Objectives

The WAMware Demonstration Skills Workshop will provide a "kickstart" for your sales teams... an immediate and noticeable step-function change in their demonstration skills and techniques... and put them on the path to becoming your strategic weapon in capturing the emotions and "votes" of your prospects.  The workshop will benefit both your newer team members as well as top-gun veterans.

Target Attendees

• The workshop is not provided for "open" attendance, but rather is sponsored by one company for its direct sales teams and indirect reseller channels.

• The workshop is attended by 10-to-15 active hands-on participants, plus optionally a handful of observers.

• Depending upon the sales process and personnel profiles used by the sponsor, attendees would be some mix of the following:

  • Technical demonstrators (application engineers, specialists, technical consultants) who are largely devoted to pre-sales demonstrations of the software product.

  • Sales people who conduct some, most or all of their own demonstrations for prospects.

  • Sales people who team (or at least, should team) with the technical person during demonstration events.

• The workshop includes 3-to-4 hours of lecture and the remainder being hands-on workshops.  During each workshop, the demonstrator (or sales team) delivers the demo to other attendees playing roles as audience members.  After each demo, the audience members and Wayne provide plus/minus critique.  We also video record various segments of the demonstrations and review as a group.

• With rare exceptions (the already near-perfect, the few untrainables), attendees come out of the workshop with dramatically improved skills to deliver high-impact demonstrations... plus a personal understanding of how to seek continuous improvement in this critical career skill.

Topics

We'll work on... general presentation techniques, setting demo objectives and laying out the demo "road map"... good posture, diction, and delivery... lively pace, positive terminology, and a warm, friendly tone... highlighting process flow and customer benefits... recap of demo and closure on demo objectives.

We'll do this in the context of three environments... 1) a small audience demonstration (say with 3-5 people around a laptop or workstation), 2) a large audience presentation (trade shows, user conferences, large customer gatherings) and 3) a web-delivered demo to a remote audience.

The "Objection Handling" module will provide your sales and application engineers with insight and skills in how to address objections that arise during demonstrations and presentations.  A question from the audience is our opportunity to really establish credibility and trust.   The more difficult the question, the greater the opportunity.  The goal is to make certain that the interruption adds to, rather than detracts from, our momentum.