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Just F*ing Demo!: Tactics for Leading Kickass Product Demos
Why do so many demos of revolutionary, game-changing products end with confused investors, overwhelmed buyers, and lost dollars?People leading demos are being forced to fit an ever-expanding feature set into their audience’s ever-shrinking attention span. Making matters worse, those leading the demos can rarely afford to spend months at a time figuring out how to improve their success rates.In Just F*Ing Demo!, Rob Falcone outlines the tactics that helped him overcome these challenges, lead clear, relevant demos, and exceed revenue generation goals quarter after quarter.The book will teach How to structure a demo;- How to ask questions that uncover what your audience truly cares about;- How to translate audience needs into a flow that is extremely easy to follow;- How to use simple but powerful interpersonal tactics within the demo itself. Just F*Ing Demo! distills Falcone’s highly successful training program into an intentionally concise yet impactful read. From the entrepreneur seeking investment to the sales professional chasing a deal, anyone can carve out a few hours, read this book, and immediately make their demos kick ass.
- GenresBusinessNonfiction
41 pages, Kindle Edition
First published September 21, 2014
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Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews
January 6, 2019
Quick read, good tips; helped as a level set for colleagues, too.
November 16, 2017
Notes from Just F*ing Demo
You are leading them down the path of [what YOU need to cover] as it relates to [what THEY say they need to learn] so that [YOU get what you want].
3 Question Discovery
● Present: What are the challenges they’ve been facing?
● Future: What are the outcomes they are looking to drive?
● Preference: Do they have any specific requirements on how they get there? How do they judge the effectiveness of a solution for delivering on those?
Anyone interested in your product is not interested because of your state of the art features; they’re interested because of the outcome it creates. It's a simple rule of buyer motivation.
Begin your demo by highlighting the outcomes it creates. This aligns with your audience’s needs and understanding, and will frame up HOW your solution can help them create the given outcome.
Plan out your demo by putting features that align with your audience’s needs into “buckets”. Starting with broad features and getting more nuanced, move from bucket to bucket, and for each: 1. Summarize what is in the bucket 2. Show the features 3. Summarize why the audience should care.
A helpful hint: All of your product’s features will not fit into your imaginary buckets, so choose only those that align with what the audience cares about
People aren’t interested in your product because of what it can do; they are interested in what they can do with it.
Answering the question on how we are different. “What I’ve heard from folks in the market is that the main difference between us is [insert difference]”;
Returning to our example case, let’s close this demo by summarizing the YOU –THEY –YOU.
● YOU: We covered a lot in this demo, starting with a look at the content areas you’d like to change on your site, the main dashboard that is going to give you a look at all of your activity, and, finally, the content tool that will allow you to select those pieces of real estate on your site where you wanted to update content.
● THEY: You wanted to learn how your team could do all of this without IT involvement. Tell me how I’ve done, and where you still have questions?
● YOU: Excellent. What I’d recommend then is we set up a second, more custom demo to address those specific use cases. Is that ok?
You are leading them down the path of [what YOU need to cover] as it relates to [what THEY say they need to learn] so that [YOU get what you want].
3 Question Discovery
● Present: What are the challenges they’ve been facing?
● Future: What are the outcomes they are looking to drive?
● Preference: Do they have any specific requirements on how they get there? How do they judge the effectiveness of a solution for delivering on those?
Anyone interested in your product is not interested because of your state of the art features; they’re interested because of the outcome it creates. It's a simple rule of buyer motivation.
Begin your demo by highlighting the outcomes it creates. This aligns with your audience’s needs and understanding, and will frame up HOW your solution can help them create the given outcome.
Plan out your demo by putting features that align with your audience’s needs into “buckets”. Starting with broad features and getting more nuanced, move from bucket to bucket, and for each: 1. Summarize what is in the bucket 2. Show the features 3. Summarize why the audience should care.
A helpful hint: All of your product’s features will not fit into your imaginary buckets, so choose only those that align with what the audience cares about
People aren’t interested in your product because of what it can do; they are interested in what they can do with it.
Answering the question on how we are different. “What I’ve heard from folks in the market is that the main difference between us is [insert difference]”;
Returning to our example case, let’s close this demo by summarizing the YOU –THEY –YOU.
● YOU: We covered a lot in this demo, starting with a look at the content areas you’d like to change on your site, the main dashboard that is going to give you a look at all of your activity, and, finally, the content tool that will allow you to select those pieces of real estate on your site where you wanted to update content.
● THEY: You wanted to learn how your team could do all of this without IT involvement. Tell me how I’ve done, and where you still have questions?
● YOU: Excellent. What I’d recommend then is we set up a second, more custom demo to address those specific use cases. Is that ok?
September 25, 2021
Amazingly to the point.
I recommend this book to all technical sales professionals out there who use presentations and demos to sell solutions. The book is amazingly short as to the point. Gives a prescription to a successful demo/presentation that resonates with the audience. Best way to use it is when you are about to build a new demo or presentation as you will immediately relate what you read to what you are building.
I recommend this book to all technical sales professionals out there who use presentations and demos to sell solutions. The book is amazingly short as to the point. Gives a prescription to a successful demo/presentation that resonates with the audience. Best way to use it is when you are about to build a new demo or presentation as you will immediately relate what you read to what you are building.
November 28, 2019
Great way to improve your demo style!
Fantastic and succinct! I do this stuff for a living and it’s very easy to fall into the trap of “show up and throw up” type demos. This shows you a great process to nail your demo more often than not. Going to put this into practice every day!
Fantastic and succinct! I do this stuff for a living and it’s very easy to fall into the trap of “show up and throw up” type demos. This shows you a great process to nail your demo more often than not. Going to put this into practice every day!
October 17, 2017
Super Quick Read, Concise and to the Point!!
Practical, real-life tips/tricks that can be immediately implemented. Just what I needed to revamp my demos and bring a more concise structure to truly address what prospects and clients want from our solutions.
Practical, real-life tips/tricks that can be immediately implemented. Just what I needed to revamp my demos and bring a more concise structure to truly address what prospects and clients want from our solutions.
January 3, 2021
Super practical advice for product sales, especially when converting from services role to a product role. Read it twice just to get as much as I could out of it, and will continue to come back to it
August 8, 2017
Good insights
Good stuff without a lot of fluff.
Great actionable tips, especially the importance of asking for customer needs before the demo.
Good stuff without a lot of fluff.
Great actionable tips, especially the importance of asking for customer needs before the demo.
December 24, 2017
Accessible.
The author did a nice job giving relevant insights for communicating product features in a sales environment. It was a good, quick read and I left with some good ideas.
The author did a nice job giving relevant insights for communicating product features in a sales environment. It was a good, quick read and I left with some good ideas.
April 23, 2018
Quick and to the point
As a sales rep in a new industry, I appreciated the short, sweet, and straight to the f*cking point character of this book. Thanks!
As a sales rep in a new industry, I appreciated the short, sweet, and straight to the f*cking point character of this book. Thanks!
December 14, 2018
Barely a "book" but GREAT advice.
January 5, 2019
A couple of nuggets of wisdom. In such a short book I suppose I was never going to get too deep
August 27, 2020
Hits the Mark
YOU - THEY - YOU are words to life by for any sales engineer out there. I will be reading this again
YOU - THEY - YOU are words to life by for any sales engineer out there. I will be reading this again
May 17, 2022
Yes, short and concise.
January 13, 2023
short, understandable, great Kickstarter for rookie salespersons (like me)
April 8, 2023
Can hardly be described as a book with how short this was. But packs a powerful punch in a few short pages. Author spoke to my soul with his emphasis on a great agenda and clock management!
Read
August 28, 2024Good book for learning how to run curated, engaging demos that are relevant for prospects and customers.
September 2, 2020
Short, sweet, to the point. I think this book is meant to be used as a supplement to the book Demonstrating to Win, which I reviewed as a solid 5. Falcone somewhat summarizes Riefstahl and adds his own flare and best practices to it. Overall I'd recommend putting in the ~30 minutes to get some actionable insights form this.
September 12, 2016
Nice a short, another "content marketing" type book but I enjoyed.
- Know who your customer is, know their specific pain points. Take 5 minutes of any demo to first ask questions
- Understand how they opreate today and how your software can help the operate in the future
- Always have an agenda and start off the demo with an agenda
- Never talk about "features" or the "product". Stick to desired outcomes
- When possible use their vocabulary to ensure you're speaking the same language
- Know who your customer is, know their specific pain points. Take 5 minutes of any demo to first ask questions
- Understand how they opreate today and how your software can help the operate in the future
- Always have an agenda and start off the demo with an agenda
- Never talk about "features" or the "product". Stick to desired outcomes
- When possible use their vocabulary to ensure you're speaking the same language
Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews