4 Features EVERY ‘Product Demo’ Should Have

Posted on July 15, 2014 by kaonmarketingguru

Creating a product demonstration is a requirement when trying to differentiate your offering from the competition. In fact, according to the 2014 Qvidian ‘Sales Executive Challenge’ report, difficulty presenting ‘competitive differentiation’ is the #1 issue B2B companies face this year.

So why is it that organizations are still bringing just a ‘shell’ of their product to trade shows, using looping video as product demonstrations, or relying on boring collateral to tell us why their solutions are different and better? Do marketers really think this is making a big impact that their prospects will remember?!  

The old saying goes, ‘you only get one chance to make a first impression’ so when you get the opportunity to get in front of a prospect you don’t want to blow it. Here’s four features EVERY product demo should have…

  1. Hands-on Customer Engagement
  2. Visually Showing How the Product Works
  3. Non-Linear Personalization
  4. Crib Notes

Hands-on Customer Engagement 3DProductModel_ipad

Did you know that interactivity can increases product knowledge retention by up to 75%? It’s true. Giving prospects a hands-on sensory experience allows them to explore product features that are the most important to them in a way that they’ll remember.

That said, getting your products into the hands of your prospects is much easier said than done.  Products (specifically in the telecom, medical or industrial industries) are often large, fragile, expensive, hard to obtain and difficult to ship. Even at trade shows companies are often bringing just their flag ship products and/or just a ‘shell’ of their product to avoid damage during transport.

Consider using virtual 3D Product Models (that look and behave just like the actual products) on touch screens appliances at trade shows, or on mobile devices for remote sales meetings. Doing so will ensure products are available at every sales encounter and that customers can engage and navigate products as desired.

Bill_CienaProductVisually Showing How the Product Works

A lot of products look similar (e.g. grey boxes) from the outside, but showing the uniqueness of what’s happening within your product and what makes it different from the competition is how you’ll win the deal.

Your brain processes visual information 60,000 times faster than text. So whether you have 60-seconds of your prospect’s attention in a trade show booth, or 30-minutes in an actual face-to-face sales meeting, visual representations of product workflow and network infrastructures will not only help overcome language barriers but assist in quickly and effectively communicating how your product works. Oh, and don’t forget that over 65% of people are visual learners.

Non-Linear Personalization

Personalization is paramount! There is no substitute for being able to look someone in the eye, shake his or her hand, and give a full presentation of any relevant aspect of your entire product portfolio at a moment’s notice.

To avoid ‘one-size-fits-all’ marketing, you need the ability to tailor the product demonstration to the needs and interests of each prospect, making their purchasing experience feel specific to their individual business challenges. By creating non-linear, user-driven product demonstrations, the prospect can control their own experience, exploring the product and messages in a sequence and level of detail that they feel are most appropriate to their needs.

Tools such as videos do the talking for you and put the sales demonstration on autopilot, creating a forgettable experience and inhibiting a true conversation with your customer. Putting your customer in the driver’s seat better highlights their interests for your sales representative, enabling them to tailor the discussion to best solve the customer’s business challenges.

Crib Notes Screen Shot 2014-07-15 at 2.47.39 PM

Crib notes aren’t for cheaters– they’re for those of us who just need a little extra help! Even the most knowledgeable sales reps need crib notes now and then!

As corporate strategies shift and organizations become acquired, the product marketing mix changes and sales people must quickly accommodate. The majority of sales reps no longer sell just one product to one audience, they sale numerous products to dozens of different recipients, within very complex buying cycles.

And here’s the rub, when several products are marketed by the same sales force, it becomes impossible and impractical for them to know the unique features and benefits of EVERY product within the portfolio. This results in a generalized selling pitch, making the sales experiences less than stellar.

Use small crib notes that help sales navigate thought the demonstration like a product expert. Quick reference points like information hot spots on products, supporting marketing messages and videos will help quickly and concisely communicate the differentiation of each product.

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Why Engagement Leads to Revenue Growth

Posted on June 26, 2014 by kaonmarketingguru

Getting prospects to REALLY understand your complex B2B offering, and why your solutions are better than the competition, is one of the hardest things for a marketer to achieve. Many of us fail at successfully communicating our differentiation and inevitably loose business because the prospects ‘just don’t get it’. So why are marketers creating more product sell sheets (boring) or videos (impersonal) that clearly aren’t helping their companies distinguish themselves?

Being risk averse and doing more of the same won’t change how prospects perceive our business it will only produce similar (lackluster) results. Statistics have shown that product knowledge retention increases from 20% to 75% when prospects are able to ‘drive’ their own interactive sales engagement. Does this surprise you? It shouldn’t. Prospects want more control over their individual experiences, allowing them to influence or become more involved in the buying process.

Engagement Marketing
Engagement marketing allows customers and prospects to participate in the process of building a brand’s image, thanks to the customer’s ability to ‘interrupt’ a brand’s communications, to complement or modify its messages to fit his or her perception. This removes the feeling of a canned, one-size-fits-all pitch or advertisement which can distance or even alienate prospects by making them feel undervalued; as if they are just another mass marketing target. Whether it’s through interacting with a virtual 3D product model on an iPad® or a conversation on Twitter, it is the individual involvement aspect of engagement marketing that captivates users and makes it far more likely that they will remember relevant information.

IMMERSION: Delving deeper into a product story via supplementary context and sensory experiences.

INTERACTIVITY: Allowing consumers to become part of the narrative, and influence the outcome.

INTEGRATION: Having a seamless content connection among all hardware platforms (tablets, laptop, website, smartphones, touch-screen appliances) and venues (trade show, sales meeting, briefing center).

IMPACT: Inspiring consumers to take action of some kind (schedule a meeting, purchase a product, share product content with a colleague).

The Moment of Truth
By incorporating sensory, emotional and intellectual components into telling your story, and making these engaging experiences universally available in every sales environment, you’re creating ‘aha’ moments where prospects can clearly visualize and understand how your solutions can solve their specific business challenges. All of these components, when incorporated together, lead to increased revenue growth through…

  • Faster communication of unique value propositions
  • Proven knowledge retention and emotional brand connection
  • Increase global reach with universally cross-platform accessibility
  • Non-linear narratives allow for greater up-sell and cross-sell potential

When prospects become engaged and ‘just get it’ you know you’ve been successful in differentiating your services and accelerating sales opportunities. It’s time to transform your marketing with a revenue-relevant customer engagement strategy today!

 

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Direct Marketing News: Why Being ‘Risk Averse’ is Bad for Your Career

Posted on May 30, 2014 by KaonTrendSpotter

DMNewsMay 27, 2014 – Byline by Gavin Finn, published by Direct Marketing News

Why Being ‘Risk Averse’ is Bad for Your Career

What opportunities for achieving great success are we missing by studiously avoiding perceived risk?

Many B2B professionals, from marketing, sales—and even product development—behave in a manner that is generally described as “risk averse,” which means they think that the so-called cost of trying new approaches outweighs the benefits. Most of the time, these people continue to operate using the same processes as they always have, thereby creating deliverables that are basically the same as the ones they’ve always created in the past.

In the case of marketers, for example, these deliverables include long-winded slide presentations, videos, and brochures, despite evidence that the vast majority of the sales collateral created by marketers is not used by the sales department—nor is it used by customers.

Why do people exhibit this type of conservative behavior?

a) They’re afraid of losing their jobs. It follows that if they stick their necks out and try new things that fail, they may, well…lose their jobs.

b) They’re ridiculously busy. With marketing budgets contracting and marketing departments reducing personnel, those marketers left are barely keeping their heads above water, never mind trying something new.

c) They’re not motivated to improve the results they’re getting now, and executive management is not demanding more It’s an “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” kind of mentality.

Perhaps it’s because business people generally don’t embrace change willingly or quickly. Psychologists tell us that we resist change out of fear, and this is definitely true for people in these kinds of marketing and sales decision-making roles.

But what opportunities for achieving great success are we missing by studiously avoiding that perceived risk?

The greatest opportunity for disruptive success is to be innovative and lead through change rather than waiting for everyone else to blaze the trail, forcing us to follow later. Research has shown that most people misjudge risk (by enormous ranges), and in this case, the reality is that the failure to constantly innovate represents a much greater risk than simply doing the same things as before. What that really means for marketers is that by behaving in a way that we believe is reducing our risk, we are, in fact, dramatically increasing the very risk we are trying to avoid.

It’s understandable that marketers tend to see investment in new ideas and solutions, or more pointedly, shifting away from doing things “the way they’ve always been done” as dangerous, because there’s a chance these new ideas might not work. After all, it hasn’t been tried before (at least not at this company)—but this unknown is inherent in any new initiative. The perceived danger represents a potential loss because if it fails, marketers are concerned about the cost to their company and to their own careers. It’s now a well-established cognitive axiom that humans are predisposed to favor strategies that avoid losses rather than those that could lead to the acquisition of potential gains.

Consider this:

a) Most B2B marketing departments are operating with fewer people and less budget than in the past. It’s literally impossible to do the same things anymore—there is simply not enough money and certainly too few people. We either have to do less of what we’ve been doing in the past or we have to do things differently. Something has to change.

b) The results that B2B marketers are achieving, in general, are less than optimal (in a recent CMO survey, marketing results were seen to be “inadequate” or “inferior” more than 80% of the time!) So, it appears that there actually is something “broke” and it does need fixing.

Since marketing results are underperforming with respect to company needs—and it’s impossible to continue just doing things as they’ve always been done before—it’s therefore logical to conclude that attempting to keep things the same is a far riskier strategy for one’s career than exploring innovative ideas.

What we all have to recognize is that by maintaining the status quo the risks have been elevated because the world around us is changing—and we need to change too.

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