Think about it…
Wouldn’t it be great to start the interaction with your customers with a conversation – or a substantial Discovery discussion – before offering a live demo?
- Consider the time saved for both customers and vendors by focusing on the identified issues
- Consider the shortened sales and buying cycles, enabled by improved clarity
- And consider the reduction of wasted demos delivered by valuable presales folks (often over and over and over and…!)
Most websites have a “Request Demo” button featured prominently on the home page – very often highlighted in a contrasting color and eye-catching shape. The intent, of course, is to entice the customer to engage. The intent is fine, but it mis-sets expectations:
- The lead is often passed to a BDR or similar, whose job is to contact the lead, “quality” and set a follow-on appointment for a demo.
What is the value to the customer in this first interaction? Generally zero…
- Next, a demo is scheduled, often with a presales professional, who at this point understands very little about the customer’s needs, desires, or situation. A live, but largely “canned” demo often takes place, sometimes with the presales person trying to do small amounts of Discovery on the fly.
Result? Mis-aligned demos where the customer often doesn’t see what they want – and another “Harbor Tour” delivered by a valuable and limited presales resource. Uncompelling and mutually frustrating.
And then what happens? If the customer is still interested (or convinced by sales), another demo is lined up – often with a request by the vendor for an opportunity to (finally) have a Discovery conversation.
This pathway basically wastes 1-2 interactions for both parties – compared to this alternative…
What if the customer is comfortable investing a few minutes to outline their situation before moving to a demo? Research suggests that many customers would prefer this…! (See Developing Your Sales Team: The Essential Sales Playbook for Founders and Entrepreneurial CEOs by Steve Kraner, page 72, Kindle version.)
So… Let’s run the experiment!
Add a button on your home page that offers a conversational alternative to “Book a Demo”. Do some testing (e.g., have only the “Demo” button, have only the “Conversation” button, offer both) – then compare results!
Here are a few other possibilities for alternative buttons, with the “Button” text followed by a sub-title:
- “Book a Conversation”
o Let’s discuss what you have in mind
- “Help Me Diagnose My Problem or Situation”
o Before leaping to a solution, let’s make sure we both understand all of the important factors
- “Help Me with My Exploration and Buying Process”
o If you are new to purchasing this kind of software, we’re happy to help – we’ve helped other customers many times before
- “Assist Me with My Buying Process – My ‘Buyer’s Journey’”
o If you are new to purchasing this kind of software, we’re happy to help – we’ve helped other customers many times before
- “I’d Like to Explore the Options”
o There may be things you haven’t yet been exposed to that could be important for you
- “Here’s My Thinking So Far”
o Let’s start with an overview of your problem and your current vision of a solution – and then we can explore from there
Thoughts, folks?
I have brought this up with our demand gen team (who manage our website) and while they agreed that "Book A Demo" doesn't set the best expectations, it is by far and away the strongest call to action. Apparently they have done multiple A/B tests in various scenarios pitting "Book A Demo" against a number of alternatives similar to what you suggest like "Book A Conversation", and the former always produces more inbound leads by a country mile.
But what about the quality of that lead, and of that first conversation, I hear you ask? Well as we know that quality is hard to quantify and its a tough sell to tell the CMO that we want to willfully reduce our inbound leads in order to set the right tone for the first conversation.
I'm not saying its a blind quality vs quantity equation, and I'm still not convinced one way or the other. Just trying to add a marketer's perspective to the discussion!
Question: in your A/B testing, did you ever offer BOTH buttons? That's my suggestion...
In any case, it would be very interesting to compare the quality and progress of leads through your process from both starting points, particularly if you offer both buttons.
One of the challenges with traditional approaches is to measure quantity without also measuring quality. Just because you get more "leads" from one mechanism vs. another doesn't necessarily result in more closed business and happy customers.
In the world of presales, a classic example is to measure the number of demos done per week (or other unit of time). However, what proportion of these demos were "wasted", resulted in repeat demos, or ended in "No Decision" outcomes? This is one reason I measure Revenue$/demo in my organizations.
Without the denominator, you run the risk of simply trying to "turn the crank faster", when you might have changed gears and gone further with less energy invested!
Book a demo may be a good call to action, but you start on the wrong foot when the first call is a sales person saying you can't have a demo.
We got rid of our demo button, I would rather have better leads than the whole I just want to see the product conversation... 😉
I love the idea Peter! I would say this, currently being on the other side of the fence (IT Manager). Not laying out clear expectations of what will happen next is definitely not a great way to start the experience.
As the customer, I just want to talk to a technical person. Obviously after lots of research on SE roles I see now why the workflow is important, but as a customer I don't.
The only thing worse is getting an SDR, who is super green, and I was expecting a technical conversation, then I'm going to be really worried about your technical expertise right off the bat 70% of the time I came in mad anyway because I went to a page called pricing, expecting to see pricing and got a contact form instead.
/RANT
So anything that can be done to make the process more transparent would help. If you can set expectations, and the meet them at a minimum, you will make happy customers.
Ideally show me the whole process, tell me that the first person that I will talk to is just there to make sure I talk to the right people, and they won't be able to answer technical questions. If you set the stage, I will be expecting it, and okay with it because I know I'm progressing along the journey.