We need you for a “high level” demo. Those are words that no sales engineer ever wants to hear. Also ranking high on the list of words an SE doesn’t want to hear is “we already did the discovery call”.
Not letting your SE do the discovery call is like taking your car to a mechanic and telling them not to bother looking under the hood because you already checked it out and determined that it’s broken.
When you don’t bring in a sales engineer to do proper discovery in a separate call that happens before the demo (yes a completely separate call, don’t hit us with the old “discovery/demo” either) then you risk ending up like Leeroy Jenkins.
For those of you that don’t know old Leeroy:
Leeroy Jenkins is the name of a World of Warcraft character that is known for screaming out his name before ignorantly charging headlong into battle, killing everyone in his party.
You see it’s simple, we like to win. Winning is done by having good demo preparation and that can only be achieved by doing a proper discovery call.
Organize your discovery call questions into 3 main sections:
- Current (How does your prospect work today with their current solution?)
- Desired (What does an ideal solution look like?)
- Impact (How will they be measuring success?)
Sales Engineers will dig in on the technical aspects around these major sections with your prospect. It allows them to deliver a demonstration that speaks specifically to the pain points your prospect is trying to solve. When you take the time to understand your prospect’s business they will appreciate it and you will come off looking professional, knowledgeable, and polished.
Let the others guys “just do a demo” and instead, we will show them how we can solve their problem.
Don’t end up like poor Leeroy, deal?
By – Adam Lazzara
Follow @AdamLazzara
Sales Engineer leader for the past 10 years working with social media and listening platforms selling solutions to enterprise brands. It's been a long and crazy journey. 