Thousands of sales engineers have obtained Great Demo! Situation Slide training over the years to better inform and educate their prospects on how their offerings can add value. This framework has delivered tangible results and is taught by Peter Cohan, author of the book “Great Demo!: How To Create And Execute Stunning Software Demonstrations,” and a well-recognized presales industry thought leader.

Now this proven and trusted framework is available to sales engineers within the Hub presales unified productivity platform, which ensures that they effectively follow a prescriptive approach to establishing value of the products and technologies they sell. To see this sales engineering framework in action, let’s examine the Great Demo! SItuation Slides in the Hub platform.

Great Demo! Situation Slides Overview

Great Demo! Situation Slides contain 6 elements. Each element represents a discovery task that enables the sales engineer to follow a prescriptive approach to establish value. The elements include:

  • Job Title and Industry for a Prospect – Create one situation slide for each key player in the demo.
  • Critical Business Issue – Document the individual’s top-level challenge, often expressed as a quarterly, annual or project-based goal or objective that is at risk.
  • Problems / Reasons – Indicate what makes it a problem today for the individual, why it’s hard to achieve the goal or objective, and how they are doing things today.
  • Specific Capabilities – State the capabilities the prospect needs to solve his/her problem from the prospect’s perspective.
  • Delta – Using the prospect’s numbers, figure out the value associated with making the change from the way they currently perform work.
  • Critical Date / Value Realization Event (V.R.E.) – Determine a date by when the prospect needs to have a solution in place (and why) / Figure out what event, e.g., manual task that’s now automated, reporting that was previously unavailable, that indicates the first success using your solution

Now that you have a high-level understanding of Great Demo! Situation Slides, let’s look at how codifying this framework within Hub can help you, the sales engineering professional, follow an approach that leads to a greater understanding of your prospect’s needs.

Job Title, Industry, Critical Business Issue, Problems and Reasons

Situation Slides guide sales engineers in their discovery conversations, enabling them to capture prospect information using a consistent, structured approach. This information, when complete, represents a “Demo Qualified Lead”.

Specific Capabilities, Delta, Critical Date, and Value Realization Events

Prompts help sales engineers capture the key information. Delta (value) information should reflect the prospect’s real, tangible numbers. That’s the most compelling method of value communication!

Illustrations

Hub also helps sales engineers identify compelling Illustrations, e.g., software screens of deliverables and output that generate a “Wow!” response from prospects.

Summary

Sales engineering can now more effectively utilize the proven Great Demo! Situation Slide framework to up-level performance when qualifying, presenting, demonstrating, and establishing differentiated value with the prospect. The Hub unified presales productivity platform empowers sales engineers with a tremendous amount of flexibility and customization to configure Great Demo! SItuation Slide playbooks based on their verticals and use cases and tailored to corresponding opportunities.

Feel free to contact either the Great Demo! team to learn more about this framework or Hub to see how you can utilize this presales framework to win more business.

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