Apprentice Hoots: Reflections on preparing a prospect demo
Developing a Salesforce demonstration for a prospective customer is no mean feat. In this week’s Apprentice Hoots blog, Charlotte reflects on the opportunity she had to gain some hands-on experience.
When Coacto were approached by a serviced office provider looking for a reliable CRM system, I jumped at the opportunity to get involved with the planning and development of a detailed demonstration. Here’s a brief outline of the process:
Planning User Stories
Firstly, we have to determine what the customer currently has and the needs of the business. We do this by creating tailored ‘User Stories’ which are an informal description of features or behaviours that require development within a software system. They are written out from the perspective of an end user of the system and the template we follow uses a layout that explains:
- As a < type of user >
- I want < some goal >
- so that < some reason >
For example: As an Office Manager, I want new enquiries from the website to be captured into the system so that I don’t have to manually re-key the details.
The next step is to discover the key details required for the customer, so we can find out
what their pain points are to help us develop the relevant solutions into a demonstration platform.
With this information, we then create a spreadsheet of the key features required from their user stories with implementation notes of how we will do this. This helps us to plan effectively for the development of the demo.
Developing a Demo
Once the planning elements have been determined and instructions have been set in place, the rest is rather simple…we begin to build!
One of the essential skills I have learnt by being given the opportunity to have such involvement in this prospect demo, is that planning is key. By ensuring that everything is planned out at the beginning enables a smooth process and provides us with clear indication for what to build.
Presenting to Prospect
Once the planning and building of the demo has been completed, it’s not just a case of presenting to one user!
As part of the development of this particular demo, I have learnt that different stakeholders have different interests within the business. This means that what the manager may be interested in seeing will be different to their employees and different once again to the owners. Therefore, separate demonstrations can be held to ensure that all key pain points of all the individual stakeholders are met and that the CRM could function across all aspects of their business.
After the demonstration, the next and final steps will be to determine the costs of the licenses, applications and implementation costs.
In summary, I have been lucky enough to have worked on such a great project so early on in my Salesforce journey. I have developed my digital and soft skills with planning, technical development and presentation skills as well communication skills – all within just ONE project!
Owl see you later…
Charlotte
