Welcome Intro:

Welcome to Demo 2.0! The purpose of this newsletter is to keep you up-to-date with the latest online marketing and demo practices, tips and examples of what online marketers in the software industry are doing to keep their brand and products in the public eye.

We hope you will find this monthly newsletter helpful and informative. We welcome your personal contributions to further enrich this publication so please don’t hesitate to contact us and share your point of view.

Special Feature:

5 Ways to Keep your Pipeline Active during the Holiday Season

In many markets, it is customary for business to wind down during the holiday season. Many people put off decision-making and major purchases until after the New Year. For this reason, the software industry generally experiences the opposite effect as the retail industry. So how do you keep the customers and prospects in your pipeline active during this time? What is the best way to be sure you have a strong start in 2008?

1. Send holiday cards

Mailing a personal holiday card to your key clients and prospects is a great way to keep your company in front of them before the holidays. This is a very inexpensive way to reach out to key contacts and a holiday card is almost guaranteed to be opened – not lost amongst other bulk mailings. There are numerous card companies that can be found online with several personalization options. Choose a card that best represents your company and add a personal touch.

2. Incentives

Offer incentives or promotions to your prospects if they sign up before the end of the year. This is a long-standing strategy to urge consumers not to put off their purchases. If you make your incentives attractive enough, your customers could be convinced to act now rather than later. Making your incentives relevant and related to the season will garner attention and prove more successful.

3. Make phone calls

Since many activities are winding down during December, this could be the best time to personally call your customers and prospects. Ask your clients if they have been satisfied with your product or service during the past year, ask them what they would like to accomplish for the next year. Catching your prospects prior to the holidays may guarantee you more face time. With major projects winding down or taking a break over the holidays, you may find the perfect time to talk.

4. Appeal to the Spirit of the Season

The holidays are about giving and part of the holiday spirit is reaching out to the less fortunate. Pick a charity and offer to donate a percentage of your sales to it. Tell your prospects what percentage you will donate and make that information available via email. If your customers have to decide between buying from you or some company that doesn’t participate in holiday giving, who do you think they will go with?

5. Put together an end-of-the-year and "What's Coming Up" report

Even as people are frazzled and engaged in other things, they are filled with the expectation of what next year will bring. Why not tell them how they'll benefit from your work? What's coming up for you - do you have a new product you're working on, a workshop they'll enjoy, an add-on service, a new strategic alliance you want to announce?

Keys to a Great Demo

1. Be clear on the Objective for the demonstration.

Why are you doing the demo? Is it Technical Proof or Vision Generation; or is it “Spray and Pray”? Hope is not a strategy! You must know what you want to accomplish before you begin and plan your meeting with that objective in mind.

2. Be clear on the Customer’s Needs.

What are the Critical Business Issues, Key Problems, or Objectives your customer wants to address? Incredible as it may seem, your customer may not be as in love with your software as you are! They simply want to solve their business issues. If you don’t know your customer’s business issues, then you may need to freeze your hand on your mouse and start asking questions before launching into a demo.

3. Reconfirm the Meeting Objective and Time Constraints at the start of the meeting.

This apparent courtesy serves to manage surprises and help you stay in alignment with your customer. How many times have you started a demo only to learn that you have only half the time you thought you had? How often has the customer brought a larger group of people of see the demo than you expected? Investing a few minutes at the beginning of the meeting to reconfirm the time constrains and review the customer’s objectives can help you “rescue” a meeting otherwise headed for disaster!

To discover what other key elements play into offering a great demo check out the full article “The Great Demo! Top Ten List” (.pdf)
Source: The Second Derivative, Peter Cohan, Principal