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<td colspan="14" align="left" valign="top" bgcolor="#FFFFFF" ><h1>Don't Let A Course Demo Do In The Sale.</h1>
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<h4>A supermarket lady brandishes tiny toothpicks of goat cheese.
An SUV salesman veers off on an abandoned logging road. A
body armor exhibitor goads onlookers to shoot him in the chest.</h4>
<p>They're all demonstrating a product -- and in a mighty compelling
way.<p>
Kicking off a training sales call with a course demo can seem
like an excellent idea, as well. Unfortunately, it rarely
is. Here's why, and what to consider instead.
<h2>
A. Your Audience Can't Relate</h2>
<h4>
Too many training demos subject training decisionmakers to
a blow-by-blow course run-through. This can be a big mistake
if the decisionmaker can't personally relate to your course
content.</h4>
<p>
Imagine you are an HR professional and a training salesperson
insists on escorting you through an e-Learning course on "Building
Linux Beowulf Clusters." You're intimidated by the content
-- not to mention bored to tears. Who can blame you for tuning
out everything else the salesperson has to say.<p>
Better if the salesperson offered a demo that addressed your
business concern that all e-Learning must be compatible with
your corporate bandwidth and firewall standards. As for content
quality, the salesperson would have been better served by
helping you set up a pilot with members of your IT organization.
<h2>
B. Your Audience Is Too Senior</h2>
<h4>
Or suppose you are VP Manufacturing for a Fortune 50 giant,
being asked to pretend you are a newly-appointed supervisor
in a shop floor role play concerning chronic employee tardiness.
You feel foolish -- then furious, as the salesperson "diplomatically"
points out an error in your style.</h4>
<p>
Better if the salesperson had deferred to your stature and
expertise and staged a demo dramatizing sizeable reductions
in scrap rates and union grievances in plants where the supervisory
course has been adopted.
<h2>
C. Your Course Doesn't Lend Itself To Being Demo'd</h2>
<h4>
Another problem with course run throughs -- even to a receptive
audience -- is that few learning experiences are convincingly
portrayed in a sales demo way.</h4>
<p>
Trying to compress 40 hours or so of instruction into 30 minutes
can leave people's heads spinning. It's like trying to enjoy
a five-star restaurant meal after the kitchen has caught fire.
Nor is previewing just one course unit necessarily an answer
-- particularly if each unit is based on learning that has
gone on before.<p>
Then you have the challenge of trying to translate a highly
interactive community learning experience into a one-on-one
sales simulation. Unless your salesperson can contort and
shift roles like a method actor, this effort is almost always
certain to fall flat.<p>
So what do you do if your prospect ardently expresses an interest
in -- or concerns about your course content? Well, begin by
asking them to clarify what the primary issue is. Maybe all
you need to do is to walk them through the syllabus so they
can see if a vital topic is covered. If their concern is more
broad-based, then consider referring them to a current client
who can speak to the overall quality of your course content
and learning design. Or, best of all, see about getting your
prospect to set up a pilot group so your course can be evaluated
under "battlefield" conditions.
<h2>
D. The Demo Prevents Customers From Expressing Their Needs</h2>
<h4>
This is a problem with all demos, but with course demos most
of all.</h4>
<p>
Every moment you are conducting a Cook's tour of your course
is a moment when your customer is prevented from expressing
their needs or voicing their concerns. A course demo presumes
customer decisionmakers are looking for you to build a pedagogical
case. They are far more likely to be seeking a business case.<p>
So before you launch into that demo on "Finance for the Non
Financial Manager" its wise to ask questions like: "Are you
satisfied that your people are incorporating bottom line concerns
in their everyday decisions?" "What sort of approaches have
you tried to help your people become more financially literate?"
"If there were a way you could equip all of your people to
think more like your CEO, would you be interested?"<p>
Then, once you have scoped out the need and identified your
prospect's hot buttons you can consider asking permission
to demo part of your course by saying something like "You're
skeptical that non college-educated employees will be able
to grasp the concept of present-value accounting -- would
it help if I demonstrated to you how that unit works?"<p>
In sum, hold that demo until you have established your customer's
needs and asked your customer's permission. And don't be surprised
if the answer is "no thanks."
<h2>
Questions you may have:</h2>
<p><b>
Q: Rather than demo our course during a sales call, suppose
I invite the decisionmaker to sit in on one of our current
public courses -- either as a participant or an observer.</b>
<p>
A: This can work if the decisionmaker is genuinely interested
in participating in the course and the learning is relevant
to his or her job. However, it is not usually a good idea
to station a decisionmaker as a passive, back-of-the-room
observer. When people aren't actively involved in the learning
it's easy to resort to becoming an evaluator critic -- or,
worse yet, to fall asleep!<p><b>
Q: Our salespeople are asking for a course sampler demo that
they can leave behind with customers. Will this help move
the sale forward?</b>
<p>
A: Probably not. Our experience with course sampler leave
behinds is that you wind up having to sell like the blazes
just to get someone to sample them.<p><b>
Q: We are thinking of doing a course demo at an executive
level pre-sales event we are having in a hotel. Is this a
good idea?</b>
<p>
A: Remember, when you are addressing decisionmakers it is
almost always better to demonstrate a business case rather
than course content. However, if you are certain a brief excerpt
of a course will engage your audience in a powerful and personal
way and speak to the business goals they want to achieve,
then, by all means, have at it.</p>
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