Create an Awesome Product Demo in 3 Easy Steps

May 15, 2012 by 2 Comments

creating awesome product demosYou love what you’re selling.  (Hopefully).  You spend most of your waking hours selling something that you think is awesome.  If you didn’t, you wouldn’t be selling it!  However, as honest as your face may be, it’s doubtful that people are going to buy your product on just your word – they want to see it!  So how do you quickly create a demo that showcases everything great there is to know about your product that gets your audience as excited about it as you are?  This is where it gets tricky.  You want to display every aspect of the product, but still keep it simple.  Keep in mind that you want the demo to be exciting and eye-catching, yet not too busy or obnoxious.  And you want the audience to stay engaged for a long time, but you also respect their time and don’t want to overstay your welcome.  Creating a demo that checks all of these boxes (and more) can sound daunting, and time consuming.  But alas, – it doesn’t have to be!

In fact, you’re only 3 steps away from having that awesome product demo ready to put in front of your next customer!

Create content

You know your product inside and out.  Any question that is thrown your way, you’ve got the answer.  However, all of that information isn’t always absolutely necessary, especially if this is the first time your audience is seeing this product.  In order to ensure that your demo lasts an appropriate amount of time and that your audience doesn’t get totally confused, it’s a good idea to limit the amount of information in your demo to only the most important info.  Something that I find useful is to write every feature or fact about my product on a separate notecard.  Having each idea on its own notecard gives me the freedom to move the ideas around, prioritizing and creating stories within my big picture pitch.  I can then remove the ideas that are the lowest priority and be confident in knowing that all pertinent information has made it into my demo.

Choose your platform

These days there are SO many ways to communicate and collaborate with anybody, anywhere.  Many times, it’s not practical or possible to meet everybody face-to-face.  Sometimes you want to reach a large audience that is spread out geographically.  Maybe your audience is global, making it inconvenient for everyone to be on a conference call at once.  All of these reasons make taking your demo online and presenting it virtually the right choice.  Web and video conferencing have come a long way and are still quickly evolving.  Choices range from extremely simple, intuitive platforms that give you the ability to share a PowerPoint presentation or document, all the way up to feature rich webcasting platforms that allow sharing of any sort of content, audio or video, and that feature social media, CRM and RPM integration, registration and robust reporting capabilities.  Don’t be afraid to reach out to someone that works with these tools frequently or, even better, someone that sells them, for some assistance.  Most likely when you say “In a perfect world, I would like X,Y & Z to happen during my demo” there will be a platform out there than can deliver. 

Put it all together

Now take those great points, maybe some fancy graphs and pictures and put it all together!  Make the most out of the platform you’re using, but also keep in mind your audience.  If they’re not technically savvy or maybe more interested in content than pictures, make sure that you keep your bright colors and crazy animations to a minimum.  Practice your pitch to ensure that you smoothly move through your presentation and don’t get too high level, or too deep, on any of your ideas.  The key here is to capture your audiences’ attention and give them just enough that it makes them wanting more.  You will know that you don’t just have a demo, but an awesome demo, when everybody comes back asking for a follow-up meeting.

Filed under Sales Demos, Solution Selling Tagged with , , , ,

Webinars 101

April 2, 2012 by Leave a comment

webinarsYou’ve hosted tons of meetings before, so why should hosting a webinar be any different?  You’ve probably been a participant on enough webinars to know what goes into them too, so it can’t be that hard either, right? Well, before going into any detail, let’s clarify that I will be speaking about a traditional webinar in this post, which for our purposes is an online meeting that has participants dialing in over the phone and logging into a web conference on their computer.  For a more detailed overview of the different types of web meetings, including webcasts, I suggest you check out Leah’s post, ‘Web Conferencing 101’.  The good news then is no, it’s not hard to host a webinar. And not only is it easier than a traditional meeting for you, but it’s also more convenient and many times more powerful since your attendees will be joining your webinar from all around the world from the comfort of their own desks (at the office or at home). 

Here are a few 101-type key tips to help you host the best webinar possible:

Pick the right platform (if you still have the choice) and know how to use it (always)
If you’re still shopping around for the right webinar platform to use, clarify for yourself first what exactly it is you want to achieve in this online meeting. If you’re hosting a webinar for a client presentation, sales demo, or any other type of presentation where you may expect no more than 100 or so attendees, then you want to make sure that you use a web conferencing platform that: 

1. Is easy for your participants to join from anywhere in the world
2. Allows you to share and collaborate documents in real time
3. Gives you the ability to record and playback your webinar for those who couldn’t make it
4. Has reporting capabilities so that you can track who did and did not show up for your meeting

An audio and web solution would be a perfect fit in this case as it will allow you to have your local as well as international clients join (via local access numbers specific to their location), show them your PowerPoint presentation and your website, record the meeting for those who couldn’t make it and be able to track everyone’s attendance from the moment you sent out the invite through the end of your meeting.  Many remote collaboration providers offer complimentary training sessions on their webinar products so that you can take advantage of all the bells and whistles their tools offer while hosting your meeting.

If you’re hosting a type of training – product, HR, educational, etc. then you might want to look for a webinar platform that offers you a few more options like:

1. Live polling and Q&A
2. Social media integration
3. Registration process
4. Audio and video streaming
5. Operator attendance

Hosting bigger audiences doesn’t mean that a webinar has to be less personal or interactive – based on the nature and size of your meeting you could use video to recreate more of a face-to-face feel to your meeting so that it can be more intimate.  Many webinar platforms give you access to a number of features that can help you control even the largest of audiences and make sure group discussions stay organized and on track.  

Once you know which platform you will be using, make sure that you MASTER using it. Read all user guides, watch how-to videos, ask your vendor for one-on-one trainings. Host your own webinars with a group of colleagues as a dress rehearsal. And if you don’t want to bother with any of that or don’t have the time to – then make sure you get a provider who can take care of the production of your online event including giving your live operator assistance.

Be prepared
Of course part of your preparation includes knowing how to use your webinar platform. I also recommend arriving at least 5 minutes early to make sure you’re set up properly.  Get yourself logged in, upload whatever documents you might need to present, test any videos you will be streaming, and have all of your materials ready.  Be in a position to greet you participants as they arrive.

Know your audience and connect with them
Even though you are not in the same room as your audience doesn’t mean your meeting can’t have that personal feel to it.  If you will be addressing an internal audience, welcome them, smile you’re your words, introduce the topic before you begin your presentation, and let them know that they matter. If your audience is external or unfamiliar to you, make sure that they are all at ease in the webinar before you start, that no one has experienced technical difficulties, and that you will do your best to accommodate each of them.  Create polling questions throughout your meeting to keep your audience involved.  Nobody know yours audience better than you and you’ll have the right tools at your finger tips to make it a productive, engaging, and fun throughout the webinar.

Follow up
This is one of the (many) big advantages webinar hosting has to offer.  Webinar services today have  amazing reporting capabilities that capture the names and information of those registered, who actually attended and for how long, who didn’t attend, who asked questions, who left half way through, who listened to the recorded webinar, and much more.  This type of detailed information is great for lead generation or even for keeping track of participants for training type webinars that require mandatory attendance. 

These are just a few of the high-level tips you can incorporate into your next webinar experience. Follow these steps and you’ll be more at ease hosting your webinars. There’s a lot more you can do and more guidance you can use to help you become a pro which we will be talking about soon in future posts. Whether you’re a beginner or a pro, you’ll find that when you host your own webinars you can reach more people, from more locations, and much more efficiently without losing out on the productiveness of your meetings.

Filed under Business Communications, Web Conferencing, Webinars Tagged with , ,

4 Ways You Can Use Virtual Platforms to Build Your Teams

March 16, 2012 by 2 Comments

online team building activitiesConducting team-building activities in the workplace is not a new concept.  For decades, leaders and managers have been coming up with activities that foster interdependence and collaboration to bring out the best in their teams. And in today’s global community, such team-building, problem-solving activities have never been more important.  So many of us nowadays are working remotely with peers we’ve never even met in person! And as a manager, you still have the responsibility of bringing your teams together and encouraging them to work with one another to achieve common objectives.

Although your teams may be global, you can still host fun team-building activities through a variety of remote collaboration solutions.The key lies in being able to successfully use these virtual platforms to teach concepts that your team members can enjoy, learn from, and apply in their lives so that they can ultimately improve performance and produce visible results. (Think of the Kirkpatrick Learning Evaluation Model)

Here are some ideas you can use to build your remote teams:

Friday afternoon coffee – over a video conference!  When your team is spread out around different locations – even globally, you don’t often have the chance to get together for happy hour or appetizers after work to enable you to bond with one another outside of the office.  A great way to get to know your team members and encourage collaboration is to have a video conference on a Friday afternoon with your team.  Treat everyone to coffee and have a laid-back video conference to allow everyone to casually chat ‘face-to-face’ without the pressures of deadlines, deliverables, or project plans.  Keep it light and talk about things you’d discuss at a bistro or lounge after-hours.

Set up a team-building activity via web conferencing and build up the morale in your organization.  Let’s say you have a team of 15.  Get everyone on a web conference, give them a ‘challenge’ that they need to solve and break them out into 3 groups.  Give each group 20 minutes to complete their activity then bring everyone back together on the conference to see who best accomplished their ‘challenge’.

Break out into focus groups – online. If there’s a problem that your remote teams have been experiencing in any of their tasks you can still bring them all together on a web and video conference to collectively identify the problem and discuss.  Some web conferencing platforms give you the ability to break your attendees into virtual break-out rooms.  You can break out your teams into focus groups and have them use these break-out rooms on the web conference to resolve the issue as a unified group.  Reward the teams with various incentives for their collaborative problem-solving efforts.

Communicate results. Take the results of your collaborative problem solving efforts from the focus groups you created online and webcast the solution to the entire organization through a webinar service.  You can make it interactive and engaging.  Have polling questions and games to play.  Host an award ceremony online for those who provided the best solution and broadcast it to everyone in your company via webcast. Boost the morale of your employees and give everyone a chance to have some fun together.

Filed under Organizational Leadership, Problem Solving Tagged with , , , , ,

3 Steps to Rock Your Virtual Sales Presentations

March 6, 2012 by Leave a comment

effective virtual sales presentationsIn sales, we’re constantly bombarded with the latest and greatest new tools, each with the promise of easy, instant results. When web conferencing and webinar platforms first came out it was no different. We were told that with webinar services and web conferencing, we could meet more clients in less time, shorten the sales cycle, reduce costs, and basically sit back and watch the money rain down from the heavens.

For all but a few acolytes, the full benefits of web conferencing have gone unrealized. Not for a lack of options – because there are almost as many conferencing solutions as there are theories on how to close a sale (you know what I mean).  To me, it breaks down like this: the successful outcome of using any tool, whether it is web conferencing or a table saw, comes down to 2 basic, universal, rules: 

  • Learning how to use the tool really well. Mastering it. Becoming an expert.
  • Applying that mastery and newfound technical knowledge to address your specific needs.

And to truly rock your efforts and sales demos, you’ll have to add step 3 (the single greatest piece of sales advice I’ve heard).  But, more on that later.

So here are the three steps to successfully hosting virtual sales demos:

Step 1: Learn how to use the technology.

As easy as it sounds, the first critical step is often the one most overlooked. Seldom do we take the time to learn more than the basics. But if we truly want to take full advantage of all that web conferencing has to offer, we need to become experts, not only in our own products, but in the means of delivering the benefits or our solution. Read the user guides, not just the quick start guide. Practice with your teammates or friends outside of the money hours. Take full advantage of your conferencing service providers’ (CSP) training program. If the CSP doesn’t offer training programs, then ask your IT department  about alternatives. If you need additional support, ask to talk to your CSP’s account manager. Again, if you don’t have one, it may be time to shop around for an alternative provider.

Step 2: Use that technology  to address your specific needs and applications.

Again, this sounds easy, but it requires a strategic plan. As a sales professional, we plan all parts of a face-to-face meeting, and planning a virtual demo is twice as important. If you sell software, what’s the best way to demo your product to a virtual audience while retaining their attention? Some basic features of all web conferencing include sharing applications, sharing your desktop, showing video clips, polling the participants, or directing your clients to a specific URL after the meeting. To rock your demo, identify what features you need to best deliver your message and engage your audience.

Step 3: Make the service sing (the most basic and hardest to do).

You need to use your hard-fought knowledge, outlined in steps 1 and 2, to “make the service sing”. Early in my sales career, I was given the key to sales success: making the service sing. I was working for a publically traded, industry leader, in the copier market at the time. I had spent months cultivating my sales demos. I could show you with ease and perfection various ways to use a copier to its ultimate capacity. Time after time I watched my prospects’ eyes widen with excitement and awe at the deftness of my skill. And time after time I witnessed the sales slowly dissipate as soon as they left the showroom.

What I didn’t realize at the time was that as soon as the prospect was out of my office, there was nothing to tie them to the solution. They hadn’t once touched the machine, pressed the buttons or had one iota of proof that they could use the copier to save time, money or make their life easier in general.

As outlined in step 2, it’s a challenge to keep the attention of a virtual audience. How can we ensure that our clients and prospects are open and attentive to our efforts? When hosting online sales demonstrations make sure you know how to share your desktop or add a video clip.  Give control to the client and have them navigate your site and get the feel of your product. Go beyond the Powerpoint presentation. Allow your product or service to resonate with your prospects. Let them experience first-hand how they could use it on their own. Make the service sing!  

We’re sales professionals and the ideas are limitless. We just need the knowledge to take a virtual audience and give them the same experience we give our face-to-face meetings. Become an expert on whichever web conferencing solution you use, focus and strategically plan ways to demo your products and, above all else, make the solution sing. If you can do this, the monetary deluge is sure to follow.

free web conferencing demo

Filed under Sales Demos, Sales Leadership, Solution Selling Tagged with , , , , , ,

5 Tips to Boost Your PR Strategy

March 1, 2012 by 2 Comments

You have the idea in your mind.  You know what you want say.  You know how you want your audience to take it.  You know the response you want from it.  You’re off to a good start but make sure you keep these 5 key points in mind to get the results you want to see from your PR strategy, because the right message can play a vital role in your company’s success. 

pr tips#1 Know your audience and speak to them

Bigger is not always better.  Everyone wants a big turnout, but it’s quality over quantity here.  When putting together the content of your message you want to tailor it to a specific target audience.  If you try to appeal to the masses then your objectives get diluted and it defeats the purpose of your message.  If you’re writing an article, make sure you have your personas ready and you know who you’re talking to. If you’re hosting a webinar, start with your attendee list, review it carefully to make sure you are inviting the right people.   

#2 Use the right platform

Webcasting is a great platform to build brand awareness and generate leads (both which should be a part of your PR strategy) while simultaneously engaging your participants.  Look for a customizable webcasting platform that allows you to brand it with your company logos. It should also be easy for your participants to join and have robust registration and reporting tools. The registration options are great for making sure the right audience will be there (refer back to point 1) and the reporting tools allow you to follow up very efficiently. Social media integration is also key.

#3 Don’t waste time

Everyone is busy and it’s important that you respect their time (and attention span!).  Clearly define your main objectives before writing the content for your press release and stick to them, don’t veer off subject.  If you hosted a great webcast, make sure to post the on-demand version on relevant websites , and use keywords optimized for SEO.

#4 Clearly define your goals

Your audience can’t read your mind, and if you are vague then you run the risk of having your message misunderstood or taken the wrong way.  Avoid too many fancy buzz words in your title – be specific on what you’ll be covering. Identify ahead of time what you want to get out of each PR message.

#5 Measure success

Is all of your hard work paying off?  Are you reaching your target audience?  Are they receiving your message clearly?  Are you generating new leads? Upselling to current clients? Make sure you know your goals (refer back to point 4) so you can judge if they are being met or not.  Measuring performance allows you to adjust your game plan accordingly for future projects . Your webcasting platform should give you metrics on attendance, answers to polling questions, information on who attended the webinars, who watched the archived versions as well as any user feedback.

Filed under Marketing Leadership, Public Relations Tagged with , , , , ,

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