Too Long, Too Soon...

Sometimes we can't do in a different way but too many times ( and may be specially in France where everybody is focusing on a hard and well done home work, thinking that the number of hours does matter in order to prove his self value or to justify that he does exist ! ) we deliver 3 or 4 hour morning or afternoon session to get our message across. I remember a sale cycle 2 years ago in which we have made a rather successful one day presentation whereas our competitor did a 2 days presentation and then our sales rep recommended us to add a one day presentation to the sales cycle in order to counterbalance with the competition !

Have you ever attended a long demo cession or a long afternoon kick-off sale presentation training ? Do you really want to impose that kind of scourge to your customer ?

Are you aware that after 45 minutes our attention starts decreasing ? do you know that the audience will only remember 20 % of the demo in case the presentation lasts 45 minutes and 5 % of the demo if it lasts 4 hours ( and by the bargain this 5% won't be the essence of your message but some irrelevant facts that will attract by chance your audience's brains like the way you move your pen or your remote device )
And by the way did you remember a software presentation that afterwards was told to be too short by the prospect ? if yes (I don't think it could happen) it is probably the best demo you have ever attended...

Moreover, our demo are not only too long but most of the time our demos happen too soon in the sales cycles. We say everything at the beginning believing that the unique and complete demo will do all the sales work and will destroy all the purchase barriers... Don't forget that the demo is only one step of the sales cycle and not the pivotal step.

If you want to learn more, I recommend you to download this excellent document from MasteringTechnicalSales :
http://www.masteringtechnicalsales.com/files/Shorten_That_Demo.pdf

And don't forget the next time you organise a demo (and maybe something else) make it the shorter and the later as possible !!!