Interactive demos and demo experiences: Helping Cybr Donut sell more with better demos - Damian Tommasino, Founder at Cyber Informants

[00:00:00] Hey, it's Andrew. And just quickly before we start this episode, I want to tell you about one of my favorite podcasts. It's the Bare Knuckles and Brass Tax Podcast. Not only does it have a great name, it also has a really good format that's interesting. The two hosts are both named George. That's not what's interesting about it. It's that George K is on the vendor side and George A is a CISO on the customer side. And they have real conversations, sometimes with guests, about the world of vendor customer

[00:00:29] interactions. They're not afraid to call out bad behavior on both sides and talk about the weird and wonderful nature of this world of ours in cybersecurity. Recent favors of mine are the one about building trust called taking a flamethrower to FOD and buzzword mumbo jumbo, and also the one with someone who's a field CISO and advisor to startups called how security buyers think and go to market strategies for young companies. I'm not getting paid for this promo. I just really enjoy the show that two Georges

[00:00:59] put on check it out. It's the Bare Knuckles and Brass Tax Podcast. Now on with this episode. In most of our sales cycles, the demo is seen as a big thing. It's a cornerstone of the sales cycle. Heck, even on our web pages, one of the calls to action is book a demo. And it makes sense, right? Because the product is a thing that actually solves problems. It's not the awareness. It's not the engine. It's not salespeople. It's actually the product itself, which someone's going to use to solve their problem. So how a prospect

[00:01:29] experiences the product actually matters. And there's no doubt good ways to do it. And there's, I'm sure, a whole bunch of bad ways to do it as well. And in the whole kind of concept about experiencing a product, changes have been going on. You know, now sellers have been doing small demos during early calls. We've seen demos happening on websites, either click throughs or even just videos. And often what we're doing is leading up to a POV, not just a POC. And therefore,

[00:01:58] what happens in the demo actually matters as well. Which is why I'm pleased to have Damian Tomasino come on the podcast today. Damian is a solutions engineer at Sneak, but he's also the founder at Cyber Informants, where he advises founders on go-to-market and how to work with prospects, especially around showing off the product itself.

[00:02:20] In this episode, related to Cyber Donut, we talk about what should happen pre-demo, different types of demos, some of the mistakes people make, and also how to think about the effect that demo can have and how to tee it up inside Cyber Donut's go-to-market strategy.

[00:02:36] I'm Andrew Monaghan, and this is the Cyber Security Go-to-Market Podcast, where we tackle the question, how can Cyber Donut get to 10 million in ARR by the end of 2025?

[00:02:58] Well, Damian, here we are today, Cyber Go-to-Market Talk Podcast.

[00:03:02] Well, Damian, here we are today, Cyber Go-to-Market Talk Podcast, and we are on a mission. We have to save Cyber Donut. Cyber Donut is the company that is behind the podcast.

[00:03:10] And the trouble that Cyber Donut is in is that they have to get to $10 million of ARR by the end of 2025.

[00:03:21] Otherwise, the doors will shut down, the windows will close, the doors will close.

[00:03:25] Someone will do that password reset thing, and suddenly, you know, no one will have access to anything, and that'll be the end of Cyber Donut.

[00:03:31] So we've got a bit of a challenge here to try and help Cyber Donut get to that point. It's a big problem.

[00:03:38] So it's November 2024. We've got 13 months to save Cyber Donut.

[00:03:44] And if you look at the website, and for those following on, you go to CyberDonut.com.

[00:03:49] That's cyber without the E, so C-Y-B-R-D-O-N-U-T.com.

[00:03:57] If you scroll down past the hero section about how we're the most advanced thing that's ever walked the planet and get right down, you'll see the numbers.

[00:04:04] So here are the numbers for where Cyber Donut is.

[00:04:07] We wrapped up Q3 about a month and a bit ago, and the ARR was only $1.21 million.

[00:04:13] So we've got a long way to go to hit that $10 million.

[00:04:16] So we need pipeline.

[00:04:17] We need to think about conversion rates.

[00:04:20] We need to think about ICPs.

[00:04:23] Everything is on the table right now about how Bill Wallace, who's the CEO, can get the company in a state where it's got a chance of taking that $10 million.

[00:04:34] So you had the chance, Damien, to have a look at these numbers.

[00:04:38] What stood out to you?

[00:04:39] Anything that you think is eye-raising or encouraging, let's say?

[00:04:45] Well, the good news, I think, is quarter over quarter, they're definitely seeing growth.

[00:04:50] ARR is very steadily growing.

[00:04:52] Net new ARR is definitely growing.

[00:04:54] And number of customers is also growing.

[00:04:57] So that's all positive.

[00:04:58] We're not seeing any stagnant quarters.

[00:05:00] We're not seeing any issues with deceleration and growth.

[00:05:05] But the other piece of this that I think stood out to me is when you're in startup mode, right, there's a certain set of phases you go through.

[00:05:12] First is incubation, kind of come up with your idea.

[00:05:14] Then you move to product market fit, right?

[00:05:17] You kind of have to find a really good problem market fit.

[00:05:21] And then you move into scale.

[00:05:22] And I think the thing that really stuck out here for me is this company who seems to be more in, like, the product market fit stage jumped the gun on hiring, right?

[00:05:32] And they are way too heavy on the headcount here.

[00:05:35] So for those following along, there's about 15 people in the GTM bucket right now that they have as full-time employees, which is insanely heavy for a company of this size.

[00:05:44] It's almost like we're looking at something from 2018, right, where they're saying, yeah, the way to grow is just to hire good-to-market folks and throw people at the problem.

[00:05:52] So, yeah, yeah, growth at all costs is dead.

[00:05:54] And we're not going back to that world again.

[00:05:55] Well, this is interesting, though.

[00:05:57] So one way to look at what you're saying is if we are overloaded, perhaps we can extend our runway a little bit past the end of next year if we looked at cutting some of the headcount.

[00:06:07] Is that how you would look at it?

[00:06:09] Or if you did, where would you start cutting?

[00:06:10] You know, for sure.

[00:06:12] So let's take some quick examples here based on the numbers on the site, right?

[00:06:15] So you've got one sales leader.

[00:06:17] You have five AEs, two SDRs, and two SEs, right?

[00:06:21] If we assume a base salary of $125 a year for each account exec, right?

[00:06:26] You've got another $50 a year base salary.

[00:06:29] Let's take, you know, variable off the table for the SDRs, another $150 to two for the SEs.

[00:06:35] And then you have a sales leader who's probably another two on top of it.

[00:06:38] If I did all the math and multiplied that out, that's roughly a million dollars a year just in base salary that we're carrying, which is almost more than the amount of AR they're pulling in.

[00:07:16] Okay?

[00:07:17] Remember, what would you shoot for?

[00:07:19] Yeah.

[00:07:19] So I would get rid of the sales leader, both SDRs, one of the SEs, and four of the account execs.

[00:07:27] So I would leave one account exec, one SE, and pull the founder back in to run as the head of sales, essentially, the head of GTO.

[00:07:36] There are sales people right now quivering, going, what the heck is this guy talking about?

[00:07:40] He's just slashing us.

[00:07:42] He's just putting us out in the street before Christmas.

[00:07:45] What sort of heartless person is Damien?

[00:07:49] So that's pretty severe though, right?

[00:07:51] That's a big cut.

[00:07:52] It's not just taking one or two off the top there.

[00:07:54] Yeah, it is.

[00:07:55] But the flip side to look at this is if you work for companies in this stage and you don't get a lot of transparency, right?

[00:08:03] You don't get to see what's in the books.

[00:08:05] All you really know is we've got X number of months and runway left, right?

[00:08:09] A lot of these folks will struggle with getting paid on time, right?

[00:08:13] Getting their expenses reimbursed.

[00:08:15] They might have problems with having to try and find a new job in the middle of summer, right?

[00:08:21] If the company realizes that they can't hit their targets then.

[00:08:24] So wouldn't the reality of helping them be to create severance packages that lets them exit in a graceful way?

[00:08:31] You take care of your people, help them transition during the biggest hiring season of the year, right?

[00:08:37] Q4 going into Q1 for sales folks, right?

[00:08:39] That would be a more graceful way to help them exit, cut a lot of the bleeding in the company, and then go into 2025 much stronger.

[00:08:48] Now, if I was to think of what you said, though, right?

[00:08:51] You're going to get down to 1AE.

[00:08:52] You're going to have the founder doing founder selling as well.

[00:08:56] They're both going to be busy, right?

[00:08:58] It's not like we've got nothing.

[00:08:59] We're closing deals.

[00:09:00] We've got pipelines growing, things like that.

[00:09:02] And then also you take with their SDRs.

[00:09:04] So how on earth are they going to get pipeline if there's no SDRs and they're spending and they're really busy?

[00:09:10] Yeah, that's a great point.

[00:09:11] So at this phase, right, if I'm looking at some of the conversion rates of, you know, first MQL to first meeting, right?

[00:09:18] Talking about how we go from first meeting to opportunity, which hopefully we can, you know, close quickly inside quarter.

[00:09:24] The numbers aren't great.

[00:09:26] And I think one of the things that we're really looking for here is if we go back to the whole concept of finding product market fit, or in this case, really what you're looking for is problem market fit, okay?

[00:09:37] The only person who can truly do that and do that well is the people who started this company, the founder or founders in this case, right?

[00:09:45] And until you can find a consistent set of customers where a singular problem resonates, right, and you can clearly articulate how your solution is helping them solve that particular problem with social proof behind it, the founder has to stay involved with those initial sales, right?

[00:10:03] You've got an AE to work alongside them, right?

[00:10:06] Learn all the different pieces and components of what's resonating, what's not, the messaging side, and you feed that back to your product marketer and demand gen, who's also on staff, right?

[00:10:14] We didn't get rid of them.

[00:10:15] And you've got an SE, who at the early stage is going to pull multiple duties, right?

[00:10:20] They are pre-sales, they are post-sales, they are customer support.

[00:10:23] That's just the nature of the beast at this size of a company.

[00:10:26] But as you find your rhythm, right, in solving that particular problem and sales, marketing, you know, the founder of the company are all putting on paper and documenting what's working and what isn't, your conversion rates go up, right?

[00:10:41] And it's much easier to then slowly scale a team once you have some KPIs to know when that time comes.

[00:10:48] It feels like maybe it's the mature way to do this, right?

[00:10:54] It will require Bill going back to the board and saying, you know, we're going to extend our runway.

[00:11:00] So we need to extend our, basically the time to get to the 10 million as well, because we're going to be smart about how we do this.

[00:11:07] It feels like that's the way this is going to go, right?

[00:11:09] It's possible.

[00:11:09] Well, I mean, going from, you know, 1-2 in ARR to 10 million in 13 months is probably not a realistic target to begin with.

[00:11:20] But Damien, Wiz did it.

[00:11:21] Wiz did it.

[00:11:22] Come on, we can all do it, right?

[00:11:23] Yeah.

[00:11:25] Well, you know, we can't all be Wiz.

[00:11:27] But I mean, the idea behind this is I would almost restructure it to a way to say 10 million is a great stretch goal, right, to shoot for.

[00:11:36] And let's look for 3x instead.

[00:11:38] So if we're at 1-2, let's go for 3-6.

[00:11:41] That should be our target for next year.

[00:11:43] Yeah.

[00:11:43] So, you know, the goal right now is to add, is to finish off this year at about 2.1 in ARR, which will mean that then 3x is 6, was it 6.45, something like that, right?

[00:11:59] Is going to get us there.

[00:12:00] So it is quite a bit short, but then maybe what they do is they plan to demand gen and a few other things going on so that, you know, there's a chance to get further than that.

[00:12:09] For sure.

[00:12:09] And we also don't have an established ACV yet either, right?

[00:12:13] Like if we look at some of the data that's in here, we started towards the end of 23 with a 50K deal, right, as the average size.

[00:12:20] We're ending this year at roughly 83K.

[00:12:24] That's only a $30,000 increase, right?

[00:12:27] That's not a significant amount.

[00:12:28] So when you're talking in millions of dollars for less than six-figure ACV, right, you're going to need a lot of customers to get there.

[00:12:36] So then you get to this point where, you know, you're basically playing a numbers team, right?

[00:12:41] The more people we talk to have the better chance of conversion, the better chance of conversion, the better chance of closing a deal.

[00:12:46] As we know, those days are gone, right?

[00:12:49] And people's attention is very short these days and everybody's super overloaded.

[00:12:54] So it's hard to get time with people.

[00:12:56] So if we really want to get to some of those bigger numbers and those bigger targets, it's actually better to really focus on who we can help the most within our ICP and actually drive a larger contract, right?

[00:13:09] Assuming the product supports it, a larger contract value with a smaller pool of customers instead of trying to target a larger amount.

[00:13:19] All right, Damian, let's get to know you a little bit better.

[00:13:22] As always, I've got 49 questions here on my list and we're going to spin this wheel so we can pick totally at random.

[00:13:32] In fact, this whole system has been audited by KPMG.

[00:13:36] They've made sure that the Quasimpic encryption that we use to protect our randomness algorithm is all protected and all the rest of it.

[00:13:44] We use obviously AI at the core of it all thing.

[00:13:46] But the whole idea is you want to get three completely random questions.

[00:13:49] So I'm going to spin the wheel right now and then let's see what we get.

[00:13:53] All right, let's do it.

[00:13:59] All right, number nine, Damian.

[00:14:01] How did you make money as a kid?

[00:14:03] As a kid, I was really into Magic the Gathering, the card game.

[00:14:06] And me and a friend used to sell cards for huge markups so that we could fuel our habits of buying new ones.

[00:14:12] How much of a market?

[00:14:13] You got me intrigued.

[00:14:15] I mean, we were kids at the time.

[00:14:17] So, you know, five dollars was a big deal for us.

[00:14:20] So the FTC is not getting involved to go anti-monopoly stuff on you.

[00:14:23] Is that right?

[00:14:24] No, no.

[00:14:25] I think we're good there.

[00:14:26] Was it the abuse of market position?

[00:14:30] Yes.

[00:14:31] There you go.

[00:14:32] All right.

[00:14:32] Let's spin it again.

[00:14:34] Spin the wheel.

[00:14:35] So 28, what's maybe the or a embarrassing moment or memorable moment in your career so far?

[00:14:48] No, this is a good one.

[00:14:49] So my second job out of college, I was a network admin for an IT healthcare company.

[00:14:55] And a lot of scripting was involved.

[00:14:58] One of the things that I was trying to do is a password reset script.

[00:15:01] And I accidentally ran it in production and reset the password of every user in the organization, including the CEO.

[00:15:08] So that was a lesson learned very, very early in my career.

[00:15:13] Did you go hide in the corner or what did you do?

[00:15:16] I got called into the CEO's office, yelled at, and then I fixed the problem and then hid in the corner after that.

[00:15:22] Very good.

[00:15:23] Oh, man.

[00:15:24] All right.

[00:15:24] Last one.

[00:15:30] All right.

[00:15:31] Number three.

[00:15:32] What is the story behind you getting your first job in cybersecurity?

[00:15:37] This is a good one.

[00:15:38] And so I actually broke into cyber because I had a really big interest in it.

[00:15:43] But not having any experience in cyber, it was hard for me to break in.

[00:15:47] And I was trying to learn from this guy at a company that I worked for who was in charge of all cybersecurity.

[00:15:53] And he was like, really did not want to share any information or let me in on anything.

[00:15:58] So I kept trying to learn more than what he would share with me.

[00:16:02] And ultimately, the vendor that we were working with realized that I was starting to surpass this guy in knowledge.

[00:16:08] And they actually offered me a job in cyber.

[00:16:12] So I broke in that way and kind of left him in the dust only because he would share information with me.

[00:16:18] I've got to admit, when you said you broke into cyber, my mind went a slightly different way at that point.

[00:16:22] I thought, oh, you kind of got in through the back door and made yourself part of the world.

[00:16:28] No, but, you know, there's that definitive line where you cross over from like being a system admin or a network admin or, you know, an analyst over into like fully dealing with cybersecurity issues.

[00:16:40] And I think everybody who's in cybersecurity kind of has that memory like etched in.

[00:16:48] All right, let's dig into this one bit here, right here.

[00:16:50] So if you look at the conversion rates, the way that we've teed this up, that Bill has done this at Cyber Donut, MQL to first meetings, that's basically something coming in.

[00:16:59] And we think that a portion of those are worthwhile us getting in the phone to do some sort of discussion with them, right?

[00:17:06] First meeting opportunity is the both sides agree that there's something here to work on.

[00:17:10] And it's obviously not fully qualified with budget and EBS and all sorts of things like that.

[00:17:15] But, you know, based on what we've learned and what they've learned, there's something here to solve.

[00:17:19] Opportunity to POV is where we're going to focus, though, because opportunity to POV is basically, okay, we found something.

[00:17:24] We're probably have to do some demos.

[00:17:26] There might be some other technical validation that might be bringing more people in.

[00:17:28] And then suddenly we get to POV.

[00:17:30] We want to focus today, our discussion and say, okay, their, let's call it demo to POV conversion rate is 39%.

[00:17:38] The feeling from Bill just talking to all his CEO buddies is that's not bad, actually, but it would be sure be nice if it was up at 50 or 60.

[00:17:47] And, you know, there's, you know, you could balance all off, right?

[00:17:50] You'd easily get it off just by throwing crap at it, right?

[00:17:52] And say, yeah, our numbers are up.

[00:17:53] But he obviously wants to do it in a sensible and logical way.

[00:17:56] So, Damian, as you're looking at that number, if you were asked to say, okay, here are some obvious places to start to figure out ways to improve that conversion rate.

[00:18:08] Let's assume that the quality of what's coming in is pretty good, right?

[00:18:11] It's not like weird and wacky.

[00:18:13] Where would you start looking and what recommendations would you give Bill to say this is what you should be doing to get that conversion rate better?

[00:18:20] Yeah, so I think there's three things that I would focus on here.

[00:18:24] The first would be reviewing with that demo flow, right?

[00:18:27] The first meeting, that first conversation, and ultimately the demo flow looks like.

[00:18:31] And what are they talking about in that meeting, right?

[00:18:34] Is it truly the problem?

[00:18:36] Are they immediately getting sucked into a conversation on, you know, features and functionality, which could explain some of these numbers?

[00:18:42] So, that's the first piece that I would look at is, you know, what are they focusing their conversations on?

[00:18:48] Assuming what's coming in is, let's say, within ICP, right?

[00:18:51] The second piece that I would look at is, how are you using the product in kind of a repeatable way to address that problem area?

[00:19:00] So, I think one mistake that I see too often is, you know, you get customers or prospects on a conversation and you start to do the demo.

[00:19:08] And we see a lot of folks, whether it's the AE or the SE, just start running through, like, here's all the things you can do with our product.

[00:19:15] It's helpful sometimes if you're having a very technical conversation with a very technical audience, more in the POV phase.

[00:19:22] But if you're trying to prove value, right, and help them realize that value of the product, it has to be tied back to ultimately solving the problem that they're looking for, right?

[00:19:32] Which goes back to my first point about what's happening in that first conversation.

[00:19:36] And the third piece I would look at here is, what channels are they using to have these initial demos and conversations?

[00:19:43] Because not everybody consumes things, you know, in the same way, in the same time.

[00:19:47] And as much as I hate to quote the, you know, the Gartner statistic, we've all seen the report that says, you know, 80% of buyers don't initially want to talk to a salesperson.

[00:19:57] They want to do research.

[00:19:58] They want to consume things on their own.

[00:20:00] Ultimately, they may have questions for a salesperson, but you're already 60% to 70% in through the buyer's journey at that point.

[00:20:07] So, when you say channels, the first thing that comes to my mind is there is a, I know it's been going for a while, but there's this movement about you should have a demo on your website, right?

[00:20:17] And I think there's different ways to do that, whether it's a video run through or actually a click-through demo thing as well.

[00:20:22] There's different tools to do that.

[00:20:24] What have you seen work, especially in cyber, right?

[00:20:27] Because it's not a consumer product or even, you know, a simple, sometimes simple dashboard to go through.

[00:20:32] What have you seen in cyber that actually works by having something on the webpage like that?

[00:20:36] Ironically, I have not seen much working because there's not much out there.

[00:20:40] This is a funny topic because I actually did a research report about 18 months ago on demo automation inside of the cyber industry.

[00:20:47] And what I found was out of about 200 to 250 companies that I looked at, only 4% of them had some sort of externally facing demo that people could consume, which is abysmal compared to like the broader, you know, tech industry overall.

[00:21:02] Did you have a conclusion why that was?

[00:21:03] Because I think we're just very slow to adapt in terms of, you know, letting consumers experience the product.

[00:21:10] There's, you know, two schools of thought here.

[00:21:12] One is, well, if our competitors sign up and they see it, they can instantly replicate their functionality, right?

[00:21:17] Okay, I get that.

[00:21:19] But if they want to replicate something or get a demo, they're going to find it one way or another.

[00:21:23] A demo online is not going to help with that.

[00:21:24] The other piece of this is if we don't get them in front of sales for initial conversation, then they're never going to engage with us.

[00:21:32] Or we could reframe that school of thought to say if they don't go beyond the demo itself online to engage with sales, you're either using the wrong messaging to solve and reach them, right?

[00:21:44] Or they're qualifying themselves out, which is probably why you're seeing some of these low numbers to begin with.

[00:21:50] Are there best practices about what the demo online should be?

[00:21:54] I mean, I presume it's just like free reign for our product, right?

[00:21:57] I mean, some of them are.

[00:21:59] Demo automation is a huge category that I still don't think has seen quite a lot of consolidation, but probably will in the next coming years.

[00:22:07] It goes all different directions.

[00:22:09] So one could be like, you know, choose your own journey where you get to pick a bunch of different use cases and then experience those through a demo online.

[00:22:17] Others are like a true sandbox where you just drop someone into your product, you know, let them run loose.

[00:22:23] Some people from a technical perspective really like that.

[00:22:26] Others, it's more of like what's considered a product tour, right?

[00:22:29] So you're not getting a live product, but rather, you know, these buttons or little areas where they want you to focus on the screen and then drive you through the product.

[00:22:37] I don't think there is a right or wrong answer here.

[00:22:40] I think the more important piece, especially within cyber, is clarity of message.

[00:22:45] Okay.

[00:22:46] Okay.

[00:22:47] You've got, let's say, 60 to 120 seconds to help me as the consumer understand what you do, what problem you solve, and why you're different from the 50 other competitors in this space.

[00:23:00] If you can't answer those three things very quickly, right?

[00:23:04] In a visual way to back up your message, of course, you're not going to convert it.

[00:23:08] Yeah.

[00:23:08] It feels like it's worth the effort, though, to get that crisp.

[00:23:12] Because I guess at the company level, your messaging has to be crisp.

[00:23:15] And now you're talking, you know, layers down into use cases and things like that, right?

[00:23:19] Where do you think you got the most impact for prospects and show them how you can help them somehow on that demo, right?

[00:23:25] Yeah, for sure.

[00:23:27] But one of the benefits of actually being a startup at this phase is that you can run micro experiments and try a bunch of different things to see what works.

[00:23:35] And I think that's one of the areas where if you have a marketing person, which Cyberdonate does, right?

[00:23:41] You have a marketing person and you have a founder who has this deep understanding of the product.

[00:23:46] Put those two things together.

[00:23:48] And instead of forcing everyone into, you know, click here to book a demo with sales, give them different opportunities.

[00:23:54] So let's say one is consume a demo online.

[00:23:57] Another is watch a video.

[00:23:58] Another is talk to someone in sales and get a demo.

[00:24:01] And each one of those demos, while the overall messaging should be the same or similar, right?

[00:24:07] Tweak it a little bit based on the people you're either doing outreach to, like within a specific industry, or based on some of the data that you have.

[00:24:15] But the really nice piece about doing or allowing prospects to go through a demo online is you capture a lot of use case information.

[00:24:23] And when they ultimately do talk to sales, that first party intent data is gold because you are no longer guessing, right?

[00:24:30] There's no search intent or, you know, what did they Google for?

[00:24:34] Like what keyword are we trying to guess on?

[00:24:36] They literally walked through use case one and use case three.

[00:24:40] Those are the things that resonate with them.

[00:24:41] So then take those pieces of information, plus their role and what they do day to day.

[00:24:47] And you should be able to go back and have a very personalized conversation with them that blows them away in terms of how others are reaching out to them.

[00:24:56] Yeah.

[00:24:56] Yeah.

[00:24:56] I love that.

[00:24:57] All right.

[00:24:57] Let's get into the demo itself.

[00:24:59] So they've come through and they've used use case one and three or the two that zero did on there.

[00:25:03] They're on the phone.

[00:25:04] The founder is on the phone as well.

[00:25:05] So they're all excited about that.

[00:25:06] And there's the salesperson as well.

[00:25:08] What are some things that you like to see in a demo?

[00:25:12] Let's start on the positive side that you think is the mindset or the process, you call it flow, that you think really works?

[00:25:20] Yeah.

[00:25:20] So I'll start with the caveat by saying that there is a long held debate between whether you should do discovery first or disco or a demo first.

[00:25:30] And I have long held that you actually should do both in the same conversation.

[00:25:35] And here is kind of the way that I structure that.

[00:25:37] And it's what I like to see in the first demos.

[00:25:39] Anytime you have someone kind of going into the demo, I truly believe you should have a prep meeting before you go into that demo and then a debrief meeting.

[00:25:46] Right.

[00:25:47] So everybody's on the same page in the prep meeting.

[00:25:49] You should come prepared with who are you meeting with from an industry perspective?

[00:25:54] Who are you meeting with from like individual titles, roles and what they do day to day?

[00:25:59] And you should have a very clearly defined set of exit criteria to move them to the next phase.

[00:26:04] OK, based on that information, you should have, let's say, some canned use cases that you can walk through that solve some of the problems that you see in that space.

[00:26:15] OK, so I'm just going to pick an example here.

[00:26:17] Let's say you're talking to an e-commerce customer who's trying to solve a PCI problem.

[00:26:21] Right.

[00:26:21] You've done your research.

[00:26:23] You've talked to some of the people who are going to be on this call.

[00:26:26] You've researched people who are going to be on the call.

[00:26:28] And you know that PCI is a really big problem because they actually are about to change the standard to 4.0 early next year in mark of 2025.

[00:26:35] Right.

[00:26:35] When you go have a conversation with them, you don't want to cover everything relating to PCI.

[00:26:40] You want to say very specifically like, look, we know that PCI is upcoming.

[00:26:45] Everybody's doing prep right now.

[00:26:47] We've worked with these three or four other types of customers in the same industry.

[00:26:50] And here are the two or three different ways that we've helped them.

[00:26:55] We're going to walk you through that today and how we think we can help you hit your PCI compliance for 4.0 very quickly with our solution.

[00:27:03] Right.

[00:27:03] Get the micro buy-in.

[00:27:05] OK, get the buy-in and then ask them questions through the disco as you're going along.

[00:27:09] They're going to start asking questions and you have the conversation going at that point, right?

[00:27:13] That's right.

[00:27:14] And at this point, you're no longer just like giving a feature-based demo.

[00:27:18] You're having an open conversation with them and using the product as more of a visual aid to support how you've gone about solving that problem.

[00:27:27] So when I would go through a demo in a similar example like this, I would basically talk, you know, here's use case number one and how we'll help you.

[00:27:34] Kind of walk them through a 60 to 90 second visual in the UI of how we would execute that and then stop, right?

[00:27:42] Confirm that that resonates with them.

[00:27:44] Ask them how that ties back to the way they do things today, right?

[00:27:48] Not just, you know, does it make sense, but how do you do that today, right?

[00:27:52] What challenges are you running into with the current way you do this today?

[00:27:56] And as you confirm each one of those, you should get a clear understanding of, oh yeah, like we don't do that at all.

[00:28:02] Or that's a really hard problem for us and we haven't figured it out yet.

[00:28:05] Or we have something in place.

[00:28:07] We don't need to rock that boat kind of a thing.

[00:28:10] And now you're starting to shape all the components of are we helping them actually realize value by solving a particular problem?

[00:28:18] And ideally, the outcome of that should be the start of your success criteria for a POV.

[00:28:24] So a couple of things stood out for me as you were talking there.

[00:28:26] One is the focus on the problem.

[00:28:29] I really feel like, and I think you kind of alluded to this before, is too often we do the product tour.

[00:28:36] And this is the dashboard and this is this report.

[00:28:39] And now, you know, this is this thing over here.

[00:28:41] And imagine if, and then, you know, whatever, right?

[00:28:44] And I feel like we can communicate a lot better if we start with the problem and say, look, if you don't know it,

[00:28:49] I'd just say a lot of people who are looking at this will tend to struggle with this area right here.

[00:28:54] How are you doing it?

[00:28:55] How's your thing?

[00:28:56] Okay, well, let's talk about how we solve that problem for you.

[00:28:59] You said it took seven days.

[00:29:00] Is it right now?

[00:29:01] Let me show you.

[00:29:01] It's going to take three microseconds or whatever in our world, right?

[00:29:05] So, but you're attaching to the problem all the way through.

[00:29:07] And, you know, in my mind, it's almost like you jump from problem to problem as opposed to you jump from feature to feature.

[00:29:14] Right?

[00:29:15] And you kind of go through it and you knock them down one by one.

[00:29:17] The second thing that I think you and I aligned on is the questions.

[00:29:22] I just got a pet peeve when I listened to, you know, gong calls or whatever and the demo is happening.

[00:29:27] And the SE talks for three minutes and then goes, hey, does that make sense?

[00:29:32] Or any questions, right?

[00:29:34] And I feel like it's like watching the magician do a trick and then saying, any questions?

[00:29:39] It's like, ah, almost always there's silence, right?

[00:29:43] Right?

[00:29:44] And someone goes, nope, nope, we're good.

[00:29:45] And then you kind of move on, right?

[00:29:47] And I think that's so important.

[00:29:48] Like, go back to how are you doing things right?

[00:29:50] How does this compare?

[00:29:51] You said it took you seven days to do this before.

[00:29:55] You know, how do you think this will impact that seven days?

[00:29:58] You know, does it tackle all the roadblocks or bottlenecks?

[00:30:02] Things like that, right?

[00:30:02] You want to put them into that scenario that you showed about and have them think about compared to what you're doing right now.

[00:30:09] Or if they had that right now, what would it mean for them?

[00:30:11] Yeah, for sure.

[00:30:13] And I think for me personally, and something that I share with others when they ask is the demo itself should always be an engaging conversation.

[00:30:22] And if it's not, that is a pretty strong sign that either this is not a priority for them or this is just not a fit.

[00:30:29] So I've actually had demos where, you know, we're halfway through a demo and, you know, I get no engagement from the prospect.

[00:30:36] They're not asking any questions.

[00:30:38] You know, it's very just like, you know, uh-huh, nodding.

[00:30:40] I'll stop the demo.

[00:30:42] Like, turn off screen share, you know, turn the conversation around and just flat out ask, you know, look, we're not, you're not kind of engaging in the conversation.

[00:30:50] Is this something you truly need to solve right now or are there other pressing matters, right?

[00:30:56] That's a hard conversation to have.

[00:30:58] No salesperson wants to turn away an opportunity, right?

[00:31:01] Because that ultimately contributes to that pipe that we're trying to fill at the end of the day.

[00:31:05] But if the timing is not right, if this is not the most pressing priority, what will end up happening is you may convert the demo, but then you go to a POV and then they drag their feet.

[00:31:14] And then the P, you're investing all this time in something that ultimately turns out not to be real.

[00:31:19] Yeah.

[00:31:20] Yeah.

[00:31:20] That's a tough one.

[00:31:22] You know, as a salesperson, you're sitting there and your pipeline is not as big as you want to be.

[00:31:26] You'd hate to have that, you know, shoot them some line and see what happens kind of conversation.

[00:31:31] Because if they go, no, no, you're right.

[00:31:32] We're out of here.

[00:31:34] But it doesn't usually, it never happens like that where someone's motivated and just walks away and said, no, we're fine with that, right?

[00:31:42] It'd been, sometimes they're just off.

[00:31:44] Sometimes they're, what I find actually a few times is they're messaging amongst themselves, right?

[00:31:49] There's all these slack, whatever going on in the background.

[00:31:52] We don't see it, obviously.

[00:31:53] And then that's what's taking up their time is they're talking about what they're seeing and whatever.

[00:31:57] So, yeah, there might be some other reason why they're not engaging.

[00:32:00] But I love that, though.

[00:32:01] You can call them out and say, listen, you know, we want to have a conversation.

[00:32:03] We want to, you know, really work with you on this.

[00:32:06] It doesn't feel like this is top of mind for you, though.

[00:32:10] Yeah.

[00:32:10] You know, I used this line recently and someone just said they really loved it.

[00:32:15] So I'll repeat it again here.

[00:32:16] But if you're giving a demo where there's almost no engagement or conversations or questions, that's no longer a demo.

[00:32:23] You're essentially a TV show for somebody, right?

[00:32:26] You're literally doing like a 15 to 20 minute, you know, mini series on an infomercial, essentially on a product.

[00:32:33] And they're just watching.

[00:32:34] And since we know people don't have that level from an attention span perspective, they probably won't capture or have something stick with them.

[00:32:42] And I think that's really true.

[00:32:43] I love that idea, though.

[00:32:45] I love that, David.

[00:32:45] So, I mean, if you feel at the end of your demo, you could have just recorded it and give it to them.

[00:32:50] You're missing a trick, right?

[00:32:52] That's not the effective way to do it.

[00:32:54] Yeah, 100%.

[00:32:56] 100%.

[00:32:56] And we do see it.

[00:32:57] Like if you look at, you know, gong calls or chorus calls or whatever, you see the long bar, right?

[00:33:02] This is the demo going on right here from minute nine to whatever, right?

[00:33:06] And often, frankly, the engagement, the questions from the SE or the seller are not that great.

[00:33:14] So there's not much engagement and it becomes a bit of a monologue.

[00:33:17] That's right.

[00:33:18] Yes.

[00:33:18] So let me ask you, though.

[00:33:20] So, you know, Cyber Donuts SEs, right?

[00:33:23] Let's say we're down to one SE.

[00:33:26] He or she is looking at the gong call going, yeah, that's me, right?

[00:33:29] That's me.

[00:33:30] How do they change this around?

[00:33:31] How would you strip it right back?

[00:33:33] Would you go right back to fundamentals and say, let's look at the flow?

[00:33:36] Or would you say, look, you just got to ask better questions?

[00:33:39] Or I don't know.

[00:33:39] How would you advise them to change this up?

[00:33:42] Yeah.

[00:33:42] So a little trick that I love to do is when you're this early on as a company,

[00:33:47] I usually set a weekly GTM meeting.

[00:33:49] And that meeting is usually 30 to 60 minutes long.

[00:33:53] It's sales, SE, it's customer success, it's product marketing, right?

[00:33:58] It's the whole GTM team.

[00:34:00] The only purpose of that meeting is for everybody to kind of share notes on every customer conversation

[00:34:07] or consumed piece of content in the previous week.

[00:34:10] Okay.

[00:34:11] What we're really looking for here is what's resonating, right?

[00:34:14] Is it a theme?

[00:34:15] Is it a topic?

[00:34:16] Is it a use case?

[00:34:17] Is it an anecdotal story?

[00:34:19] Ultimately, just throw it in a Google Doc, right?

[00:34:22] You'll start to see things emerge in a very thematic way.

[00:34:25] You take that and kind of convert that back and then start to flush that out.

[00:34:30] So, you know, going back to my example earlier, if you're talking to a lot of companies about

[00:34:35] PCI 4.0, right?

[00:34:37] There's dozens of different controls and then some controls within there.

[00:34:41] You obviously aren't handling all of them.

[00:34:43] So, if you've had, you know, six, seven, eight conversations in the previous week and it's

[00:34:48] like, oh, you know, 6.4, that control has been coming up again and again and again in

[00:34:53] every conversation.

[00:34:54] We have people referencing that or we're downloading an asset relating to that.

[00:34:59] You know, since that is the thing that's resonating most, flush that out, right?

[00:35:03] How do you help?

[00:35:05] Who are you helping?

[00:35:06] What specifically are you making easier?

[00:35:09] And then once you have that written down somewhere, that's then the opportunity for

[00:35:14] the SE and hopefully the AE and or founder to kind of go back and refine, you know, the

[00:35:19] demo, I hate to use the word script, but the demo script, right?

[00:35:22] Of like, here are some common questions we could ask.

[00:35:25] Here are some things that we could use to get micro buy-ins.

[00:35:28] You don't want to be robotic, but you should have a set of questions or discovery points that

[00:35:35] you can kind of come back each time.

[00:35:36] And you're essentially checking your own internal box, right?

[00:35:39] Are we on the right path?

[00:35:40] Are we making an impact?

[00:35:41] And if not, you're not going to hit your exit criteria.

[00:35:44] Yeah, I like that a lot because if you're making any behavior change, and I've learned

[00:35:48] this over the years working with sales teams, you have to be very intentional.

[00:35:52] You can't just say, oh, we're going to ask better questions.

[00:35:54] And then somehow I hope that on the next call, these magical better questions are going

[00:35:58] to flow out the sky in the moment, right?

[00:36:00] You have to sit there and go, okay, when we do this part of the demo, we're going to show

[00:36:05] them this, this, and this, and then we're going to ask this question right here, right?

[00:36:08] It might feel a little awkward at the start, but then it won't, right?

[00:36:12] And you realize, actually, that's a great question because you look at when we ask it on the

[00:36:15] GOM calls, the prospect talks for three minutes because it's the right question to ask and it

[00:36:20] gets to the heart.

[00:36:20] So I think you have to be intentional about this is the exact question we're going to ask

[00:36:24] at this point.

[00:36:25] And then adjust, right?

[00:36:26] If it doesn't work or it doesn't, I don't know, feel right, you adjust it a little bit.

[00:36:29] But, you know, I think there's a lot of vagueness, you get away with a lot of vagueness and generalities

[00:36:34] unless you're intentional about how you're going to go about doing this.

[00:36:38] Yes.

[00:36:38] And remember earlier, I said my favorite thing here is there's three phases.

[00:36:42] There's that pre-reading where you're prepping, there's the actual demo, and then there's

[00:36:45] the debrief afterwards.

[00:36:46] The debrief, you can't skip because that's where you kind of come together and say, all

[00:36:51] right, it's fresh on our mind.

[00:36:52] We're just off the call.

[00:36:53] Here's all the things that we heard.

[00:36:55] These were the points that resonated really well and got them talking a lot, right?

[00:36:59] And then you have Gong to kind of reference that.

[00:37:01] How do we use those in more meetings going forward?

[00:37:03] Yeah.

[00:37:04] Yeah.

[00:37:04] I think I'm kind of with you on the demo script isn't the right thing.

[00:37:07] You don't want someone literally reading stuff, but there's a way to do things that you know

[00:37:11] works and you kind of talk about problems, you talk about what we do in a certain way.

[00:37:15] One of the things that I'm going to throw at you, and it's okay to completely disagree with

[00:37:21] me on this.

[00:37:22] I'm just interested in your opinion.

[00:37:24] I have this philosophy in a lot of things to do with sales that get them dessert first

[00:37:29] is the mindset that you should go with.

[00:37:31] And the way it translates in a demo is if you got some amazing wow moment or thing that

[00:37:36] you do that's just going to change their world, do you lead towards it and then build

[00:37:41] up and say, well, we have this and this and we've got this dashboard and these policies

[00:37:44] and whatever.

[00:37:45] And suddenly, bang, look, look at this amazing outcome, you know, 10 minutes later in the

[00:37:48] demo about what it does.

[00:37:50] Or do you give them an amazing outcome and then have them say, well, how the heck do

[00:37:53] you do that?

[00:37:54] Right?

[00:37:54] And then you kind of go through, well, what we actually did was build some policies.

[00:37:57] Let me show you the policy engine.

[00:37:58] And then we had a workflow.

[00:37:59] Let me show you the workflow engine.

[00:38:00] And what that meant was that you saw this amazing thing and imagine you had that every

[00:38:04] day.

[00:38:05] So have you got any strong opinions on lead towards the big thing or start with the big

[00:38:09] thing and then explain how you got there?

[00:38:11] I tend to go the latter, right?

[00:38:12] So outcome is always first.

[00:38:14] And I always try to get that in the front of the meeting, right?

[00:38:17] So again, before you dive right into UI and screen shares, you want to come right up front

[00:38:24] and say like, look, this is the outcome that we tend to help your type of company and people

[00:38:29] in your role achieve, right?

[00:38:31] And here are the three ways in which we do that.

[00:38:34] If I can't get a buy-in from them that, oh yeah, that resonates with me, that makes sense

[00:38:38] to me, there's no point in giving them deserve because they're not going to be interested

[00:38:42] in it, right?

[00:38:42] So if we know what the outcome is, I should have several use cases that I can very quickly

[00:38:47] tie to that outcome.

[00:38:48] And then there are a handful of features that get executed in each use case.

[00:38:52] And it's not a linear path.

[00:38:55] It is a, I call it a dynamic linear path, right?

[00:38:58] Because much like you don't go into a demo with just like a canned script and sound like

[00:39:02] a robot, like that I can replace you with AI, you want to go in with guardrails.

[00:39:07] You want to go in and say, all right, when we talk about this pain point, here are three

[00:39:12] up and talk about, it's going to be different for everybody.

[00:39:15] So you have to be personable, right?

[00:39:17] And build a relationship and help them understand, you know, are you actually going to solve a

[00:39:22] problem or this isn't really a priority right now?

[00:39:24] I think what we're talking about a lot is the product tour, as you described it before,

[00:39:30] is not the way to do this, right?

[00:39:32] We're not trying to train someone on the product and show them every last step of a policy engine.

[00:39:37] We need to give them the confidence that there's a good policy engine there.

[00:39:40] We don't need to click everything to show them that either.

[00:39:43] We don't have to say, okay, let me click in here, here, here to show this, right?

[00:39:46] So I think we're moving away from the idea of our products who are focusing in the problems

[00:39:49] and then figuring out what is the high impact way that we can do, give them an experience

[00:39:55] of our product.

[00:39:56] Maybe it's not even like a demo, right?

[00:39:58] The experience of our product such that they're going to remember and be hopefully wowed a

[00:40:03] little bit about what's there and then want to take whatever that next step is, right?

[00:40:07] I want to bring more people in.

[00:40:08] What you just showed me, I want to show to more people or I want to go to a POV or it

[00:40:12] might be, right?

[00:40:13] It seems like that's what we're zeroing on and be very intentional about solving problems,

[00:40:18] not doing the product tour and thinking about how do we make this an experience that they'll

[00:40:22] remember as opposed to just yet another demo of a product.

[00:40:25] Yeah, for sure.

[00:40:27] And I think there's a little bit of a reckoning coming, right?

[00:40:30] Where if you look at most cyber founders, they tend to have very technical backgrounds, right?

[00:40:35] Engineering development, former CTOs, very, very heavy on the tech.

[00:40:40] Not so much on the GTM side.

[00:40:42] But if you talk to, you know, so in their view, it tends to be, well, if my product can

[00:40:47] accomplish X, it should drive more sales, hence more revenue, higher, you know, AR.

[00:40:53] If you look at the GTM side, right, we tend to know a little more of it's not always the

[00:40:58] best feature, but it's rather like the relationship that you build with somebody and how you can,

[00:41:03] you know, sell someone on a vision of where you're going, right?

[00:41:07] Build something that you can work on together.

[00:41:09] I think the reckoning that's coming is having to meet in the middle.

[00:41:13] And I think some startups are also starting to realize this.

[00:41:17] It's the buyer experience that's going to make a sale, right?

[00:41:20] And I've experienced this as well.

[00:41:22] I've worked for a couple of startups where we didn't have the best product.

[00:41:26] We didn't have all the right features, right, that a customer is looking for.

[00:41:29] But we delivered such a good experience of the customer.

[00:41:33] We delivered documents ahead of times, right?

[00:41:35] We had an overall process that was aligned to the way that, you know, 70 to 80% of those

[00:41:41] buyers were purchasing things.

[00:41:43] And the feedback that we always got was, you know, the product's pretty good and we love

[00:41:47] the vision of where you're going, but you're just so easy to work with, right?

[00:41:51] You made it easy.

[00:41:51] You communicated very clearly.

[00:41:53] You have everything lined up and you didn't take more of my time than was absolutely necessary.

[00:41:58] And we would end up displacing, you know, huge companies, not because of a better product,

[00:42:04] but because of a better experience.

[00:42:06] Yeah.

[00:42:07] That's interesting.

[00:42:08] One thought and then one final question for you.

[00:42:10] So, um, in the last few months I've been getting a lot of demos from sales tech companies.

[00:42:15] So using AI somewhere in sales, I'm just fascinated about how different products are coming to market

[00:42:21] with different, different facets.

[00:42:22] And one of the things I've noticed is that quite a few of them in the prep work will actually

[00:42:27] create a persona inside their product for me.

[00:42:30] Right.

[00:42:31] They say, look, Andrew, we looked at your website.

[00:42:32] We saw what you do.

[00:42:33] We actually created a persona.

[00:42:35] We imagined it was one of your clients or might be.

[00:42:37] And, you know, this whole thing.

[00:42:38] Right.

[00:42:39] So they did that work beforehand and they didn't get it perfect, but, you know, I appreciated

[00:42:42] it.

[00:42:43] Right.

[00:42:43] Right.

[00:42:43] And then what they did is they would just hand over the reins to me and say, well, why

[00:42:46] don't you just go in there and start using your persona?

[00:42:49] And so I would share my screen.

[00:42:51] I would go in and start and they say, click on that.

[00:42:53] Now speak into there.

[00:42:55] And then the AI is going to do this.

[00:42:56] Later it came back, you know, they give you all this stuff.

[00:42:58] And now I'm suddenly immersed.

[00:43:00] My experience is not a demo.

[00:43:02] My experience is I'm immersed in their product and feeling what it's like and going,

[00:43:07] some of them I'm like, let me try that again.

[00:43:09] I didn't do a good thing.

[00:43:10] I don't know, like practicing questions or something like that.

[00:43:13] Right.

[00:43:13] Or a cold call.

[00:43:15] I screwed up the cold call.

[00:43:16] Let me do it again.

[00:43:17] I was like, I was adamant I was going to do better and get better feedback from the

[00:43:20] AI.

[00:43:20] So I wonder how that might apply in actual cyber.

[00:43:24] Right.

[00:43:24] When you've got someone coming on and let's say you've got an idea, they listen to use

[00:43:28] case one and three on the on the website demo.

[00:43:31] Right.

[00:43:32] And you say, OK, well, maybe there's a little can thing that we can get going for someone

[00:43:36] and they let them in with us play around with that a little bit or tell them

[00:43:40] what to do.

[00:43:41] I wonder if there's some role for that somewhere.

[00:43:42] There absolutely is.

[00:43:44] So one trick that I used to use is we were selling this product once that could do external

[00:43:49] scans, right?

[00:43:50] And present back a risk profile and a bunch of information.

[00:43:53] So there wasn't really anything to install.

[00:43:55] But, you know, when you sell to the enterprise, everybody's going to have a different idea on,

[00:44:00] well, you can scan this.

[00:44:01] You can't scan that.

[00:44:02] Or I need this person's permission or legal needs to do it.

[00:44:05] You know, I need an NDA in place first.

[00:44:07] There's just too many variables to solve for.

[00:44:10] So to kind of get around this problem, one trick that I did was we ended up building a

[00:44:15] demo.

[00:44:15] And then what we would do is I would reskin the entire demo environment to a particular

[00:44:20] industry.

[00:44:21] And then we would walk through kind of like what you were saying, a manual version of somebody's

[00:44:26] role.

[00:44:27] Like, oh, you're the, you know, the audit person.

[00:44:29] You don't have any permissions to change anything.

[00:44:31] But here are like reports you could use to adhere to that, you know, audit requirement that

[00:44:36] you have, or, oh, you know, you're the engineer.

[00:44:37] Here's a way that you could build policies because you have to implement and manage the

[00:44:41] thing day to day.

[00:44:42] So that's kind of like the manual version of what you described.

[00:44:45] And it works really well, right?

[00:44:47] Because you're putting yourself in the buyer's shoes and helping them really understand

[00:44:51] like, oh, this is what they do day to day.

[00:44:54] Now I can kind of tour them through the product in a more personal way.

[00:44:58] The only thing that I would say is don't get lazy with AI, right?

[00:45:03] Personas are okay.

[00:45:04] You know, broader audiences are better.

[00:45:06] And especially as you sell to, you know, the enterprise in general and becomes more complex

[00:45:11] sale, there's more people involved.

[00:45:13] Always tailor it to the person, not just the persona, right?

[00:45:17] And a great example of this is the role of DevOps, right?

[00:45:21] If anybody who's ever sold something to a DevOps team, well, in some companies, they're

[00:45:25] just responsible for operations in some companies, you know, they do development and a little bit

[00:45:31] of operations.

[00:45:32] Some companies are responsible for the whole thing, like they'll all code all the way through

[00:45:36] the deployment.

[00:45:37] And it's like when you talk about a persona, right?

[00:45:39] It's a good starting point, but the persona of a DevOps engineer is still wildly different.

[00:45:45] So you still need to adapt it.

[00:45:47] I like that a lot.

[00:45:48] So final question on this, and this might be a philosophical thing as well, is I think,

[00:45:53] you know, 20 years ago, it was reasonably common.

[00:45:56] You might do a discovery call and then you say, okay, well, let's get together again for

[00:46:00] a demo, right?

[00:46:01] It's a two-step process.

[00:46:02] I think people's attention spans and their own desire to get something back rather than

[00:46:09] just giving us information means that we have to give them more on that first call.

[00:46:14] How do you feel about an AE saying, okay, well, you know, this seemed to be their major

[00:46:18] concern was this.

[00:46:19] It's giving an AE, here's the two-minute version to get them excited about solving that problem.

[00:46:24] You know, don't try and do a demo, but just show them this bit here or something like that.

[00:46:28] How do you feel about having that injected into the process?

[00:46:33] Yeah, 100%.

[00:46:33] I don't like the idea of doing these like huge, heavy discoveries and, you know, asking for

[00:46:39] all this information, especially if you know you're not going to get a lot of it without

[00:46:42] an NDA in place.

[00:46:43] Because it just, it puts so much friction in the process, right?

[00:46:47] And friction, as we all know, is like the biggest killer of deals.

[00:46:50] So we don't want to do that.

[00:46:51] On the flip side, though, we don't want to just give the generic canned demo, right?

[00:46:55] Because then you could just do it as a product or a sandbox and you don't need the human element

[00:47:00] there either.

[00:47:01] I think the one thing that sales in general, not just SE, not just AE, but sales in general

[00:47:08] needs to get much better at is account research, right?

[00:47:11] When you go into a meeting, you need deeper and richer notes on who you're meeting, why

[00:47:16] you're meeting, pain points they'd have.

[00:47:18] If there's public information available, like a merger acquisition or earnings report for

[00:47:23] some of those larger companies, like pull all of that.

[00:47:26] Because then to your point, when you speak about a particular problem, then you could use

[00:47:32] the UI as a quick way to visually back up how you're solving the problem without getting

[00:47:37] into the big, huge demo that we're used to.

[00:47:40] And if you really want to take it to the next level, take that one next feature that you

[00:47:45] might've shown them and how to execute a particular use case, record that as a 30 to 90 second

[00:47:50] clip and send that as a follow-up as something you can track to see how it's shared internally.

[00:47:56] Yeah, I like that a lot.

[00:47:57] Yeah, I feel like there's a, I think one of the themes from what you've said today is

[00:48:01] much more of a conversation, right?

[00:48:02] Much more of a give and take rather than this diagnosis and then demo and then, you know,

[00:48:07] whatever.

[00:48:07] So I think this, this is the way to go.

[00:48:09] So figuring out what, what do you trust your sellers to, to actually show?

[00:48:13] And it might not be a demo, it might be a screenshot or it might be a, the sales click

[00:48:17] through version of the demo or something that they get to play around with, right?

[00:48:20] But I feel like there's something there that you can give so that they get excited for

[00:48:23] the next call.

[00:48:24] David, this has been, this has been good.

[00:48:26] I really loved your approach.

[00:48:27] I love the fact that you approached this from the standpoint of company success, go to

[00:48:32] market success.

[00:48:34] And then once that's all, you know, once you've really got a handle on that, then a lot of

[00:48:38] these finer points for the demo or the experience that we give them on the product actually kind

[00:48:42] of fit in line a little bit with that, right?

[00:48:44] Rather than just thinking about the demo on its own.

[00:48:46] So you've really opened my eyes and given us some food for thought for Cyberdonut about

[00:48:50] how they go and do this with our prospects.

[00:48:53] Yeah, let's, let's see how Cyberdonut does and hopefully they're on track for next year,

[00:48:57] but I enjoyed the conversation.

[00:48:58] Thank you for having me.

[00:48:59] Well, you're now an official advisor to Cyberdonut.

[00:49:02] We'll get you on the website.

[00:49:03] You can put that in your LinkedIn and be proud of it.

[00:49:06] And the remuneration for that is a t-shirt.

[00:49:09] So I'll make sure there's a t-shirt on the way, just like this one.

[00:49:12] We've got a safe Cyberdonut right here, as you can see.

[00:49:14] So I really enjoyed the conversation.

[00:49:16] Thanks for joining us, Damien.

[00:49:17] If someone wants to get in touch with you, is the best way LinkedIn or is it something else?

[00:49:21] Yeah, LinkedIn's the place to be.

[00:49:22] I live on LinkedIn post-daily, always having great conversations there.

[00:49:26] I would imagine you're the only Damien Tomasino in there.

[00:49:29] Is that fair to say?

[00:49:30] Actually, I think there's two or three of them, but I think I'm the only one with a profile

[00:49:34] picture, so you can't miss me.

[00:49:35] Oh, there you go.

[00:49:36] A profile picture and in Cyber, so there you go.

[00:49:38] Well, that was great.

[00:49:39] Look forward to catching up with you some other time.

[00:49:41] You too, thanks.

[00:49:54] It would mean a lot to me and to the continued growth of the show if you'd help get the word

[00:49:59] at.

[00:50:00] So how do you do that easily?

[00:50:01] There are two ways.

[00:50:03] Firstly, just simply send a link to a friend.

[00:50:06] Send a link to the show, to this episode.

[00:50:09] You can email it, text it, Slack it, whatever works for you, and it's easy for you.

[00:50:14] The second way is to leave a super quick rating.

[00:50:17] And sometimes that can seem complicated, so I've made it as easy for you as I can.

[00:50:21] You simply have to go to ratethispodcast.com slash cyber.

[00:50:27] That's ratethispodcast.com slash cyber.

[00:50:31] And it explains exactly how to do it.

[00:50:33] Either of these ways will take you less than 30 seconds to do, and it will mean the world

[00:50:37] to me.

[00:50:37] So thank you.

[00:50:38] Thank you.