Bart Kowalczyk of AutomateNow asked Emma McCarthy, Channel Account Manager for HubSpot, based in Dublin, for her top tips.
H2H Sales and Marketing
H2H? It’s Human to Human, often overlooked in sales, especially in CRM and automated marketing. At Automate Now HubSpot Consultancy, we help businesses set up CRM, automate and improve Sales and Marketing Processes or outsource Inbound Strategy. But H2H is key.
What is a Sales Demo Call?
It’s an opportunity to present personalised solutions to a business, to help them overcome pain points and/or reach a goal, such as increased visibility, better efficiency or whatever.
If you take the time to get to know a business well and you understand its operations, you are in a position to show how HubSpot can be of value to them. Each business is different, so different software aspects will be relevant to each prospect.
It’s NOT an opportunity to impress or dazzle your product’s brilliance. Nobody wants to sit through a demonstration of every element of a piece of software; they just want to see the functions relevant to their pain points or those that can help them reach a goal.
How to Prepare for a Sales Demo
- Select a maximum of 4 features to demonstrate. Make sure you don’t swamp the prospect with too much information. (You might choose to go higher for a big organisation with a very complex operation, but the golden rule is not to go overboard with too much information.)
- Customise the information that you do give to make sure it is relevant specifically to your prospect’s individual situation.
- Include the prospect's name and information in the demo account so they can relate.
What is CGP(T)?
CGP is an acronym we use at HubSpot to describe part of the qualification stage of working with a prospect, where you are seeking to learn more about the prospect, their business and the challenges they face.
It stands for:
- Challenge – that the prospect faces
- Goal – that the prospect is aiming to achieve, and
- Plan – to achieve the goal.
Sometimes, there is another letter added on, T:
Timeline – what is the timescale to achieve the goal?
It is perfectly fine to be upfront and advise the prospect that you’ll use the CGP(T) framework to get to know them better before you present any software solution. Their answers will form the basis for the presentation later on.
Dig deeper: ask “Why?” Your prospect’s Goal is 100 more leads. Great. Why? As you ask more questions, you understand your prospect and their motivations better.
Asking about Timeline is important, for example, to see whether they are ready to proceed immediately, they are just at the stage of looking around to see what is available, how long they envisage spending on a sales campaign, etc. This all informs the sales presentation that you give.
How Do You Deliver the Sales Demo?
I use the actual product: Hubspot.
I headline the presentation to show from the start how it is relevant to the prospect. E.g., “You told me that your follow-up processes are manual and it takes 2-3 weeks to reply to an email, so today I’m going to show you how to automate that process.
Then I’ll show you how to personalise each email because you are anxious about emails looking impersonal,” etc.
So now, the prospect feels heard and understood, which is a good basis going forward.
I’ll have four different tabs open, one for each of the areas to be addressed: Automation, Reporting, Marketing and CRM, for example, taking them one at a time, explaining how each relates to a challenge or goal the prospect has declared.
Two Top Mistakes in Sales Demo Calls
- Treating the demo call as an opportunity to showcase your knowledge – all of it. Keep the call focused on the client’s needs and goals.
- Showing too much: certain features or functionality might be very impressive, but if they are not directly relevant to the client, leave them out.
In short, keep it short. Better to be concise and targeted in 30-40 minutes max than rambling for 90 minutes and losing your audience.
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