by Rich Baker, Founder and CEO of Glance Networks
 
With the soaring costs of travel, many sales professionals are increasingly turning to web demos as a way of saving money, while at the same time, extending the reach of their business. Web demos (doing your product or software demo remotely over the web) allow you to react more quickly to the needs of customers and prospects. Even everyday phone calls become more productive when you can quickly and easily share what’s on your computer screen. Here are a few tips that can help you when preparing for your next web demo:
 
1.    Take a practice run-through before your presentation.  This isn’t just to make sure your presentation runs smoothly or you know the high points to hit. Especially when doing a software demo, you’ll know that you have your software and files installed properly and configured correctly on your computer. You’ll also see how fast your network can send screen changes.  You can make sure there’s no embarrassing content left over from internal testing — yes, we’ve seen this happen in live demos! You’ll get a better idea for pacing the demo, and you can leave applications running and files pre-loaded to avoid start-up pauses.
 
2.    Use a solid Internet connection.  Make sure you have plenty of bandwidth. Often ISPs tout their download bandwidth. But if you’re hosting the demo, it’s the upload speed that matters, and it’s often only a tenth as fast. (You can check your speed using the Speakeasy Speed Tester.) To avoid wireless drops, connect your computer directly to your network and disconnect your wireless interface. 
 
3.    Lower your screen resolution. We all like a nice big screen when working, but that’s not what you want for web demos. Lowering your screen size to 1024×768 or even 800×600 means your demo will be transmitted much faster to your guests. It also makes it less likely your presentation will be shrunk down on your guest’s side, making text hard to read.

4.    Go for solid colors. You know about not wearing a checked shirt on TV?  This is similar. In a remote presentation, good solid colors compress better and transmit faster. If possible, avoid complex photos, gradients and textures in your desktop’s background, slides or charts.  You’ll find screen changes and transitions come across snappier.

5.    If something goes wrong, keep talking.  We all have days when the demo gods don’t smile on us. If something glitches, despite your run-through, it’s usually not worth getting distracted trying to fix it. Acknowledge that something went wrong, and then move on. If it’s a live product demo, have a backup slide presentation.

6.    Finish with a bang.  Sum up what you’ve said. State next steps. Then pause for questions with a memorable or “sticky” image on the screen, and a clear call to action.

Web demos can be your most cost effective way to boost inside sales and to combat the rising cost of doing business today. But make sure you choose a web demo tool that starts quickly and easily, works reliably, and doesn’t require any unnecessary effort on your audience’s part.
 
Read more about the growing popularity of web demos and get tips for better demos at http://blog.glancenetworks.com/.
 
Rich Baker is Founder and CEO of Glance Networks, the one-click desktop sharing tool.  Rich holds a PHD from Stanford and is a former Assistant Professor at UCLA.

Invest in Yourself – Sales Gravy Store

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by Steve Reeves 

It really is real, this “Sales 2.0″

With so much quality content already posted in this category, penning a new entry is a little intimidating. So this new boy on the block starts with an affirmation of what’s been said before . In order to add some value, we can create some context for Sales 2.0 by looking at our case studies.

The author is old enough to know better, but nevertheless is involved in three independent, and different businesses. One, a Business 2.0 start up; another the relaunch of a desk top engineering package as an enterprise solution; and the third, a government funded research program targeted at predicting “adverse events” in intensive care environments.

“Sales” is a critical success factor in all three, but nothing like the selling we were doing just a few years ago. What happened? Yep, Web 2.0 and the leadership it offered to us all.

The “selling is a numbers game” guys are lost and gone for ever. Cold calling flat out doesn’t work, and the spammers have ruined Email as a marketing tool. Customers now know at least as much about the product/service as the sales people, so they can’t be fooled by fast talking and firm hand shakes.

So where’s the sales people’s value add if it’s not door knocking or blind siding the customer?

As Evan suggests in his video, the value add is exactly where it’s always been, for sales professionals – helping customers to make the right choices, and staying around to make sure they get what they bought.

As Doug describes the value add is in all the additional information, and communication, made possible by social media and the sales guy networking wider and deeper.

As Rich describes it’s in ensuring that positive customer experience gets happy customers marketing to their friends.

As Kelly and Nita describe it’s in recognizing the extent of the customers’ control, and engaging them in being part of the brand.

So what does this have to do with the context of the three projects? And where are the parallels between the businesses?

In the Business 2.0 sector we have to understand the needs of small business owners, earn the right to be heard by creating real value with content, engage them in defining their solution, creating the brand, and virally marketing to their peers. Search helps them find us whereas blogs and forums help us find them. We need to build that 2+2=5 into the software so that the relationship between the users becomes as important as the software.

In the engineering software business we plan repositioning the solution in the Corporate Responsibility space, based on Sustainable business and creating wealth without costing the earth. Environmental forums and blogs are our path into this space. We just need to create enough quality content so the community takes us seriously. Then we’ll use networking sites to make contact with the corporate buyers.

In the medical business the Internet does a similar job. But we’re not after groups of people. We really want to influence just a small number of individuals, the senior clinicians who’re struggling to meet government demands for evidence based medicine when they can’t believe the evidence. We certainly can’t fool these people – most of them really are brain surgeons – but we can use networking to find them, blogs to engage them and forums to get them owning the brand and spreading the word.

Our job as the sales guys is recognizing the change in dynamics and, like the judo black belt, making it operate in our favor.

About Steve Reeves

CEO of Widespread Solutions d/b/a Front Office Box out of Chicago Il. He also provides business development consulting in Europe and is appointed Exploitation Manager for the European Union Avert-IT research project. Steve used to be a CFO (but says he’s feeling better now) and has spent the last 30 years in sales and sales management positions in the computer and consulting industry.

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