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This article is the sequel to The 5-Act Play for PreSales, to point out how best practices from across the PreSales universe fit into each act. If you have not already, please read that article for the fundamental explanation and PreSales applications of the 5-act play.
As a reference, here’s the 5-act play infographic:
And here’s an example of the 5-act play to get us on the same page:
A long time ago in an office far far away, my reputation as a product expert was spreading internally,
and I was asked to give PreSales demonstrations.
But my aimless stories left my audience lost and confused.
Therefore, I determined that a story map would enable me to stay on track and reach a definitive finish line.
If I could engineer an SE story template based on conventional story archetypes,
then I could completely, consistently, and confidently execute exhaustive discoveries and enthralling demonstrations!
Now, let’s find what best practices for PreSales fit into each of the acts:
Act 1: Identify the Situation 🙂
Start with setting the scene, star, and stakes. The scene determines the features to demonstrate/sell, but the stakes define your solution’s value.
But wait! Didn’t Peter Cohan turn the demo world upside down with his Upside Down Demo model in his book Great Demo!, to bring the bottom line up front (BLUF)? Yes, and he also states (and practically shouts it in his sequel book, Doing Discovery), you can’t bring up the bottom line until you find their bottom line!
The bottom line is the value lost due to their issue. When you discover multiple issues, prioritize and strategize how the order will be addressed. Perhaps there is an epic story arc for them all, or you simply want to prioritize the executive buyer before they leave the room.
You will only know who needs what if you discover early and often. Never stop listening, learning, and identifying the situation. In the words of Cortney Zamm, Director of Solutions Engineering at Sprout Social, “Disco never dies!” Keep the spotlight on your buyer to keep their eyes lit up!
“If a story is not about the hearer he [or she] will not listen . . . A great lasting story is about everyone or it will not last. The strange and foreign is not interesting — only the deeply personal and familiar.” — John Steinbeck, East of Eden
Connecting your demonstration to your buyer will ground your story and perk up your audience. As Jonathan Friedman, CEO and Co-Founder at DemoStack, puts it, “the best demo is a mirror”.
To accurately reflect your buyer, frequently ask for clarity and confirmation when discovering, and questions and comments when demonstrating. This enacts an exhaustive discovery and engaging demonstration, truly building the buyer’s narrative and your character as the trusted advisor.
Moreover, clear requests get clear responses. Don’t take crickets for an answer! Instead of asking, “Any questions? Any thoughts? Anyone …?”
… ask for specifics.
“How do you see that being valuable for you?”
“What challenges do you foresee with this solution?”
“What will you do with the time you save?”
To quickly assess feedback for digging deeper, Cohan has another charming trick to first ask the audience to simply respond “Oh yeah!” or “Oh no!” From there, he asks for more. And he gets great responses as they have an expectation of engaging and time to think.
Before starting the meeting, as people are trickling in, my trick to seamlessly learn the buyer’s situation is to conduct introductions with the Role Goal Poll:
- “What’s your role in the solution?” Hopefully, you know their title beforehand. This question allows you to confirm and clarify their position in the solution and their involvement in the sale.
- “What’s your goal for this session?” Align and achieve! And uncover the underlying value point by following the goal up with “Why’s that important to you?” Furthermore, utilize the Sandler Up-Front Contract strategy to see which goals are most significant by presupposing the next steps upon meeting them.
The Role Goal Poll defines your buyer’s Situation, to set the scene, star, and stakes. Referencing my opening example:
- The scene was my office;
- The star was me, characterized by my
role as a reputable product expert and
goal to do PreSales demonstrations;
- And this implies the value from the stakes of my reputation and the sales of my organization.
-
Act 2: Incite the Issue 🤕
Why change? Why now? What is the cost of not changing? Collect baseline metrics that your solution can help, allowing you to later justify necessity and urgency by demonstrating projections of value over time.
Ask your buyer for baselines, but first offer benchmarks from previous similar customers. For instance, “Most customers spent between X and Y hours a week doing Z. Is your work above or below that?” Providing benchmarks makes it easier for your buyer to calculate and admit faults under the social cover.
Bringing this point home, in 6 Important Lessons I Learned from Becoming a Buyer, Thomas Edwards shares:
“As part of discovery, the best Solutions Consultants asked the right questions to help me measure and quantify our existing challenge. At this stage, they weren't even selling their product, but the metrics they asked me about were the ones that they knew their product could help impact. In some cases, these were metrics that we weren't measuring at all. This helped us see how big our challenge was and made the solution all the more compelling.”
You can find metrics for revenue, reductions, and risks; with issues respectively coming from growing, slowing, and conforming pains:
- When a company is stretching to penetrate their market, they have growing pains because they need solutions for scaling out to reach their potential revenue.
- When a company’s stretching creates hemorrhaging, they have slowing pains because they need solutions for loss reduction. In my opening example, I had slowing pains from losing my audience.
- When safety, values, reputation, or compliance are at risk, the company has conforming pains because they need solutions to bring their standards up to par.
Just as you’re identifying the roles and goals for individuals’ situations, track who has what issue so you can draw that person’s attention to its respective value from your solution.
Act 3: Inform of the Solution 🤩
Why us? How do you help them define their prize? Great questions!
Before giving your advice, ask what they are looking for, what they already know, and what’s holding them back, so your advice can be precise and progressive.
Being precise also means speaking incrementally, leaving space for your audience to learn up and lean in. As professed by Gong, “You’re not there to ask questions. You’re there to get them to ask questions.”
But don’t just give answers, give advanced advice. Advance to understand the underlying meaning to their question, so you can truly advise them.
In The Six Habits of Highly Effective Sales Engineers, Chris White calls this the habit of probing to understand the job to be done. White gives the example of buying a shovel to dig a hole, to build a fence, to provide privacy for the homeowner. Now we’re talking situation and issue!
The job is the buyer’s situation, imperiled by its issue, putting your solution into the context of the story and value into the sale.
In the same sense, nobody just wants to buy software or a seed. They want to bask in the shade of success!
This deep discovery requires quiet wisdom to see the fruits of your labor. Quiet to welcome questions, and wisdom to question them. This is what separates the wise guys and gals from the wise men and WISE Women (in Solutions Excellence).
In the words of the wizard Gandalf the Grey, “A wizard is never late, nor is he early. He arrives precisely when he means to.” By responding to their questions with advanced advice, you become the trusted advisor in their narrative. As a result of your supporting role, the buyer is enabled to define, buy, and optimize the solution.
In my opening example, based on my Situation and Issue, and ensuing exploration, I determined that my solution should be a story map.
Act 4: Illustrate the Steps 😵💫
For solution demonstrations, continue to actively engage and incrementally showcase, to ensure everyone is following and directing the story. And as Pollard highlighted, speak straight to the heart, by conveying the emotion over the motion.
While the solution demonstration is not a training session, the purpose of buy-in conversations and buyer enablement is to instruct the immediate steps for your buyer. By proactively and authentically guiding these processes, Brent Adamson, elaborating on The Challenger Customer, calls this the Prescriptive Approach, as opposed to the Responsive Approach. The former has a 104% increase in purchase ease and 87% decrease in purchase regret.
To raise a suggestion or bring buyer’s back on track, Adamson uses the phrase, “In working with other customers like you, one of the things that they’ve learned is…”
When identifying the situation, I mentioned the Sandler Up-Front Contract to presuppose the next steps. Here, they are reviewed to affirm them. Even if you skipped past the Sandler Up-Front Contract, checking for satisfaction to rationalize the next steps is great for uncovering objections before everyone walks away.
In my opening example, my call to action was “If I could engineer an SE story template based on conventional story archetypes…” Notice that this statement starts with the conditional conjunction “if,” because this was my call to action to achieve success.
Act 5: Inspire Success 🥰
Why should your buyer pick up your call to action? Inform and inspire them by showing your solution’s value against your buyer’s situation and issues.
The ending has two parts: repeating the most important points and delivering inspirational remarks of what the world will look like when your idea is adopted.
The principle of recency states that audiences remember the last content they heard in a presentation more vividly than the points made in the beginning or middle.
In order to get the most out of your audience, describe the possible future outcomes with wonder and awe. Show the audience that the reward will be worth their efforts. ― Nancy Durate, Resonate
The buyer will most remember your ending, so use this mind space wisely. Communicate with KPIs and victory cries by understanding their data and underlying needs. Give them a destination worth following your directions.
John Care, author of Mastering Technical Sales advises that PreSales’ contribution to an organization is through sales, success, and stories. Success is the glue and the grease connecting and moving everything together. By defining and articulating success, the sale moves forward where it can be disseminated as a story.
In my opening example, my success was to “completely, consistently, and confidently execute exhaustive discoveries and enthralling demonstrations.” My solution of a story structure was just the vehicle to take me to this destination.
Conclusion
With the best practices in hand, you can make your practice your best! It will never be perfect, that’s why it’s practice. But it will make progress into new frontiers; to boldly show what no solution demonstration has shown before!
I look forward to hearing how your 5-act play plays out, and how the best practices are becoming better!
About Jason Zeikowitz
Jason E. Zeikowitz is a Technical Trainer at MTX Group.
This article is the sequel to The 5-Act Play for PreSales, to point out how best practices from across the PreSales universe fit into each act. If you have not already, please read that article for the fundamental explanation and PreSales applications of the 5-act play.
As a reference, here’s the 5-act play infographic:
And here’s an example of the 5-act play to get us on the same page:
A long time ago in an office far far away, my reputation as a product expert was spreading internally,
and I was asked to give PreSales demonstrations.
But my aimless stories left my audience lost and confused.
Therefore, I determined that a story map would enable me to stay on track and reach a definitive finish line.
If I could engineer an SE story template based on conventional story archetypes,
then I could completely, consistently, and confidently execute exhaustive discoveries and enthralling demonstrations!
Now, let’s find what best practices for PreSales fit into each of the acts:
Act 1: Identify the Situation 🙂
Start with setting the scene, star, and stakes. The scene determines the features to demonstrate/sell, but the stakes define your solution’s value.
But wait! Didn’t Peter Cohan turn the demo world upside down with his Upside Down Demo model in his book Great Demo!, to bring the bottom line up front (BLUF)? Yes, and he also states (and practically shouts it in his sequel book, Doing Discovery), you can’t bring up the bottom line until you find their bottom line!
The bottom line is the value lost due to their issue. When you discover multiple issues, prioritize and strategize how the order will be addressed. Perhaps there is an epic story arc for them all, or you simply want to prioritize the executive buyer before they leave the room.
You will only know who needs what if you discover early and often. Never stop listening, learning, and identifying the situation. In the words of Cortney Zamm, Director of Solutions Engineering at Sprout Social, “Disco never dies!” Keep the spotlight on your buyer to keep their eyes lit up!
“If a story is not about the hearer he [or she] will not listen . . . A great lasting story is about everyone or it will not last. The strange and foreign is not interesting — only the deeply personal and familiar.” — John Steinbeck, East of Eden
Connecting your demonstration to your buyer will ground your story and perk up your audience. As Jonathan Friedman, CEO and Co-Founder at DemoStack, puts it, “the best demo is a mirror”.
To accurately reflect your buyer, frequently ask for clarity and confirmation when discovering, and questions and comments when demonstrating. This enacts an exhaustive discovery and engaging demonstration, truly building the buyer’s narrative and your character as the trusted advisor.
Moreover, clear requests get clear responses. Don’t take crickets for an answer! Instead of asking, “Any questions? Any thoughts? Anyone …?”
… ask for specifics.
“How do you see that being valuable for you?”
“What challenges do you foresee with this solution?”
“What will you do with the time you save?”
To quickly assess feedback for digging deeper, Cohan has another charming trick to first ask the audience to simply respond “Oh yeah!” or “Oh no!” From there, he asks for more. And he gets great responses as they have an expectation of engaging and time to think.
Before starting the meeting, as people are trickling in, my trick to seamlessly learn the buyer’s situation is to conduct introductions with the Role Goal Poll:
- “What’s your role in the solution?” Hopefully, you know their title beforehand. This question allows you to confirm and clarify their position in the solution and their involvement in the sale.
- “What’s your goal for this session?” Align and achieve! And uncover the underlying value point by following the goal up with “Why’s that important to you?” Furthermore, utilize the Sandler Up-Front Contract strategy to see which goals are most significant by presupposing the next steps upon meeting them.
The Role Goal Poll defines your buyer’s Situation, to set the scene, star, and stakes. Referencing my opening example:
- The scene was my office;
- The star was me, characterized by my
role as a reputable product expert and
goal to do PreSales demonstrations;
- And this implies the value from the stakes of my reputation and the sales of my organization.
-
Act 2: Incite the Issue 🤕
Why change? Why now? What is the cost of not changing? Collect baseline metrics that your solution can help, allowing you to later justify necessity and urgency by demonstrating projections of value over time.
Ask your buyer for baselines, but first offer benchmarks from previous similar customers. For instance, “Most customers spent between X and Y hours a week doing Z. Is your work above or below that?” Providing benchmarks makes it easier for your buyer to calculate and admit faults under the social cover.
Bringing this point home, in 6 Important Lessons I Learned from Becoming a Buyer, Thomas Edwards shares:
“As part of discovery, the best Solutions Consultants asked the right questions to help me measure and quantify our existing challenge. At this stage, they weren't even selling their product, but the metrics they asked me about were the ones that they knew their product could help impact. In some cases, these were metrics that we weren't measuring at all. This helped us see how big our challenge was and made the solution all the more compelling.”
You can find metrics for revenue, reductions, and risks; with issues respectively coming from growing, slowing, and conforming pains:
- When a company is stretching to penetrate their market, they have growing pains because they need solutions for scaling out to reach their potential revenue.
- When a company’s stretching creates hemorrhaging, they have slowing pains because they need solutions for loss reduction. In my opening example, I had slowing pains from losing my audience.
- When safety, values, reputation, or compliance are at risk, the company has conforming pains because they need solutions to bring their standards up to par.
Just as you’re identifying the roles and goals for individuals’ situations, track who has what issue so you can draw that person’s attention to its respective value from your solution.
Act 3: Inform of the Solution 🤩
Why us? How do you help them define their prize? Great questions!
Before giving your advice, ask what they are looking for, what they already know, and what’s holding them back, so your advice can be precise and progressive.
Being precise also means speaking incrementally, leaving space for your audience to learn up and lean in. As professed by Gong, “You’re not there to ask questions. You’re there to get them to ask questions.”
But don’t just give answers, give advanced advice. Advance to understand the underlying meaning to their question, so you can truly advise them.
In The Six Habits of Highly Effective Sales Engineers, Chris White calls this the habit of probing to understand the job to be done. White gives the example of buying a shovel to dig a hole, to build a fence, to provide privacy for the homeowner. Now we’re talking situation and issue!
The job is the buyer’s situation, imperiled by its issue, putting your solution into the context of the story and value into the sale.
In the same sense, nobody just wants to buy software or a seed. They want to bask in the shade of success!
This deep discovery requires quiet wisdom to see the fruits of your labor. Quiet to welcome questions, and wisdom to question them. This is what separates the wise guys and gals from the wise men and WISE Women (in Solutions Excellence).
In the words of the wizard Gandalf the Grey, “A wizard is never late, nor is he early. He arrives precisely when he means to.” By responding to their questions with advanced advice, you become the trusted advisor in their narrative. As a result of your supporting role, the buyer is enabled to define, buy, and optimize the solution.
In my opening example, based on my Situation and Issue, and ensuing exploration, I determined that my solution should be a story map.
Act 4: Illustrate the Steps 😵💫
For solution demonstrations, continue to actively engage and incrementally showcase, to ensure everyone is following and directing the story. And as Pollard highlighted, speak straight to the heart, by conveying the emotion over the motion.
While the solution demonstration is not a training session, the purpose of buy-in conversations and buyer enablement is to instruct the immediate steps for your buyer. By proactively and authentically guiding these processes, Brent Adamson, elaborating on The Challenger Customer, calls this the Prescriptive Approach, as opposed to the Responsive Approach. The former has a 104% increase in purchase ease and 87% decrease in purchase regret.
To raise a suggestion or bring buyer’s back on track, Adamson uses the phrase, “In working with other customers like you, one of the things that they’ve learned is…”
When identifying the situation, I mentioned the Sandler Up-Front Contract to presuppose the next steps. Here, they are reviewed to affirm them. Even if you skipped past the Sandler Up-Front Contract, checking for satisfaction to rationalize the next steps is great for uncovering objections before everyone walks away.
In my opening example, my call to action was “If I could engineer an SE story template based on conventional story archetypes…” Notice that this statement starts with the conditional conjunction “if,” because this was my call to action to achieve success.
Act 5: Inspire Success 🥰
Why should your buyer pick up your call to action? Inform and inspire them by showing your solution’s value against your buyer’s situation and issues.
The ending has two parts: repeating the most important points and delivering inspirational remarks of what the world will look like when your idea is adopted.
The principle of recency states that audiences remember the last content they heard in a presentation more vividly than the points made in the beginning or middle.
In order to get the most out of your audience, describe the possible future outcomes with wonder and awe. Show the audience that the reward will be worth their efforts. ― Nancy Durate, Resonate
The buyer will most remember your ending, so use this mind space wisely. Communicate with KPIs and victory cries by understanding their data and underlying needs. Give them a destination worth following your directions.
John Care, author of Mastering Technical Sales advises that PreSales’ contribution to an organization is through sales, success, and stories. Success is the glue and the grease connecting and moving everything together. By defining and articulating success, the sale moves forward where it can be disseminated as a story.
In my opening example, my success was to “completely, consistently, and confidently execute exhaustive discoveries and enthralling demonstrations.” My solution of a story structure was just the vehicle to take me to this destination.
Conclusion
With the best practices in hand, you can make your practice your best! It will never be perfect, that’s why it’s practice. But it will make progress into new frontiers; to boldly show what no solution demonstration has shown before!
I look forward to hearing how your 5-act play plays out, and how the best practices are becoming better!
About Jason Zeikowitz
Jason E. Zeikowitz is a Technical Trainer at MTX Group.
This article is the sequel to The 5-Act Play for PreSales, to point out how best practices from across the PreSales universe fit into each act. If you have not already, please read that article for the fundamental explanation and PreSales applications of the 5-act play.
As a reference, here’s the 5-act play infographic:
And here’s an example of the 5-act play to get us on the same page:
A long time ago in an office far far away, my reputation as a product expert was spreading internally,
and I was asked to give PreSales demonstrations.
But my aimless stories left my audience lost and confused.
Therefore, I determined that a story map would enable me to stay on track and reach a definitive finish line.
If I could engineer an SE story template based on conventional story archetypes,
then I could completely, consistently, and confidently execute exhaustive discoveries and enthralling demonstrations!
Now, let’s find what best practices for PreSales fit into each of the acts:
Act 1: Identify the Situation 🙂
Start with setting the scene, star, and stakes. The scene determines the features to demonstrate/sell, but the stakes define your solution’s value.
But wait! Didn’t Peter Cohan turn the demo world upside down with his Upside Down Demo model in his book Great Demo!, to bring the bottom line up front (BLUF)? Yes, and he also states (and practically shouts it in his sequel book, Doing Discovery), you can’t bring up the bottom line until you find their bottom line!
The bottom line is the value lost due to their issue. When you discover multiple issues, prioritize and strategize how the order will be addressed. Perhaps there is an epic story arc for them all, or you simply want to prioritize the executive buyer before they leave the room.
You will only know who needs what if you discover early and often. Never stop listening, learning, and identifying the situation. In the words of Cortney Zamm, Director of Solutions Engineering at Sprout Social, “Disco never dies!” Keep the spotlight on your buyer to keep their eyes lit up!
“If a story is not about the hearer he [or she] will not listen . . . A great lasting story is about everyone or it will not last. The strange and foreign is not interesting — only the deeply personal and familiar.” — John Steinbeck, East of Eden
Connecting your demonstration to your buyer will ground your story and perk up your audience. As Jonathan Friedman, CEO and Co-Founder at DemoStack, puts it, “the best demo is a mirror”.
To accurately reflect your buyer, frequently ask for clarity and confirmation when discovering, and questions and comments when demonstrating. This enacts an exhaustive discovery and engaging demonstration, truly building the buyer’s narrative and your character as the trusted advisor.
Moreover, clear requests get clear responses. Don’t take crickets for an answer! Instead of asking, “Any questions? Any thoughts? Anyone …?”
… ask for specifics.
“How do you see that being valuable for you?”
“What challenges do you foresee with this solution?”
“What will you do with the time you save?”
To quickly assess feedback for digging deeper, Cohan has another charming trick to first ask the audience to simply respond “Oh yeah!” or “Oh no!” From there, he asks for more. And he gets great responses as they have an expectation of engaging and time to think.
Before starting the meeting, as people are trickling in, my trick to seamlessly learn the buyer’s situation is to conduct introductions with the Role Goal Poll:
- “What’s your role in the solution?” Hopefully, you know their title beforehand. This question allows you to confirm and clarify their position in the solution and their involvement in the sale.
- “What’s your goal for this session?” Align and achieve! And uncover the underlying value point by following the goal up with “Why’s that important to you?” Furthermore, utilize the Sandler Up-Front Contract strategy to see which goals are most significant by presupposing the next steps upon meeting them.
The Role Goal Poll defines your buyer’s Situation, to set the scene, star, and stakes. Referencing my opening example:
- The scene was my office;
- The star was me, characterized by my
role as a reputable product expert and
goal to do PreSales demonstrations;
- And this implies the value from the stakes of my reputation and the sales of my organization.
-
Act 2: Incite the Issue 🤕
Why change? Why now? What is the cost of not changing? Collect baseline metrics that your solution can help, allowing you to later justify necessity and urgency by demonstrating projections of value over time.
Ask your buyer for baselines, but first offer benchmarks from previous similar customers. For instance, “Most customers spent between X and Y hours a week doing Z. Is your work above or below that?” Providing benchmarks makes it easier for your buyer to calculate and admit faults under the social cover.
Bringing this point home, in 6 Important Lessons I Learned from Becoming a Buyer, Thomas Edwards shares:
“As part of discovery, the best Solutions Consultants asked the right questions to help me measure and quantify our existing challenge. At this stage, they weren't even selling their product, but the metrics they asked me about were the ones that they knew their product could help impact. In some cases, these were metrics that we weren't measuring at all. This helped us see how big our challenge was and made the solution all the more compelling.”
You can find metrics for revenue, reductions, and risks; with issues respectively coming from growing, slowing, and conforming pains:
- When a company is stretching to penetrate their market, they have growing pains because they need solutions for scaling out to reach their potential revenue.
- When a company’s stretching creates hemorrhaging, they have slowing pains because they need solutions for loss reduction. In my opening example, I had slowing pains from losing my audience.
- When safety, values, reputation, or compliance are at risk, the company has conforming pains because they need solutions to bring their standards up to par.
Just as you’re identifying the roles and goals for individuals’ situations, track who has what issue so you can draw that person’s attention to its respective value from your solution.
Act 3: Inform of the Solution 🤩
Why us? How do you help them define their prize? Great questions!
Before giving your advice, ask what they are looking for, what they already know, and what’s holding them back, so your advice can be precise and progressive.
Being precise also means speaking incrementally, leaving space for your audience to learn up and lean in. As professed by Gong, “You’re not there to ask questions. You’re there to get them to ask questions.”
But don’t just give answers, give advanced advice. Advance to understand the underlying meaning to their question, so you can truly advise them.
In The Six Habits of Highly Effective Sales Engineers, Chris White calls this the habit of probing to understand the job to be done. White gives the example of buying a shovel to dig a hole, to build a fence, to provide privacy for the homeowner. Now we’re talking situation and issue!
The job is the buyer’s situation, imperiled by its issue, putting your solution into the context of the story and value into the sale.
In the same sense, nobody just wants to buy software or a seed. They want to bask in the shade of success!
This deep discovery requires quiet wisdom to see the fruits of your labor. Quiet to welcome questions, and wisdom to question them. This is what separates the wise guys and gals from the wise men and WISE Women (in Solutions Excellence).
In the words of the wizard Gandalf the Grey, “A wizard is never late, nor is he early. He arrives precisely when he means to.” By responding to their questions with advanced advice, you become the trusted advisor in their narrative. As a result of your supporting role, the buyer is enabled to define, buy, and optimize the solution.
In my opening example, based on my Situation and Issue, and ensuing exploration, I determined that my solution should be a story map.
Act 4: Illustrate the Steps 😵💫
For solution demonstrations, continue to actively engage and incrementally showcase, to ensure everyone is following and directing the story. And as Pollard highlighted, speak straight to the heart, by conveying the emotion over the motion.
While the solution demonstration is not a training session, the purpose of buy-in conversations and buyer enablement is to instruct the immediate steps for your buyer. By proactively and authentically guiding these processes, Brent Adamson, elaborating on The Challenger Customer, calls this the Prescriptive Approach, as opposed to the Responsive Approach. The former has a 104% increase in purchase ease and 87% decrease in purchase regret.
To raise a suggestion or bring buyer’s back on track, Adamson uses the phrase, “In working with other customers like you, one of the things that they’ve learned is…”
When identifying the situation, I mentioned the Sandler Up-Front Contract to presuppose the next steps. Here, they are reviewed to affirm them. Even if you skipped past the Sandler Up-Front Contract, checking for satisfaction to rationalize the next steps is great for uncovering objections before everyone walks away.
In my opening example, my call to action was “If I could engineer an SE story template based on conventional story archetypes…” Notice that this statement starts with the conditional conjunction “if,” because this was my call to action to achieve success.
Act 5: Inspire Success 🥰
Why should your buyer pick up your call to action? Inform and inspire them by showing your solution’s value against your buyer’s situation and issues.
The ending has two parts: repeating the most important points and delivering inspirational remarks of what the world will look like when your idea is adopted.
The principle of recency states that audiences remember the last content they heard in a presentation more vividly than the points made in the beginning or middle.
In order to get the most out of your audience, describe the possible future outcomes with wonder and awe. Show the audience that the reward will be worth their efforts. ― Nancy Durate, Resonate
The buyer will most remember your ending, so use this mind space wisely. Communicate with KPIs and victory cries by understanding their data and underlying needs. Give them a destination worth following your directions.
John Care, author of Mastering Technical Sales advises that PreSales’ contribution to an organization is through sales, success, and stories. Success is the glue and the grease connecting and moving everything together. By defining and articulating success, the sale moves forward where it can be disseminated as a story.
In my opening example, my success was to “completely, consistently, and confidently execute exhaustive discoveries and enthralling demonstrations.” My solution of a story structure was just the vehicle to take me to this destination.
Conclusion
With the best practices in hand, you can make your practice your best! It will never be perfect, that’s why it’s practice. But it will make progress into new frontiers; to boldly show what no solution demonstration has shown before!
I look forward to hearing how your 5-act play plays out, and how the best practices are becoming better!
About Jason Zeikowitz
Jason E. Zeikowitz is a Technical Trainer at MTX Group.
