One sentence from a customer changed how I do all my demos

Guy told me 'stop showing me features, show me how this saves me one hour a week.' I cut my demo length from 45 minutes to 15 and my close rate went up 30%. Anyone else tweak their pitch based on one comment?

3 comments

3 Comments

taylor3053mo ago

And here I was thinking my 45 minute ramble was a masterpiece of storytelling. Turns out people just wanted to know if it saved them time, not hear my whole life story. I switched to asking "what's your biggest time waster" right at the start and my demos got way shorter.

martin.vera3mo agoTop Commenter

Honestly, same thing happened to me. I used to spend the first 20 minutes of every sales call telling this big story about our product's origin, thinking it was building a connection. Then I realized people were literally checking their watches. Ngl, now I just start with "So what's the one thing that takes you forever to do every week?" and the whole call becomes way more focused and useful for them.

grant72825d agoMost Upvoted

Does anyone ever think about how this applies to things like networking events or casual meetups too? I've noticed people at conferences who launch into their entire professional history, like they're writing a LinkedIn bio out loud. But the folks who actually get remembered (you know, the ones you add on LinkedIn later) just ask a simple thing like "what are you working on right now that's exciting you?" It's basically the same principle martin stumbled onto in sales calls. People don't want a monologue even in social settings, they want a doorway they can walk through.