, and trying a couple of times until they got it right.
John: [16:12] The biggest mistake that people make when entering the world of investing is, they get so enamored with somebody’s idea. There are lots of entrepreneurs that have cool ideas. There are very few of them that can turn that idea into a functioning burgeoning business.
John [16:42] In these days investing is cloudy because it is easy to get venture capital, but in the past, it was hard. So, people assumed that if somebody got funded the company was destined to do well, however 90% of new businesses fail.
Bill [17:12] Are we betting on the idea? Or are we betting on a growing business?
John [17:42] You bet on the entrepreneurs themselves and not the ideas.
John [18:42] When investing, be on the side of something that has already proven itself in the marketplace, has brand recognition, and seems obvious that it’s the new way to do it.
John [20:42] Over the last five years, everything has become a technology startup. Even existing businesses in a way are becoming technology startups within themselves.
John [23:12] You have no crystal ball. You do not know if entrepreneurs are going to guide the business properly, but to make an informed decision you can look at what they’ve done and how they’ve gotten to that point.
John [24:42] Private market exchanges
John [28:42] You can do all the homework in the world, at the end of the day you just do not how things are going to turn out.
John [31:12] A spec is a special all-purpose collection of equity investors.
Bill [34:42] Apps and technologies are so quick that they outstrip our ability to regulate.
John [35:12] The next iteration of innovation is going to be technologies that bump up against compliance and regulation.
John [36:12] There is technology that already exists but is not being utilized because it’s not yet legal.
John [37:12] Regulation and compliance must catch up with technology, or the technology is going to slow down.
John [39:42] 40% of the world’s population have never been on the internet.
John [40:42] People can suddenly go from being behind the rest of the world by a hundred years, but in a split second can be ahead of everybody because their adoption rate will not be getting rid of the old thing but going right to the modern setup.
John [40:57] The biggest barrier for the United States to be competitive in the next hundred years is going to be our will to adopt new things.
John [43:42] A CIO's role traditionally in a law firm was to put together the technical Legos to make people efficient and allow them to do their jobs. However, in the next decade, the C...
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