207: Joe Caprio On The Future Of Sales Demos

What's poppin' y'all, it's your man James Say What Sales Buckley, and we're back with this week's episode of Make It Happen Mondays with your host, John Barrows. Big thank you to our partners, Sales Loft, Gong, Proposify, Vidyard, and Rise. In this episode, John's speaking with Joe Caprio, co-founder of Reprise, A Better Way to Demo. John is consistently talking about how bad most demos are for prospects. Some buyers are super smart. We need to treat them like they are. Joe's research proves that the frustration that we experience as demo attendees is often shared by the people that are actually doing the demos. Joe and Reprise are preaching heavily against the traditional ways of doing these demos.

Guys, this is an epic and very different episode, y'all. Get pumped, because this is straight fire. Are you interested in becoming a reseller of JBSales On Demand? Well, we're pumped to talk to you. Visit us at jbsales.partnerstack.com for more details and reach out if you're ready to join us. I am at your service and can be reached at jamesatjbarrows.com anytime to connect and talk about you becoming a reseller of our online training. Let's go deep on the trouble with demos. Here's John and Joe. Good afternoon, everybody. This is John Barrows. Make it happen Mondays. Hopefully you had a fantastic weekend. I had a weird weekend because I was, you know, Super Bowl, Tom Brady, not a Patriot anymore.

But I still was very proud that he got number seven because I got a whole bunch of autographs and I'm going to get those, make some money on them. And it actually leads into our conversation because I have a fellow Bostonian on. So I'm going to apologize up front for all the F-bombs that get thrown and all the side jokes that we have. But Joe Caprio, what's going on, my friend, co-founder of Reprise? How are you doing, man? Hey, John. Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited for this one, especially on the eve of Tom Terrific at number seven. He deserves it. The greatest of all time. Mr. Goat himself, Tom Brady. Thanks for having me. So you are one of those ones that appreciates Tom, right?

Not as a hater of him now that he left? Dude, I'm not a hater. He gave us 20 years. He's been in the Super Bowl in three separate decades. I was a sophomore in college when he won his first championship. Not supposed to win then. He took us to six Super Bowls or won six Super Bowls. Took us to nine. We were in the Super Bowl half of the year since. Like we've been in the game every other day. Every fucking. And I feel like we're back in it too now. I mean, look, I will say that it is to be determined now. What Belichick does with this? Because if Brady wins another one and Belichick just shits the bed for the next few years, his legacy is going to be in trouble, which I hate to hear. But it is reality.

So anyways, let's not bore everybody with Patriots because they'll fucking hang up right now if they're listening. But Joe, why don't you give us a little background of where you're coming from, what you're up to these days. And then we'll get into the conversation because today we are going to be talking about demos and how sucky they are and where they're going. So Joe, give me a little background here. Yeah, I would love to. So I got my start in startups at Insight Squared going back like a decade. I used to have John Barrows come in and train my sales team because they wouldn't listen to what I was saying. And so I spent like six, seven years at Insight Squared. I did every job on the sales team there.

And then I eventually became the VP of sales and I had the entire, you know, 75 person go-to-market team roll up to me. So I spent seven years consulting and interviewing startups on, you know, what metrics and what reporting they need to make sure that they're on track to hit their goals. And we called it like a sales MBA. And looking back, I actually do feel like it was as powerful as going back to school to learn about sales leadership from a metrics perspective and growing startups. And from there, I went and spent two years as the head of sales at Chorus.ai, the call recording vendor. And we put a huge focus on the enablement role. And so I spent two years consulting and selling best practices to high growth startups on how to onboard and train your sales team.

So I think spending, you know, a good chunk of time learning about the metrics of growth and then spending a good chunk of time learning about the soft skills and training that a growth company needs, it put me in a really good position to get back together with some of the co-founders from Inside Squared on this new venture called Reprise. We raised a seed round last April. We raised a big A round that we're about to announce. And we're going to market pretty aggressively. We're going to go hire like 100 people and really try to create this category to your point of demo creation. And, you know, John, I spent the last 10 months now going up and down my network and having conversations with the first degrees and then going outbound to, you know, who I think will be my target audience.

And I've had about 600 conversations specifically about demos and about the way the market reacts to a salesperson's pitch. And I'd love to share some of those findings with you on this call. And that's kind of what I think we should we should hop into. Yeah, absolutely, man. Because I mean, I rip on this. I rip on demos all the time. I fucking can't stand them, at least the way that they're delivered in general, because I go through probably two or three on a week on a weekly basis. Right. Because that's how I learn about stuff. It's like, oh, that sounds kind of cool. I'll take the sales pitch. And for me, it's like, hey, what's the new cool stuff out there? And also, I'm evaluating how people deliver just so I can get some insights there, too.

But man, every fucking demo is exactly the same. Right. Kid gets on the call, whatever. And they're like, hey, you know, is this still a good time? It's like, dude, I picked up the fucking phone for a scheduled call. So, yes, it's still a good time. Let's skip that part. And then, OK, we'll get about a 30 minute demo here that I'd like to go through. And if you have any questions as we go through, just let me know. OK. And then they fucking just drone through power by slide by slide by slide. No context, no relevance. Pause intermittently, go, does that make sense? Does that make sense? And then at the end, barely leave time for next steps. And I say, sure, send me an info, you know, send me information.

I'll call you in a couple of weeks. And then they touch base and check in. I mean, that is literally that script right there is like 80 percent of demos that I've ever seen in my life. So so first of all, a we're going to talk about where things are going right now. But why the fuck do you think that companies and reps are still falling into that product pitch pre-internet approach? Because it is like, look, back before the Internet was here, it made sense. You never you didn't even know what I had, Joe. Right. So when I came and showed you, I was showing you something you didn't even know. And it was like, holy shit. So that made sense. But as soon as the Internet hit, it didn't make fucking sense anymore.

So why do you think we're still stuck in that zone right now from a majority standpoint? Look, I can tell you that the frustration and the like the mismatch that you feel getting demos is matched by frustration from reps giving demos. It sucks for both sides. You know, it it sucks for both sides. And you're kind of already like nailing the reason why there is a misalignment in the way that the consumer wants to shop for technology and the way the salesperson is being told or forced or trained to go out and sell technology. And it's not lined up anymore. And you want to know why we're still all everything we do in sales and in sales sales training. It's still geared off the Sandler submarine, which was invented in the 50s.

And so we could add demo is one of the stages of the submarine. But at the end of the day, we're still rolling out this very gated give to get process where it's not actually give to get, is it? It's get before you give. And so it's like the customer wants to see your product. Make sure you get discovery first. The customer wants to know what the price is. Make sure you figure out who signs first. The customer wants to try it out. Make sure you get an opt out contract and success criteria first. And so we are training get before you give. And as we're still doing a 60 year old concept of get before you give, the world is totally changed on the other end. And we're buying and selling stuff on our iPhones with our thumbs, never talking to a human being like during COVID, for example, my wife and I sold two homes and we bought two homes.

Like John, we don't have it like that. That's like all the money that we have. You know what I mean? Like we literally moved all of our money out of these two places into these two places. And we did it in the chat app, in app chat for our mortgage broker. And we did it by texting with the realtor. Like we found the listings on Redfin. We sent her the listings. This is what we want to see. She texts back a time that we can go to the house and a lockbox code to get in. So we literally, we moved millions of dollars of our own money without talking to a salesperson. Then I start reprise and I need a $5,000 piece of technology. So I reach out to the vendor and I'm like, does it do what I need? And he's like, let's get on the phone.

I get on the phone with him and I'm like, show it to me. Does it do that thing I need? And he's like, listen, my product's really complicated. You wouldn't understand our demo until you give me discovery. And I fucking laughed in his face. I'm like, listen, buddy, like I told him this. We just bought and sold four fucking houses. Like I'll understand your $5,000 piece of tech. Like show it to me. And then he says, well, you know what? It's just our process here. The first call is for discovery. And then the second call is for a demo. So I bought from his competitor that had a freemium offer on his website. Of course, you know, and that's the, and I think there's this, there's this discussion because it's a consumerization of, of everything, right?

Like Amazon pretty much fucked everybody from that standpoint because we're all just expecting to be able to do this and do that, you know, but it's, it's this weird thing of, of that, that disconnect that I'm trying to understand if they hate it, if the rep hates it and the, and the, and the people hate it, like why the, why doesn't somebody say something? Is it become a manager standpoint or whatever that is pushing this down? Or is it just, is it just old school thinking at the end of the day? I think it's the latter. Honestly, I think the, look, last year was crazy for everybody. Like as an industry, we had 30% layoffs back in March. And we're the lucky ones that we can work inside. We hired most of those people back, right?

But at the time, the smart money was to get through this thing, to get through COVID specifically. Can your sales team, can your BDR team, can any like superfluous product features you're building and just go with what your core is and try to do it without human effort. And so what's happening right now is the investors, the advisors, the VCs, they're telling product leaders or telling marketing leaders or telling CROs, like go touchless, go freemium, go product led, remove the friction, build an easy onboarding, let your buyers go through the process without salespeople. And that's actually advice from the top. So if you're taking money from a VC, I bet you, you're getting that advice at the same time.

How do you make it easier? How do you make it viral? How do you make it on like easy onboarding, right? Then you look at folks that are either sales leaders, sales enablement leaders, or sales thought leaders. What does that mean to them? You go back five years ago, it was like AI is going to replace the job. And we all panicked and we had a problem with AI. Well now, right, robots are going to replace your job. Product led is going to replace your job. And so legacy thought leaders, legacy sales leaders, they're fighting against that saying, you can't win a deal. If you don't do discovery first discovery for demo, that's the way it's always been. And they're clinging to these old hat techniques to justify their existence out of fear of being replaced.

But just like AI didn't replace human beings, product led strategies are not going to replace human beings. It's time for us as salespeople to adapt the way we engage with our market, because it's not up to us. It was never meant to be about us. We were there to fill a gap and help shepherd people through their own journey. Now, those people are just a little more tech savvy. They grew up on iPhones. Buyer age has decreased. Tech savviness has increased as a result. And they want to shop this way. Our job as a profession is to, again, up level and iterate the way we engage with buyers. So we get back to what we used to say we were, which was customer centric and follow the customer journey, not the seller journey.

But we deviated from that shit when we started clinging to discovery before demo. And I think this kind of aligns with my, I said this like four or five years ago, and I think it'll be a long time coming. But I think that the sales are specifically with all the account based marketing and inbound lead flow and those type of things. Like if we're going to get better and better and better at that, right, where we're going to get more targeted, artificial intelligence, technology is going to be able to profile you and send you the right message at the right time for you to say, okay, cool. The last thing in the world I want, I mean, if we, let's go back to the old, you know, corporate executive board, by the time somebody gets to you, they're already 60 to 70% of the way through the sales process, blah, blah, blah, whatever that number is.

I don't really give a shit. It is true that people are more educated by the time they come to us. Now, an outbound cold call is a different story, but an inbound, my whole thought process has always been, why do you have frontline salespeople taking those calls? If you have an educated buyer who is 60 to 70% of the way through the sales process, the last thing in the world they want is to talk to some 22-year-old wet behind the ear kid that's going to ask them bant questions and then not be able to give them any insights. So I'm going to bail on that immediately, right? So I believe that the inbound, at least, the inbound part should not be sales. I think it actually should be customer success.

I think it should be customer support to just answer the questions to the person with no commissions to say, look, I'm here to help. Like, what questions do you have? Let me show you how to run the trial. I'll send you a few follow-up emails to see if you're still doing it. And we're going to play the numbers game here. But that experience is the experience that people are expecting these days. So what does that mean for the reps that are here, right? The ones that are on that journey right now. Are we moving towards a, they're going to actually have to evolve out and get replaced? Or is there a space for them? And where is this evolution going to land, in your opinion? Yeah, I think it's adapting, not replacing at this point.

But it's funny, you talk about like customer self-education, and they're doing 70, 80% of the education before they meet a salesperson. I've heard that stat for a long time. And I don't think, I don't think I really, really understood or registered like what's really happening there until I've gone out and in my go-to-market at Reprise, I've done these early like product market fit interviews. And I'm literally asking that question. And what I'm realizing is, it's not like I'd rather read an e-book than talk to you. It's not that. I don't want to read an e-book either, right? What I actually want to do is when I, when I tried Airbnb for the first time, I installed that thing on my phone. And I was like, oh, that place actually looks pretty good.

And it's cheaper than the hotel and hotels tonight. I'm going to use Airbnb. If I hadn't found an inventory that I wanted, I would have deleted the app, no harm, no foul. My mom was like, should I try Uber? Like, wait, does Uber even come, come to this town? Right. And I put it on her phone and I showed her the four cars that were like within a five minute ride. And I'm like, this is easier than calling the cap. If we had been in a really remote area and there were no cars available, she'd delete the app, no harm, no foul. And what people are really looking for is not to go and do homework and research and read your stupid case studies. What they're looking for is that style of instant gratification and instant recognition of like, oh, this thing does what I need.

This has what I want. Now I will continue. And so they're moving that style of shopping into enterprise B2B SaaS and your product can't be immediately put on their cell phone in the inventory or the light switch moment immediately obvious to them. So what they end up doing is coming to a call with you because they have to, right? Because you can't put what they actually want on the website. So you put case studies and videos and whatever else to talk around what you do. So now this person shows up to a call with you and your old trainer is like, if I learn more about you, if I get more dirt, I could use it later. I could tailor my pitch, but real talk, I can go in there and say, you're losing money if you don't buy my product.

Right? So what ends up happening is I get on a call with you and you want to do discovery. And I'm like, I'm already a week overdue in my mind. I should be in your app. I should be using your product. I should have kept it or deleted it by now. But now I got a kid trying to do discovery. And when I say, can you just get on with it? Give me the high level. I literally just want to see this. They'll say things like you wouldn't understand the demo until we do. It's about as insulting as it gets, by the way. It is. But how about this, right? Not only is it insulting, but it's just fucking not true anymore. Because I can go on any website, any listener, look at your website right now. And I bet you one, maybe two clicks.

I go into product, feature, use case, whatever. And it's like, what vertical are you? What role are you? Here's some custom, you know, value language for you. So with one or two clicks, your website can segment me and then show me what I need to see. Then I get on the phone with a human, a living, breathing person. And I'm like, what do you want to know? And you can't get one, two questions in and be like, this is how I could help you. Right? It's illogical. Yeah. So I think the danger or the fear that I have is, and you know Kevin Dorsey, right? KD, right? So we talked about this because he actually, he called me up and I don't want to name the name, but there was an LMS solution out there.

And he's like, John, I need your advice on this. Like, what do you think? I'm looking at these two vendors. He's like, I wanted to go with this one, but the experience was so bad because he knew he had already done his due diligence on the other competitors. He had already seen the demos and he actually wanted to go with this one vendor. And the fucking rep brought him through, said, sorry, you know, and said, okay, now I got to do discovery. And then we got to schedule a call to have an engineer come in and do the, and he was like, dude, I don't want to buy this product. He's like, I want to buy this product, but because of that experience, I don't want to do it. So tell me from your perspective, which product is better, right?

And I said, unfortunately, their product is better. It's just their sales process blows. Yeah. So, but what do you do though? Because I usually try to break things down in a couple of different buckets, right? So there's sophisticated buyers and there's unsophisticated buyers. So the sophisticated buyers who you and I just described, the person that goes on the website that does the, you know, downloads the trial, plays around with it for a little bit, checks out the references on G2, whatever it is, and literally comes and says, look, all I need to see is that. And if you back them out, you will lose them fast. Yep. But then there's the unsophisticated buyer whose boss told them to look into something.

They're really just checking off a box and they're trying to get price. They probably already want to go with one of your competitors. So how do I, as a rep, quickly identify that, first of all, and adjust accordingly? Yeah. So number one rule, first calls, tailored by lead source or channel or however you found them. I mean, you already, you already said it, an inbound conversation behaves much differently than an outbound conversation. And so in my mind, if you're inbound, the first five minutes of our call, I'm going to ask you why, why'd you come inbound? What are you looking for? What is it that you want from me? And then in that first 30 minute discussion, I'm going to super high level show you, I can satisfy that problem.

And that's, that's the, that's the basis of our first conversation. If you tell me what you're trying to do, I'll show you how to do it in my product. And then the remaining 10 minutes, answer your questions, book the next conversation and learn how you want to want to move forward. If you're outbound, I probably hooked you either by offering something cool or you won't believe it until you see it. Well, I better show up and show up. And so in that situation, I might ask a couple of light questions in the beginning, but then I'm evangelizing really quickly. And my, I'm still doing product in the first call now, but I'm doing it in like, we do three main things or we satisfy two main problems or we have, we have four primary offers, which one of these is interesting.

Great. Shut it down and use the final 10 minutes to figure out why that was interesting. And again, how they want to move forward and how they want to behave. And so the first call for me, it actually looks really, really similar. It's just the, the pitch and my pitch does come in the form of a high level product demo. The pitch comes a little earlier if it's, if it's inbound, because we get right to the problem and then I show solution. If it's outbound, the pitch comes a little bit later and it's more like, or I should say the pitch is a little bit longer. And it's more like, here are three things we've helped the customer with, or here are four problems we've solved. And it's more like a choose your own adventure for which one we go into.

But the meta point right now is it is not discovery on the first call demo on the second call trial on the third call, which is what they'll have you believe sales is linear, right? And it's gated stage progressions as a solution, but it's not John. And here's why it takes five or six, five or six people to get a deal done, right? Five or six stakeholders weigh in to get a deal done. Okay. Less than two stakeholders show up on a first meeting. So what do you do? You do discovery with the first person who shows up, which is usually low level. And then you don't do discovery two weeks later when you meet the signer, you don't do discovery two weeks later. You know what I mean? Like you just do discovery once.

We're at the wrong stage. We're at the wrong stage. Right, right. Right, exactly. So like we, from the, from the jump right now, we have to throw out the idea that it's discovery demo trial deal. That's not how it works anymore. Every interaction you have now is a little bit of discovery and a little bit of demo together. And you think about a first call is like five minutes of, of, of pitching or overview or demo in 25 minutes of discussion. The second call should be 30 minutes of like recap and delivery, like a deeper dive demo. And then 30 minutes of like, you know, evaluation planning. The third call should be a technical demo where you're showing how it integrates with their existing stack, right?

The fourth call should be an executive level demo where you're repeating the stuff you learned from their, their, their frontline and their mid, mid-level management and demonstrating how you would solve that, right? Even the onboarding call, a new customer onboarding call is a little bit of Q and a, and then a lot of delivery on what it is that they bought for. And so every interaction you have now is a disco demo hybrid and the demo kind of morphs to be longer or shorter depending on the application. But this idea that you're reading on LinkedIn, you're seeing people record the selfie videos about like discovery before demo, they're acting like there's one demo and there's not. Joe's putting out some great truths about how buyers feel when it comes to attending demos, but I never considered how the sellers might feel about it either.

No doubt they harbor some anxiety and ill will about doing things that they know don't work as well as they should. This has been a great conversation so far between John and Joe. Don't forget to send me your sales success stories at jamesatjbarrows.com to be highlighted on one of the Make It Happen Mondays episodes upcoming. Today, we want to give a shout out to Rahul Wadwa of Slintel for taking the steps to build his personal brand using the Say What Sales personal branding course in JB Sales On Demand. Rahul has started to create and curate his own content regularly and has already begun creating new connections that have led to new conversations because of the content that he's been sharing.

Way to be, Rahul. Stay the course, buddy. We got you. Build your personal brand with JB Sales On Demand. The hardest part about getting started is knowing how to devise your plan. The personal branding course at JB Sales On Demand outlines the steps that I took to build the Say What Sales personal brand myself. If ever you've thought, hmm, I really want to do more content, this is the course for you. While you're there, you might as well look at the other courses available and learn to prospect better and close more deals. All this and more can be found at ondemand.jbarrows.com. Subscribe today and start selling better now. Let's throw it back to Joe and John for more demo talk. Yeah, I mean, especially in anything that is remotely close to a complex sale, right?

Anything that's ACV is over five grand and, you know, three to five, three to six people involved. Like, if you take the mindset of the linear, let me qualify, discover, and then demo, you know, by the time you get to the demo of the executive who is the person and you don't discover, at least be pinpointed with your discovery. You don't want to have to go through the back, you know, the true discovery, but discover that person. Because I've always said, you know, and I steal from Gary Vee all the time, right? The context over content. Like, if you've got 30 slides in a slide deck, nobody gives a shit about all 30 slides. They care about the four to five that might be relevant to what they're looking for.

And if you try to show me all of it, then none of it looks great. It all kind of boils down to average. But I wrote a blog post a while back called Sell to the 20%, which is my fundamental belief that no matter what product or service you buy, you only use 10 to 20% of the functionality, whatever that is. And so because of that, that's how I believe people buy. They only give a shit about that part. And if you try to show them more than that part, now that kind of flies in the face of, well, I want a solution cell and I want to make sure I ask questions and, you know, make sure you're getting the right solution. So I get the balance here. But at the patience level, I mean, I'll even go onto a website these days.

I gotta be honest. If I, if there's not a video on your website, I lose it. I immediately go off. If I can't show, because I'm a very visual person. I know some people are more tech, you know, read and everything else. I'm a visual person. If I can't click on your website and watch a video about what you do, I'll go find it. You know, I'll, I'll, I'll find somebody else. Like if I have to do more than two or three clicks to figure to your point of what you do, I'm not going to be paying attention. And the same thing with a demo. I mean, every demo, dual screen, and it starts with, you know, well, we were founded in, and as soon as I can tell, as soon as I can tell that you're, you're pressing play.

And it's like, there's almost this psychology around that's, that's so weird back. Let's go back to face-to-face selling, right? You could feel it engaged up front, talking to somebody about what they're looking for, whatever it is. All right, cool. Right. And then all of a sudden the laptop comes up and what happens is you automatic, both parties go into a completely different mindset, right? I'm as the presenter, I'm now in presentation mode and now as a buyer or as the person being presented to, I'm in now consume mode. Yep. There's no dialogue. There's no back and forth. It's, it's like a physical switch that gets clicked off as soon as the laptop, as soon as the demo comes up. And it's just, I mean, it's just infuriating that, that, that, that still happens, but I keep going back to that, that we've all been burned before.

I know why it happens still, because we've all been burned before by the person that called us, just wanted price. We thought it was, and they were really just trying to get a number and we chased them 75 times because we thought it was an opportunity and they screwed us, right? So because of that, I'm going to drill everybody through my discovery process and probably piss off the good clients that I would be able to get. Yep. We are, we are destroyed by the bad buyers that we deal with. It makes it hard for us to be effective with the good buyers that we meet. Um, it's the same thing with, with like asking discovery questions. Most reps kind of throw them out there knowing that people aren't going to really answer them.

Well, how do you guys normally buy software? Such a dog shit question, but like they get their ass kicked if they really try to have that conversation with somebody who's just price shopping or, or just like kicking tires and like they get beat up by a bad prospects and they're afraid to ask the good ones that question. So you said a couple of things that jumped out the, uh, the, the website experience, right? I had this epiphany this year. I go on most websites as pre-call research to a sales call. So I'm not actually shopping for what your company does or what you sell or who you are. I'm just trying to figure out real quick. Okay. And so I go on your website and I'm like, what do they do?

I don't want to read your case studies. I can, I can, I can scope your, your, your case studies, like the customers you sell to real quick. That's important to me. But like, what do you actually do? I want to see the product and I want to, I want to see the light switch moment. And so when I get on a website, I'm like product feature tour platform, like clicking real quick to try and get like a gift or a video of what you do. I thought it was because I was just doing fast sales research. And now I realize I consume every website that way. I consume every piece of information that way. Like shut the fuck up and tell me what it is real quick. How do I get it real fast? Right. And so, so that, I mean, that's just the way people want to, want to engage right now.

And your point about like demoing the 20%, I always told my sales reps, like sell to that person's pain, right? Whoever you're meeting with sell the lowest hanging fruit that, that what normally pisses that role off in their day-to-day job, right? Attack low hanging personal problems. Don't attack business problems. Don't attack executive problems, attack personal pain of the person you're meeting. Cause all you're really trying to do is win the next conversation. And in that next conversation, they'll bring in another stakeholder attack their personal pain, right? And every time you meet another stakeholder attack their personal pain. And what you're doing is you're building real emotional champions across the org.

And at some point you take whoever's going to really make that deal happen for you. And you explain to them, you know, you'll never get this approved if you don't attach it to a business initiative, right? And you get coached up on which business initiative you can get yourself attached to, but stop trying to attach yourself to an executive problem or like a company OKR on the first meeting when they don't even know you just get to know the person you're selling to get them personally to think this would benefit them as a human being, right? And work your way through the stakeholders, making a human connection with each one. And eventually someone will walk you into a corporate problem that you can get your project attached to.

Let's talk about two scenarios here. Let's talk about the sales engineer, right? And the role of a sales rep versus a sales engineer in a technical demo, right? Because the ideal state is I've done my discovery with the two or three people that matter, right? I've showed them a little bit to get them hooked up. And then we have this now there's the we got four or five engineers in the room. They want to see the deep dive, right? The the and then and ideally it's collaborative, it's dynamic. We pop in and out and whatever, right? But that's not how it happens. The way it happens is SDR qualifies with shitty band, flips it over to an AE, AE then qualifies again asking basically the same fucking questions, barely shows the client kind of wants it.

They know they want it. So they bring the expert in with the engineer, the engineer is given no insight at all, really. And so they just basically go through their standard pitch and go through slide by slide by slide. And then the client says, yes, I mean, some information will follow up. And what's the price, right? So so what's that dynamic? What should that dynamic look like between the sales rep and the engineer in a technical demo? Should the sales rep literally just put their hands up and say, I'm not the smart kid in the room here. I got the smart kids here. So go ahead, smart kids. What's that dynamic look like? So unfortunately, I still think this is a byproduct of bad sales training or bad sales process where you're sending your reps out there with a bad script.

That's not what the buyer is there for, but you're sending them out there with a bad script. And what should really be happening is we should identify that from the jump, this opportunity has already been segmented by lead source, by vertical and by role. And so, you know, the top two or three things that they care about. And so your salesperson should not be doing long form discovery and then promising a demo with the SE, right? Your salesperson should be doing like real quick five minute overview. Here are the top three things that are most relevant to you by lead source, by vertical and by role and get the prospect to latch onto one or two of them. And now I know what I'm building my personal business case on.

The rest of the call should be asking like, what's your tech stack or what are the other integration points we need? That's the actual information that matters on a first call, not how you buy software, how you would integrate this and how you think you would use it on a daily basis. That's where discovery should live. And that form of discovery lives post demo on the first call, not pre demo. So throw away the band discovery and get into the top three things that this person might care about. Have them pick one thing they care about and then do real discovery around how they would use it, how it would integrate with their existing processes. That information gets shared with the sales engineer before the second call.

And the sales engineer shows up with a demo environment that's connected to the customer's existing stack and speaks to the two use cases that was most important to the prospect. That's not how it works today. How it works today is I do shitty discovery. And in spite of my shitty discovery, that prospect actually had a problem. And to your point, in spite of the sales motion, they're coming back to another call. Well, because I haven't done my job properly, I did my job like it was still the nineties. I don't actually know those really intimate, important details from my SE. So what I do is I say, Hey, my SE is a product expert. Come on in, ask him or her the questions. And then I'm used to seeing them live dance and be nimble and try to like, in the moment, answer a question.

Oh, let me go into another account and show you how that works. Oh, let me open up a show and show it. Like they're not ready to do it, but they're agile because they know the product really well and they're technical. So that's become the dynamic here is sellers are not doing their job the way they should. They're doing the job the way they used to do it. And then that work is getting dumped onto the SE to like dance and be, and be left hanging in the breeze on these calls. Yeah. And it's just so frustrating because it's, it's, it is a laziness factor too, right? I mean, it's, I, and look, I used to be this guy when I was selling outsourced IT services. I didn't know what the fuck I was talking about.

Right. So I'd roll in and I'd be like, and I'd always go on a dual sales call with my engineer and I'd legit walk in the door. I'd be like, so thank you very much, Mr. Customer. So anyways, Dylan, you know, and then Dylan would talk for like 45 minutes. And at the end, I'd be like, so anyways, yeah, thanks for that. Um, you know, we're going to go put together a proposal. Actually, you know what? Dylan's going to go put together a proposal for you. And if you have any questions, here's his cell phone. He picks it up on the weekend. So don't, don't, you know, don't worry about that. And I like, it was just me not doing my job and abusing engineers because I was lazy as shit. And then I woke up to realize how valuable their time was and started to respect it a lot more and also leverage it a lot more.

But, but at the end of the day, put them in a position to be successful and not have to rediscover the situation or have to put on that sales hat. Cause the danger that I always find with sales engineers is the minute that a sales engineer has to qualify from a salesy standpoint, they lose all credibility, all credibility, right? There has to be that line where the engineer is the engineer and the sales reps, the sales rep, let the sales rep ask the cheesy questions, let the sales rep ask the process oriented type of shit. Engineers should be there to answer questions and, and ask real questions, not discovery questions, but like real actual questions that help, help understand the situation a lot better.

I couldn't agree more. I think when you bring the SE in to do the A's job, which is evangelism and earlier stage conversations, you eliminate the ability to have the SE as the, as the one true gate. And so I think about the rise of product led strategies. What's happening is the consumer gets into the product earlier, but they're not actually converted. Even if it's a free account and they're using you, they're not a paid customer yet. They're still in the evangelism stage. And the account exec needs to go in there and do the evangelism, not the sales engineer. The new gate in SAS sales. It used to be when they get into a trial, it was real, right? That's not the gate anymore. Cause they're using it right off the website.

The real gate is when you have that come to Jesus moment. Like what technical blockers still exist, what custom things would you need for this to be successful? And that conversation should include the sales engineer. But when AEs can't own the top half of their funnel and they have to bring a sales engineer early, they no longer have that as like the promise land. Oh, Mr. Mrs. Customer, I'd love to do that for you, but that's actually my sales engineer and I'm not allowed to get them until we hit this, this, this high watermark. And so that's actually the way it's supposed to work now with product led motions. And with product led, you know, or, or the way buyers are buying in a, in a product led motion.

But if you bring your SE in too early, you no longer have that as like the promise land you're trying to shepherd the customer to. And so it's not just like laziness and you should do this and finger wagging. It's also for sellers out there. If you're leaning on your sales engineer, cause they do a better demo than you, right? You're actually hurting your ability to convert deals later in the funnel. Yeah, I couldn't, I totally agree. And you lose control too. You lose leverage. And you lose control and absolutely credibly. And again, the engineer loses the credibility as well. Yeah. They lose their respect and they no longer want to take your meetings and they start asking for like, let's have a form that talks about why they're requesting a sales engineer.

And right. Like that's when you get into those situations. Like that's not just a coincidence that they're asking for that. They're, they're calling you out. Sales is wasting sales engineering time. Like they're calling you out on it and they're right. They are a hundred percent. I mean, I think that's where, you know, we, you know, look, there are, you know, technical sales and we don't want to pretend like we're the, you know, the technical person when we're not, but from a higher level perspective and understanding those business kids. I mean, one of the things that I love, and I think this is right up your alley with reprise is, um, is what I've started to do. Give you an example. Like we sell sales training, obviously.

And one of the things that I used to do was give people access to the online content, right? So if we have an online portal that has all this stuff in video format and I used to say, Hey, what, look, go check it out. Cause either you like it, you like it, you don't, you don't, you know, you'll see exactly what the training is. You'll see me. Right. But what was happening, it was, it was, it was elongating my sales cycle. So it was like a mini demo, it was like a trial, right? But not a trial. So, you know, and I'd check to see if they'd logged in a week later and they didn't, you know, and we had a call coming up and they'd pretend like they did and all that other stuff. And so I was like, wait a minute, what the fuck am I doing with this?

This is stupid. So what I started doing was doing a screen share. So you and I would talk, I'd ask you some questions, I'd show you what, you know, like, cause we have some spreadsheets and stuff that help coordinate things. And then afterwards I would light up, uh, any one of the screen share stuff, like, you know, my, you know, it was vidyard or whatever it is at the time. And I would just be like, Hey Joe, you know what, as a followup to our conversation, I just kind of wanted to kind of walk you through again, some of the components that really, I think struck a chord with you. And while we were talking based on what your needs were, remember that spreadsheet I was showing, well, take a look, this is that part that does this.

And so just want to kind of give you that visual reminder there. If you wanted to forward this along to anybody else, feel free, um, you know, and let me know when you want to, you know, and hopefully have a next schedule. That right there, cut our sales cycle in half. Yep. So John, I actually, I, I, I know, I know that would work. Uh, my experience is 75% of the SAS trials you give away. If a customer prospect asks you for a free trial, they're not actually asking to test your technical capability. They're not actually asking to test to make sure that the product really works. All they're really doing is getting set up so they can do some internal selling without you there. No one wants to talk to you.

No one wants to bring their boss to the slaughterhouse. No one wants to lead their boss into a room with a salesperson. There's a stigma. And so they're like, can I get a trial so they can go demo their boss without you? And the reality with SAS trials is that's how it starts. This is a customer that's interested in use case one. And so I turn on a trial and they go get lost in use case two and use case five. And that part of the product isn't set up and you expose all your warts, you elongate sales cycles, you lose deals on some bullshit that wasn't even part of the original scope, all because your champion doesn't want you around. And so what I did from day one with chorus is I started, you know, clipping the 30 minute interaction, clip down the four minutes where I'm in the product.

And in my follow-up email, I just proactively say, Hey, John, thanks for the time. Here's a clip from the call. It's the demo. Share it with your teammate that you mentioned, share it with so-and-so that came up on the call. And I'm proactively saying like, you don't need to bring people to me to spread my, to spread my, my, my value prop out there. You don't need to set a meeting for me to try to sell at your company. This is what we do go take it to them. And so like the, actually the other thing that, that I really wanted to talk to you about is champion enablement. Right. And so I think this change and in SAS, this B2Cfication of the way buyers behave, iPhone purchasing and instant gratification.

And let's be real. I don't want to be ageist, but like a younger cohort of executive decision makers right now that grew up on social media and iPhones and mobile devices, they're ready to transact this way. And so the first like change for you and I, the first change for salespeople is show up and show up, like stop doing discovery on the first call and demo later. Understand every interaction is about giving some form of instant gratification, some form of instant intelligence, and then getting the discovery that you need. Well, the other major, major change that's happening for salespeople is we're being reallocated. We're no longer, we're no longer behaving like AEs. We're behaving like technical support.

We're behaving like sales engineer, right? We're behaving like customer success because we're engaging with people that are earlier in like getting in the product earlier and earlier. So our games won't work anymore. It's now on us to figure out how to enable this new wave of buyer, right? And it's about asynchronous delivery. Record your shit and send it to them. Make everything you tell them available to them offline. Don't make them ask. Don't gate the stuff they want behind another meeting. Send it to them. As many, Vidyard, Loom, you know, even Reprise, we create demos that you can email out. Every single thing that you do needs to be available to the buyer without you because deep down, that's what they actually want is they want to be able to engage and interact with your messaging and your product and your value without having to include a salesperson in that conversation, period.

So stop acting like a salesperson is my TLDR. I mean, that's that's and that's what I love, you know, the idea of that video, right? To allow them to advocate for you, be your champion, but you're there with them because, you know, I use this as for proposals to, you know, obviously all of us want to get to the, you know, the decision maker to present the proposal so that we can, you know, walk them through it and get access to power and all that stuff, right? Right. Because disrespect your champion, right? Right. Yeah, exactly. Totally shit on your champion. I know you're not the person, so let me go above your head. And I can't even count on you to make the pitch for me is really what we're saying there.

And again, I understand why, because most of them can't, you know what I mean? Most of them go and they're like, you know, and they pitch that personal value we talked about. They go to the CFO and they're like, this is going to be amazing. It's going to save me so much time and I've never known a CFO to buy software to give their employees their weekends back. And so, right. The game, exactly, exactly. So our game, we know this pitch to the champion we're talking to, and then later attach it to an executive problem. Well, how do you make sure your champion is actually attaching it to an executive problem? The game is create their pitch for them and give it to them. We used to do this. We'd create pitch decks, you know, competitive matrix and a feature, you know, and we build your internal evaluation doc for you.

So when you go show your CFO, like you don't have to do the homework of making an evaluation doc, right. As a champion, you could just use the one that vendor sent you rip out their letterhead, put it on yours, but like, make it look like you did your homework. So I've been making my champions pitch decks my entire career, like show this to your CFO, show this to your CRO, right. And now the game is like, they don't even want to do it in PowerPoint anymore. They want to play a video or they want to like click through a sandbox without the seller there. But how do you make sure that they're doing it in a voice that resonates with the financial buyer and not just with the low level pain point that you got them hooked on?

Yeah. And I think that's, and that's kind of that balance, right, of a good rep figures that out, at least what those things are, develops that champion, shows them something that'll resonate up there, but also make their champion look good and also solve their problems. And I, you know, that's been the balance always for sales reps is how do I, how do I do both, right? How do I understand these evaluators and, and, you know, address their challenges so that they see this is something I want and then sell it up to the upper level and bridge that gap. And it's always been a challenge. It always will be. I mean, with the, with what you guys are doing though, you're taking a different angle. I mean, I brought up Vidyard as a, you know, just a screen share or whatever, and I'm just going to record myself doing something, but what are you guys doing?

Cause you're a different approach than just record my screen and stuff. You're doing custom shit, right? Yeah. So our product is, is, I mean, it's, it's first of its kind. We're the first to market with this technology. We've built a Chrome extension, right? And so it lives, it lives in your browser. And what you're able to do is kind of navigate and go through your, your actual product. And my software picks up where you're clicking in your technology and it creates a total replica of your product, like just those four screens. And so you go into your tech and you're like, here's the feature, here's the use case. Here's the screen that this buyer needs to see. And my technology actually downloads the front end of your product.

And we create what's called like front end only demos severed from the server, severed from any data, but you have added access. And so we're enabling sales and marketing leaders to literally create like full scale replicas of their product, but just these three screens, just this one click and then edit the data. So you can even put your customer in your demo. And so what we're creating is super slimmed down, scaled down, like immediate time to resonate, like two clicks to a light switch moment. And then we're enabling you to put it on your website. So your leads can self-educate, conduct it live over zoom. So every demo is tailored to the audience that you're pitching to, and then email the demo out when it's over.

So your champion can go demo the rest of the stakeholders without you there. And we're doing it all like super fast, cheap, better than anything you could build internally with an engineering team, which by the way, would mean they're no longer building your roadmap. Your engineer team is busy building your demo. So we built a platform to clone a production environment and make it super editable. So sales and marketing leaders can finally create demos instead of being dependent on the build team. So it's like a sandbox for reps, right? Basically, right. Instead of giving the client the sandbox, we're creating one on our own because we can, it's easy to do. And then I'm giving it to you and you can fuck around with as much you want because there's nothing, there's no harm, no foul.

You could break this thing because it can't break. Exactly. Like, yeah, that's slick. And I think that to your point, getting them involved, I've always said getting somebody involved in the demo is probably the best way that you like, if I could ever hand if I could ever hand you the controls for you to drive now and you're clicking around and you're looking at your data. Like I've, that's why I've, I've in the past, I've seen really good demos from, uh, like BI companies, right? Yep. Where they'll say, Hey, look, why don't you like open it up? Do this, grab a spreadsheet, grab any spreadsheet that's on your, you know, on your file. Right. And bring that in there. And the client's like, holy shit, look at this.

Like those are where it's like, bing. Talk about light bulb going off. Like that. That's some powerful shit. Awesome, man. Well, cool. Uh, look, we got to wrap this up here, but any last things that you want to, uh, you'll hit on or anything that we missed here on this topic? Yeah, guys go to get reprise.com. Check out my new business. Find me on LinkedIn. I'm Joe Caprio. I love talking about early stage stuff. I love talking about scale, about startups and just about sales and sales process in general. So I'm a total loser and a nerd for this stuff. And I'd love to meet y'all and, you know, come and find me. Love it. And just for everybody listening, it's reprise. Is it spelled reprise or reprise?

Reprise. Reprise, but it's R-E-P-R-I-S-E, right? That's right, sir. Just want to make sure. Cool. So, and the website is reprise. What? Get reprise.com. Get reprise.com. There it is. Cool. So go check it out because I love what you guys are putting together over there. And I, and I hope that, that we can get past this bullshit show up, throw up thing, which I can't believe we're still talking about 30 years later. Um, but it, it, it's, it's a need, man. And like we've talked about, right? I think we all have to take ourselves out of the SaaS world. Every once in a while and realize that sales outside of SaaS and San Francisco and VC and all that other shit, you know, it's, it's like 1985 all over again.

So, you know, let's, let's, let's, let's realize that a lot can be learned from both ends, right? The old school and the new school and trying to put those pieces together. So, Joe, uh, look, man, thanks for coming on, man. I love what you're doing. Uh, say hi to George for me too, right? Cause you're, you're partnered up with him. Yes, sir. Yeah. George Soto is on board to run content and marketing at reprise, man. We're going to hire a hundred people this year. So we're growing. Absolutely. Holy shit. All right. So if you're looking for a job, same thing, right? Awesome, man. Oh yeah. Thank you, John. Yeah. No problem. And look, uh, you know, we could, like I said, I, we could have a whole nother conversation about Boston sports and all sorts of other shit, but, uh, I'm glad we didn't go too far down.

Cause I think we would have lost the audience next time though. All right. Yes, sir. Thank you, John. I really appreciate this. Yeah. Thanks for coming. It was great talking to you and everybody out there. Hopefully you got some nuggets out of this. It'll make a difference for you and learned as much as I did on this one. And, uh, like I always say at the end of the day, uh, even if you're having a shitty day, go make somebody smile today. Cause if you made somebody smile, you know, you had a good day in this world needs a lot more of that right now. So thank you all for listening and make it a great day. Cheers. All right, guys. Hope you enjoyed this episode. We had some great conversations in here.

Don't forget to visit us at on demand.jbarrows.com to check out the on demand sales training that is designed for frontline reps and find me on LinkedIn. Let's schedule a free one-on-one sales coaching session for you to talk about what you're struggling with. Don't forget to hit the subscribe button so that you can hear the latest make it happen Mondays episodes each week. And don't forget to send me your sales wins. That email again is james at jbarrows.com. This way I can highlight you on our next episode of make it happen Mondays. Have a great week, everybody.