I am back from a trip to England.

I spent a week with my son Bryan, daughter-in-law, Frances, and my devilish grandson, David. During that time I stayed at the on-base ‘hotel’ at RAF – Fairford. (Always comforting to have an assault rifle pointed at you through the car as you fumble for your ID to go ‘home’…)

While there I visited Stonehenge, Avebury, Salisbury, Warwick Castle, and the Windsor Castle. One day Bryan and I left Fran and David at home to go to the famous baths in Bath (maybe Dallas should be renamed ‘Hot’). These warm springs go back to the early Roman days BC. It is now a 4 story modern facility with saunas, cold and warm pools, restaurant, etc. A wonderful day. Needless to say, I slept the entire way back to the base. Worn out by out that water.

The family is doing well…flourishing in England, proud to be serving our country in the armed services.

After visiting the Windsor castle, they kicked me out of the car at the Slough train station. I caught the train to London Paddington, and from there took the underground to the Covent Garden station. I was staying in London for the week to work with a client.

While making my way to Covent Garden, I heard the 3 Magical Words (not knowing at the moment that would hear these words at least a thousand times before I departed London a week later):

M I N D T H E G A P

These words permeate every aspect of the London Underground system. On video inside the subway car, constant audio reminders – both in the cars and while waiting at the station. Mind the gap. Mind the gap. Mind the gap. It never ends…

So, what does Mind The Gap mean?

It means to not fall in the gap between the subway car and the station platform. Apparently, this is a problem…(I don’t see how because the ‘gap’ is about 4 inches wide…). I mentioned this to my main contact at the client’s office…he busted out laughing telling me that his mother had fallen in the gap when he was a young boy. So, of course, I laughed too – then realized that I was laughing at my client’s mother falling into the ‘Tube’. He told me that he thinks the whole never-ending mantra was developed because of her….Too funny.

I had a free weekend in London so I went to see the sites: Big Ben, Westminister Abbey, Buckingham Palace, Kensington Palace, Royal Albert Hall, London Bridge, Tower Bridge, London Eye, Hyde Park, St. James Park, Winston Churchill Museum, Parliament…and a bunch of pubs. I went to all of these places via The Tube. Standing for long periods of time smashed like a human sardine with the pleasant, insistent message of Mind The Gap, Mind The Gap, Mind The Gap floating through the subway car…got me to thinking.

I really should mind the gap…in my life and in my business.

Like the gap between my intentions and my execution. The gap between my thoughts and my actions. The gap between what I want to do and what I should do. The gap between what is comfortable and what is new and awkward.

And the gap between what my company offers and what our customers want.

I have this sign up in my office now…To remind me of my most wonderful trip to England, and to, well, Mind The Gap…every day and every way.

Last week I mentioned scripted demonstrations…what are they and why should they be part of your evaluation arsenal?

A scripted demonstration is where you tell the software vendors exactly what it is you want to see in their software. And you lay it out for them in advance…in a script. If you do not do this, you increase the probabilities significantly that you may not select the vendor that best fits your requirements and needs.

What are the benefits to using this technique? There are a number of them, and the implications are huge:

You maintain control of the demonstration. By determining what you do and don’t want to see—and by communicating this upfront—you keep the agenda tight and focused on your needs. These scripts should flow as if people were doing their normal jobs, except that the software vendor salesperson is showing you how you will be doing it if their product is selected.

It takes some salesmanship out of the equation. By taking most of the demonstration down to “boring” functional items (which tie back to your business objectives), it takes away from some of the discussion of the newest features that may or may not be relevant to your business.

It will tell you whether the software vendor salespersons are winging it or really want your business.

Are they willing to work for your business by taking the time to create a terrific scripted demonstration?

Are they listening to you?

Will they listen to you in the future?

It has been my experience that they are not interested in doing a scripted demonstration. It is much easier to do a regular sales demonstration. You should be interested in the meat and potatoes. Hold the flaming dessert for later in the process, thank you very much.

One of the best things I did when researching and writing my book on software evaluation practices was to ‘cross the aisle’ and interview software sales professionals for their take on the whole process.

One of the questions revolved around the notion of scripted demonstrations. Here are two quotes:

“I’m a little bit different than probably some of the salespeople that you have. I mean, I’m kind of a master of my craft so I know how to weave in the zings that I want to weave into my demo. If it’s not in a script and I think they need to see it, I will make sure they see it. So I think that really depends on the skill level of the salesperson. The thing that I would rather do is go into a room and not do my demo and have the customer say this is what we want to see now.”

“I would probably say I am doing them 5-10 percent of the time. I am showing them cool functions and features that I want them to see. Well, why do I do that? Because I’m lazy…true. I don’t want to have to do a scripted demo. That is a big fat pain in the butt. I don’t want to do it. What I really want to do is get your emotion connected with my software.”

Interesting, huh?

This shows the push-pull that goes on between evaluation teams and software companies. Big time.

They want your emotions…scripted demonstrations is a “just the facts ma’am” that is ruthlessly efficient. Most vendors HATE them…they are a lot of work and they take all the excitement off the table.

More on this in the coming days.

What do you do when a software vendor shows up at your offices to do the product demonstration two-step, and you realize after a not-long period of time that they are the wrong vendor, with the wrong product, with the wrong message, at the wrong time?

That train wreck scenario happened to me several weeks ago…

Several things contributed to this across-the-board waste of time:

One, the vendor somewhat misrepresented themselves in their written and verbal communications. They didn’t outright lie…but they did shade the truth.

Two, they didn’t listen to me in our pre-demonstration conference several days before the demo. (You ARE having these conferences beforehand…aren’t you?). I was quite clear on what my client wanted to see, and what the client’s requirements were.

What happened is the vendor came and showed the client wanted the vendor’s strengths were…despite the fact that it had nothing to do with what the client required…

So, I had to stop the session…kick my client out of the room, and raise hell with the vendor. In a sense, they were glad that I did as well as they could feel the tension and anger in the room building. After that break, the sales professional did better…but their opening hour killed any chance of them gaining the trust of the client. Plus, their product just doesn’t fit.

Even more puzzling about this…is that the vendor flew a VERY long way to do this demo.

This is what happens when you sell features instead of solutions.

Sat through another round of software demonstrations today…had to kick the vendor out of the room so I could talk to my team.

All of my clients learn this lesson after working with me for awhile…and here it is:

It is not my job to keep you focused, disciplined, and behaving appropriately during software vendor demonstrations…or any business meeting for that matter.

I’m in the minority here…nobody agrees with me…which makes me all the more think I’m right.

Situation: Software salesperson is going through demo…doing his thing. Questions are asked about the product…and then begins a general deterioration of the session, usually culminating in my client airing some of their dirty laundry to the software vendor.

While this is going on the looks and glances toward the back (at me) begin. These looks all say, “What are you (David) going to do about Person X who is so undisciplined and is going on and on”

Answer: Nothing.

Not one thing. What I am willing to do (and always do) is to discuss this exact scenario with my project team prior to the sessions. I spend a great deal of time talking about discipline, focus, and the reason for the sessions – what the sessions are and aren’t.

It’s not my job to baby undisciplined people…I like the adult route.

Over the years during evening debriefing sessions, I’ve had project team members ask what I can do stop this from happening. My answer is always this:

“The solution is easy. Just don’t do it…”

As Kojak used to say, “Who loves ya, baby?”

Was sitting through another round of software demonstrations at a client’s office today…Was much of the same of what I go through every day.

Something hit me though…this particular sales person was not blathering on endlessly about features in their product. He was listening…and writing things down.

The Sounds of Silence.

The lack of noise was unnerving…this guy was actually listening to the many moods and nuances of my client…and was thinking about his answer. And his answer was solution, not feature, oriented. Was the software bizarro world.

Now I was paying attention….to him, and to he was saying and not saying. And it really begin to strike me that this particular company may have something to offer my client…namely, a solution to the many complex issues that reside here.

There is too much feature-based selling by the vendors…and not enough listening and discernment.

And it really is okay if you product cannot handle every single requirement that a software prospect may have. It really is.

For the uninitiated, sitting through a software product demonstration can be an exhilarating, but ultimately unsatisfying, experience.

The exhilaration comes from seeing all the terrific technologies out there…very cool stuff that can be seductive. Visions of pushing one button on your keyboard that pulls up multi-colored graphs…that give you a huge ‘ah-hah’ and solves ALL of your business problems.

Seasoned software sales folks are very adept at putting a software timepiece in front of you…and swaying it gently. You are getting very sleepy…

When you ‘wake up’, you get that unsettled feeling…like maybe you’ve been had. You really haven’t…you just have realized that a lot of what you may have seen doesn’t solve your problems. It’s just neat stuff – that has nothing to do with your problems or the pain you are experiencing.

And it’s not their fault…it’s your’s.

Because you let them control the demo.

Because you don’t communicate your business requirements.

Because you don’t send demonstration ‘rules’ to the vendor prior to their arrival.

Because you don’t prepare demonstration scripts.

And, because you don’t have a evaluation methodology.

Without the proper kind of training…this is not a fair fight. The software vendor with the ‘best’ salesperson should not necessarily win your business. The software product with the best fit should.

Think about it.

Within the real estate industry, where I have done the lion’s share of my work, there is a vendor I have busted twice with this little bit of trickery.

As more and more technology has become Internet based, it is not unusual for software vendor salespersons to request Internet connections to be made available during the demonstrations. This particular vendor made a big deal about having the connection; processing over the Internet was a large consideration for this particular client.

The demonstration started, and very quickly we began to go through the scripts. The software vendor salesperson was talking about the speed of the processing. I looked up at the screen and noticed that the whole demonstration was running on c:\localhost, which for the technically challenged means that the entire demonstration was running locally on the vendor’s laptop. In other words, the entire Internet connection “hook-in” was a sham. I held my tongue to see if the representative would correct his misdirection. He didn’t. He proceeded through the whole day talking about the speed of the vendor’s internet product. When I held the debriefing that night, I asked the team about the Internet speed. They were very impressed. I then asked how many of them knew that the entire demonstration was local, processed on the software vendor salesperson’s laptop. The IT director raised his hand. The other people in the room were shocked—and then they were angry. We had a long discussion about product and company—good product, bad company.

The really interesting turn on this story was that three weeks later I was going through demonstrations with another client with this same vendor. The same thing happened again. It was an entirely different sales team; in fact, these were senior sales people. I held my tongue and then did the same thing at night: revealed what had been done to the project team. Same result, same anger.

All of this was avoidable. All the sales representative had to do was disclose upfront that he was going to do the bulk of the demonstration locally in the interest of speed and timing. That’s what everybody else does. But they were insecure about the functionality of their Internet offering that they misled.