For many, this means supporting sales people on individual deals—such as doing presentations and demos or authoring RFPs. How often does a custom demo outperform a standard one? Could demos be put online in a video format? Should we set up a demo center? MORE
Product Demos: Selling Value in Spite of Product Deficiencies. The B2B Product Manager Magazine April 2017 is now available. In this issue we cover everything from selling value in spite of your product’s deficiencies to what makes a rock star product manager to the criticality of the functional designer role. Plus tips for hiring the right product manager and getting unbiased customer feedback. View the April 2017 Issue. In This Issue: Blog: High-Octane Product Management. MORE
In this issue we cover everything from obsessing over customer success to demo techniques to improving your website lead generation and conversion. We also throw in a few tips for improving feature adoption, product demos, product planning and win-loss analysis. Web Demos: Engaging An Audience You Can’t See. Product Demo Techniques: Telling Versus Selling. The B2B Product Manager Magazine March 2017 is now available. MORE
Product demo objections are a staple of the sales process in the B2B software business. Successful demos require that you master the art of making certain product deficiencies seem trivial in the grand scheme of the overall solution. The Playbook: The single biggest factor to overcoming product demo objections is to understand very early in the sales cycle the strategic goals of the executive buyers. MORE
The Body Part: Product Demos. In many companies, product demos are a second string job for anyone with product expertise. The injury: poor problem discovery and poor preparation make for “show up and throw up” feature demos that bore prospects to tears and delay buying decisions. There’s a good reason why athletes in contact sports wear protective pads. MORE
With an agreed vision and delivery plan and with the first members of the team on board, we did was what all good bands do: make a demo. The Demo. Some years ago, I wrote a blog post noting that small teams are more creative and productive than big teams. MORE
You’ll want to tailor all of your sales materials—the web site, demo, presentation, ebooks—around this ideal customer profile. Analyzing past results to drive future successes may be the most important goal for today’s product leaders. MORE
Every deal the company won had one thing in common: the buyer participated in a non-customized demo in the company briefing center. The solution was to standardize the selling process around a standard demo. Have it always ready for a standard demo.” MORE
Do it early in the sales process and your presentations and demos will flat out “nail it.”. If you’re going to dominate your market, you have to make the customer organization measurably better at their business, from the top down. Products and services are the means to the end, but every customer-facing function in your organization plays a role in delivering customer value. It’s like relay race. MORE
This concept also holds true for salespeople who do product demos, with the understanding that a further level of product training is required. Wealth made simple: news and articles from IRC Wealth. Product training for sales is one of the more daunting tasks for product managers and marketers and one of the biggest product rollout challenges in high-tech companies. You’ve created textbook sales and marketing materials. MORE
In some cases, it’s clear that the person doing the demo hasn’t prepared and is just following a canned script. In others, you can tell that they put a lot of time into tailoring the demo specifically for the client, but even then, the demo can often miss the target. MORE
Demo of our solution. What if we demoed the wrong solution for their needs? Nearly every product manager I speak to desires to be a leader in his or her organization. MORE
Note that this approach still assumes that you can collect the relevant feedback in the sprint review meeting, for instance, by carrying out a product demo, usability test, or solution interview. Option 1: In the Sprint Review Meeting. MORE
In this issue we cover everything from obsessing over customer success to demo techniques to improving your website lead generation and conversion. We also throw in a few tips for improving feature adoption, product demos, product planning and win-loss analysis. Web Demos: Engaging An Audience You Can’t See. Product Demo Techniques: Telling Versus Selling. The March 2017 Issue of The B2B Product Manager Magazine is now available. MORE
And I wanted them to see the presentation and demo done correctly at least once. When it comes to product, get one of the sales engineers to deliver the presentation and demo. Or, Be careful what you teach your sales teams. MORE
Get people to practise things like stand-ups, demo days, progress reports, anything that exposes the work you’re doing. Coach, lean advocate and author Jeff Gothelf talked about scaling Lean principles at this year’s London #mtpcon. MORE
So often, we see our role at a trade show as one of doing demos and talking up our product’s features. When you begin a demo, talk about the problem first. If they don’t, then demo the solution to a different problem.). By prefacing your demo with a conversation about problems (rather than leading with your product), you increase the likelihood of people being more open about their pain points. Events. It’s natural to dread them. MORE
We did a “lunch-and-learn” where we fed the team pizza and spaghetti, while one of our product managers did a demo of the product and talked about how it was complimentary to the products they were already selling into their accounts. MORE
When it comes to product demo techniques, there are two styles: telling and selling. The “telling” demo (stop me when you see a feature you like) won’t energize your buyers or set you apart from the competition. The “selling” demo energizes your buyers with a vision because it’s more about their business than it is your products. The “Telling” Demo. It’s more or less a rewind and replay for each demo. MORE
” He is contacted directly by potential buyers—they don’t want a sales demo, they want advice. By the time the average customer reaches out to a company or is contacted by a sales rep, that customer's purchase decision is almost over. Matt Dixon, author, The Challenger Sale. MORE
The product managers certainly need to be there to make sure nobody makes any claims that must be supported elsewhere—such as the demo or on the ever-changing product roadmap; you need to make sure nobody is making any promises the products can’t keep. “A Day at Corporate” Analyzing the win and loss patterns at one company revealed that many deals were being lost during the software demo. 13:00 product demo by the corporate demo team. MORE
The #1 challenge with conducting web demos is the ability to read and engage an audience you can’t see. Is the demo going well? The key to reading a prospect you can’t see is to engage them in a discussion during the demo. Ideally, you should have some idea of what your prospects are trying to accomplish and why it’s important prior to each demo so you are prepared with a few discussion points. MORE
That’s why many product managers get involved with roadmap discussions, technical demos, and answering RFP/RFIs. Product Demo Center. If your enterprise clients require a product demo, then treat it like a marketing program. Set up one or more demo centers with all the necessary equipment ready to go. Put some time into developing the most common scenarios and make it a great demo. Sales teams often need access to deep product knowledge. MORE
In addition, we ask for an email address to access our online demo. This demo login alone brings us 15 to 20 new contacts every week. Here are the response rates for the people who gave their email address to access our demo. MORE
Whether your team is motivated by competitive pressure, pushing out a new feature before a big event or demo, or making a positive impact in the lives of your users, working both quickly and efficiently helps you to meet those goals. MORE
If you are curious to learn more about the right way to set up product analytics , check out our Playbook and explore the Amplitude Demo ! The six things you need from a great product data scientist and how to find them . MORE
It was more than just incremental delivery, we really did incorporate agile principles like pairing and demoing, and engineering practices like automated build and test processes, code-reads, design for testing. MORE
And with so many new innovations coming to the fore each month, Boston Innovators Group , Mass Innovation Nights , Boston New Technology meetup , and other groups offer monthly or quarterly innovation demo gatherings. Contributed by Steve Robins. MORE
Product Demos: Selling Value in Spite of Product Deficiencies. The B2B Product Manager Magazine April 2017 is now available. In this issue we cover everything from selling value in spite of your product’s deficiencies to what makes a rock star product manager to the criticality of the functional designer role. Plus tips for hiring the right product manager and getting unbiased customer feedback. View the April 2017 Issue. In This Issue: Blog: High-Octane Product Management. MORE
When working with development, we have a set of requirements, we collaborate on the design of the solution, and then we accept completion of the features based on seeing them in a demo. MORE
The post Customer Value, Underperforming Products, Product Demo Objections and More appeared first on Proficientz - Product Management Training for B2B. The B2B Product Manager Magazine May 2017 is now available. In this issue we examine the impact of a customer value culture, why products underperform and three steps to connect corporate strategy to product, marketing and sales execution plans. MORE
Find other ways to engage that fit in with their constraints whether it’s personal demos, one off emails or quick conversations around the office — they’re hard work, but worth their weight in pigeon poop. MORE
In the enterprise world visiting some sales demos can be an eye-opener too. The one spontaneous ovation at this year’s London MTPCon was when Drift CEO David Cancel muttered “I hate agile” as an aside while he was on stage. MORE
Maybe you show a "before and after" image as a demo. A product marketing manager wonders what he should be doing while development is working on the product. It'll be six months until the first release is available. Six months? Before you worry about go-to-market, get a concept in front of some customers. Test your product idea. MVP is the smallest amount of coding that can be used to test your product hypothesis.” MORE
38:40 The value of weekly demos across self-organizing teams. A few months ago, I sat down with Hope Gurion, Chief Product Officer at CareerBuilder , to talk about her team, how they work, and how she stays current in the fast-moving world of product management. MORE
She’d uncovered an opportunity to partner with a local firm that would distribute our free demo to a few thousand of their customers and she was convinced it would be an easy way to generate a lot of new business quickly. Printing demo discs was cheap and she just wanted my ok to get some co-branded materials made to package them with, and maybe we could do a seminar together, and dedicate some telesales resources to following up on the leads. MORE
But just as importantly they are mindful about knowledge transfer, ensuring that the other product teams and the go-to-market teams like sales and marketing get the same customer and market insights, demos of work-in-progress, and more. MORE
In a perfect world, you’ll always understand big picture business objectives before a product demo and you’ll invest your time on prospects that give you the best chance making the sale. If you need to make the shift from selling tactical products to strategic business solutions, contact Proficientz to discuss how our Product Demo Training Courses can help you shorten sales cycles, improve win rates and expand the deal size. MORE
At the end of the week, demo the idea to the larger team, run user feedback studies, revise your experiments, and repeat. After years of false starts and incremental improvements, 2016 is the year where virtual reality (VR) has finally arrived. MORE
A Sales Demo Challenge. Even though we had a lot of customers successfully using it for agile projects, the sales engineers felt severely challenged because we didn’t have the features to show in the sales demo. The first one is about “how to demo.” MORE
” He is contacted directly by potential buyers—they don’t want a sales demo, they want advice. By the time the average customer reaches out to a company or is contacted by a sales rep, that customer's purchase decision is almost over. Matt Dixon, author, The Challenger Sale. MORE
We know that Sales wants Product on every demo and customer call; Engineering has a full calendar of agile ceremonies; Marketing expects web-ready success stories and lots of booth duty; Support escalates dozens of hot customer issues. MORE
Sales should do most product demos (not Product); Engineering should do QA testing (not Product); Marketing should design customer collateral (not Product). I’ve known Cliff Gilley, The Clever PM , for years — and follow his blog/Quora activity/social posts. MORE
Demo Related Topics PM Hardcore
AUGUST 18, 2017
A Sales Demo Challenge. Even though we had a lot of customers successfully using it for agile projects, the sales engineers felt severely challenged because we didn’t have the features to show in the sales demo. The first one is about “how to demo.”
High Octane Product Management
MARCH 10, 2017
In a perfect world, you’ll always understand big picture business objectives before a product demo and you’ll invest your time on prospects that give you the best chance making the sale. If you need to make the shift from selling tactical products to strategic business solutions, contact Proficientz to discuss how our Product Demo Training Courses can help you shorten sales cycles, improve win rates and expand the deal size.
Product Beautiful
JUNE 8, 2014
We did a “lunch-and-learn” where we fed the team pizza and spaghetti, while one of our product managers did a demo of the product and talked about how it was complimentary to the products they were already selling into their accounts.
High Octane Product Management
MAY 24, 2017
Product demo objections are a staple of the sales process in the B2B software business. Successful demos require that you master the art of making certain product deficiencies seem trivial in the grand scheme of the overall solution. The Playbook: The single biggest factor to overcoming product demo objections is to understand very early in the sales cycle the strategic goals of the executive buyers.
High Octane Product Management
FEBRUARY 25, 2017
When it comes to product demo techniques, there are two styles: telling and selling. The “telling” demo (stop me when you see a feature you like) won’t energize your buyers or set you apart from the competition. The “selling” demo energizes your buyers with a vision because it’s more about their business than it is your products. The “Telling” Demo. It’s more or less a rewind and replay for each demo.
Under10 Playbook
NOVEMBER 2, 2016
And I wanted them to see the presentation and demo done correctly at least once. When it comes to product, get one of the sales engineers to deliver the presentation and demo. Or, Be careful what you teach your sales teams.
Roman Pichler
JANUARY 25, 2017
Note that this approach still assumes that you can collect the relevant feedback in the sprint review meeting, for instance, by carrying out a product demo, usability test, or solution interview. Option 1: In the Sprint Review Meeting.
High Octane Product Management
MARCH 9, 2017
In this issue we cover everything from obsessing over customer success to demo techniques to improving your website lead generation and conversion. We also throw in a few tips for improving feature adoption, product demos, product planning and win-loss analysis. Web Demos: Engaging An Audience You Can’t See. Product Demo Techniques: Telling Versus Selling. The B2B Product Manager Magazine March 2017 is now available.
High Octane Product Management
MARCH 9, 2017
In this issue we cover everything from obsessing over customer success to demo techniques to improving your website lead generation and conversion. We also throw in a few tips for improving feature adoption, product demos, product planning and win-loss analysis. Web Demos: Engaging An Audience You Can’t See. Product Demo Techniques: Telling Versus Selling. The March 2017 Issue of The B2B Product Manager Magazine is now available.
Under10 Playbook
NOVEMBER 10, 2016
For many, this means supporting sales people on individual deals—such as doing presentations and demos or authoring RFPs. How often does a custom demo outperform a standard one? Could demos be put online in a video format? Should we set up a demo center?
Mironov Consulting
MAY 1, 2017
We know that Sales wants Product on every demo and customer call; Engineering has a full calendar of agile ceremonies; Marketing expects web-ready success stories and lots of booth duty; Support escalates dozens of hot customer issues.
Product Powers
APRIL 4, 2015
She’d uncovered an opportunity to partner with a local firm that would distribute our free demo to a few thousand of their customers and she was convinced it would be an easy way to generate a lot of new business quickly. Printing demo discs was cheap and she just wanted my ok to get some co-branded materials made to package them with, and maybe we could do a seminar together, and dedicate some telesales resources to following up on the leads.
Tyner Blain
MAY 24, 2017
It was more than just incremental delivery, we really did incorporate agile principles like pairing and demoing, and engineering practices like automated build and test processes, code-reads, design for testing.
Mind the Product
SEPTEMBER 14, 2017
In addition, we ask for an email address to access our online demo. This demo login alone brings us 15 to 20 new contacts every week. Here are the response rates for the people who gave their email address to access our demo.
Under10 Playbook
MAY 24, 2017
” He is contacted directly by potential buyers—they don’t want a sales demo, they want advice. By the time the average customer reaches out to a company or is contacted by a sales rep, that customer's purchase decision is almost over. Matt Dixon, author, The Challenger Sale.
Mind the Product
JULY 21, 2017
But just as importantly they are mindful about knowledge transfer, ensuring that the other product teams and the go-to-market teams like sales and marketing get the same customer and market insights, demos of work-in-progress, and more.
Amplitude
MAY 25, 2017
If you are curious to learn more about the right way to set up product analytics , check out our Playbook and explore the Amplitude Demo ! The six things you need from a great product data scientist and how to find them .
Mind the Product
NOVEMBER 18, 2016
Get people to practise things like stand-ups, demo days, progress reports, anything that exposes the work you’re doing. Coach, lean advocate and author Jeff Gothelf talked about scaling Lean principles at this year’s London #mtpcon.
Product Beautiful
FEBRUARY 24, 2014
Demo of our solution. What if we demoed the wrong solution for their needs? Nearly every product manager I speak to desires to be a leader in his or her organization.
Mind the Product
NOVEMBER 22, 2016
In the enterprise world visiting some sales demos can be an eye-opener too. The one spontaneous ovation at this year’s London MTPCon was when Drift CEO David Cancel muttered “I hate agile” as an aside while he was on stage.
Product Talk
JANUARY 27, 2016
38:40 The value of weekly demos across self-organizing teams. A few months ago, I sat down with Hope Gurion, Chief Product Officer at CareerBuilder , to talk about her team, how they work, and how she stays current in the fast-moving world of product management.
Mind the Product
APRIL 3, 2017
With an agreed vision and delivery plan and with the first members of the team on board, we did was what all good bands do: make a demo. The Demo. Some years ago, I wrote a blog post noting that small teams are more creative and productive than big teams.
Mironov Consulting
APRIL 19, 2017
Sales should do most product demos (not Product); Engineering should do QA testing (not Product); Marketing should design customer collateral (not Product). I’ve known Cliff Gilley, The Clever PM , for years — and follow his blog/Quora activity/social posts.
Product Beautiful
AUGUST 24, 2016
So often, we see our role at a trade show as one of doing demos and talking up our product’s features. When you begin a demo, talk about the problem first. If they don’t, then demo the solution to a different problem.). By prefacing your demo with a conversation about problems (rather than leading with your product), you increase the likelihood of people being more open about their pain points. Events. It’s natural to dread them.
Mind the Product
JUNE 13, 2017
Find other ways to engage that fit in with their constraints whether it’s personal demos, one off emails or quick conversations around the office — they’re hard work, but worth their weight in pigeon poop.
Under10 Playbook
NOVEMBER 2, 2016
You’ll want to tailor all of your sales materials—the web site, demo, presentation, ebooks—around this ideal customer profile. Analyzing past results to drive future successes may be the most important goal for today’s product leaders.
Mind the Product
NOVEMBER 9, 2016
At the end of the week, demo the idea to the larger team, run user feedback studies, revise your experiments, and repeat. After years of false starts and incremental improvements, 2016 is the year where virtual reality (VR) has finally arrived.
bpma ProductHub
DECEMBER 12, 2016
And with so many new innovations coming to the fore each month, Boston Innovators Group , Mass Innovation Nights , Boston New Technology meetup , and other groups offer monthly or quarterly innovation demo gatherings. Contributed by Steve Robins.
Under10 Playbook
NOVEMBER 2, 2016
Every deal the company won had one thing in common: the buyer participated in a non-customized demo in the company briefing center. The solution was to standardize the selling process around a standard demo. Have it always ready for a standard demo.”
Mind the Product
JANUARY 19, 2017
Whether your team is motivated by competitive pressure, pushing out a new feature before a big event or demo, or making a positive impact in the lives of your users, working both quickly and efficiently helps you to meet those goals.
Under10 Playbook
NOVEMBER 2, 2016
The product managers certainly need to be there to make sure nobody makes any claims that must be supported elsewhere—such as the demo or on the ever-changing product roadmap; you need to make sure nobody is making any promises the products can’t keep. “A Day at Corporate” Analyzing the win and loss patterns at one company revealed that many deals were being lost during the software demo. 13:00 product demo by the corporate demo team.
High Octane Product Management
APRIL 18, 2017
Product Demos: Selling Value in Spite of Product Deficiencies. The B2B Product Manager Magazine April 2017 is now available. In this issue we cover everything from selling value in spite of your product’s deficiencies to what makes a rock star product manager to the criticality of the functional designer role. Plus tips for hiring the right product manager and getting unbiased customer feedback. View the April 2017 Issue. In This Issue: Blog: High-Octane Product Management.
High Octane Product Management
APRIL 18, 2017
Product Demos: Selling Value in Spite of Product Deficiencies. The B2B Product Manager Magazine April 2017 is now available. In this issue we cover everything from selling value in spite of your product’s deficiencies to what makes a rock star product manager to the criticality of the functional designer role. Plus tips for hiring the right product manager and getting unbiased customer feedback. View the April 2017 Issue. In This Issue: Blog: High-Octane Product Management.
Under10 Playbook
NOVEMBER 2, 2016
When working with development, we have a set of requirements, we collaborate on the design of the solution, and then we accept completion of the features based on seeing them in a demo.
High Octane Product Management
MARCH 14, 2017
The Body Part: Product Demos. In many companies, product demos are a second string job for anyone with product expertise. The injury: poor problem discovery and poor preparation make for “show up and throw up” feature demos that bore prospects to tears and delay buying decisions. There’s a good reason why athletes in contact sports wear protective pads.
Under10 Playbook
NOVEMBER 2, 2016
That’s why many product managers get involved with roadmap discussions, technical demos, and answering RFP/RFIs. Product Demo Center. If your enterprise clients require a product demo, then treat it like a marketing program. Set up one or more demo centers with all the necessary equipment ready to go. Put some time into developing the most common scenarios and make it a great demo. Sales teams often need access to deep product knowledge.
Under10 Playbook
JUNE 21, 2017
” He is contacted directly by potential buyers—they don’t want a sales demo, they want advice. By the time the average customer reaches out to a company or is contacted by a sales rep, that customer's purchase decision is almost over. Matt Dixon, author, The Challenger Sale.
High Octane Product Management
FEBRUARY 14, 2017
This concept also holds true for salespeople who do product demos, with the understanding that a further level of product training is required. Wealth made simple: news and articles from IRC Wealth. Product training for sales is one of the more daunting tasks for product managers and marketers and one of the biggest product rollout challenges in high-tech companies. You’ve created textbook sales and marketing materials.
High Octane Product Management
JUNE 20, 2017
Do it early in the sales process and your presentations and demos will flat out “nail it.”. If you’re going to dominate your market, you have to make the customer organization measurably better at their business, from the top down. Products and services are the means to the end, but every customer-facing function in your organization plays a role in delivering customer value. It’s like relay race.
Under10 Playbook
NOVEMBER 2, 2016
Maybe you show a "before and after" image as a demo. A product marketing manager wonders what he should be doing while development is working on the product. It'll be six months until the first release is available. Six months? Before you worry about go-to-market, get a concept in front of some customers. Test your product idea. MVP is the smallest amount of coding that can be used to test your product hypothesis.”
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