Peter Cohan
Principal
The Second Derivative



Learn how make your new offering "easy to buy, easy to sell" and engage the hearts and minds of the sales team - to help you achieve your product launch objectives and your sales organization to make their numbers.

Cries of "Who cares?", "So what?" and "No more features!" issue from the more vocal members of the audience - and everyone else appears to be apathetic. Bad news!

The situation? You are demonstrating your new, earth-shattering, game-changing product at the annual sales kickoff meeting - but it is not going well. This is your key opportunity to "sell to sales" and put your new product foremost in the minds of the sales team - and they're not responding as you'd hoped.

Most demos to the sales force of new products and new releases of existing products are uncompelling, unconvincing and fail to generate the desired excitement in the sales team.

What's going wrong and what can you do?

Here's a rapid answer: capture, test and communicate Customer Success Stories or Use Cases to generate a vision of how your customers will benefit from using your new offering. Start with your customers' business issues, present these up-front and then map the balance of the demo to the specific capabilities customers need to solve their business problems.

The result? You gain sales force "Share-of-mind" - and achieve your roll-out objectives!

Speaker bio:
Peter Cohan is the founder and a principal of The Second Derivative, a consultancy focused on helping software organizations improve their sales and marketing results. In July 2004, he enabled and began moderating DemoGurus®, a community web exchange dedicated to helping sales and marketing teams improve their software demonstrations. In 2003, he authored Great Demo!, a book that provides methods to create and execute compelling demonstrations. The 2nd edition of Great Demo! was published March 2005.

Before The Second Derivative, Peter founded the Discovery Tools® business unit at Symyx Technologies, Inc., where he grew the business from an empty spreadsheet into a $30 million operation. Prior to Symyx, Peter served in marketing, sales, and management positions at MDL Information Systems, a leading provider of scientific information management software. Peter currently serves on the Board of Directors for Collaborative Drug Discovery, Inc. and the board of advisors for Excellin, Inc. He holds a degree in chemistry.

Peter has experience as an individual contributor, manager and senior management in marketing, sales, and business development. He has also been, and continues to be, a customer.
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