Why the ‘Golden Demo’ Isn’t So Golden!
When I was an application engineer at Altium, I was given the task of creating a golden demo which we would use for a weekly webinar. A colleague of mine and I managed to pull together a rather intricate 45-minute script that would demonstrate numerous functions of Altium Designer. Granted, I knew nothing about marketing and I was coming into this job after a decade of test and integration engineering.
In two instances, I was asked to accompany a sales rep to an onsite meeting. The plan was simple. I would start going through the motions of the golden demo and then we would entertain questions. In both, cases, this plan went down in flames. The first time, a heavy-handed manager interrogated me about each function, comparing it to the tool they already had. We didn’t even get through a quarter of the presentation and got stuck on feature comparisons.
The second time, we were torn apart by the low man on the proverbial totem pole. He may have not been a manager, but he owned the PCB process. It became apparent to us that he saw Altium Designer as a threat to his existence, and not a tool to aid his work.
Due to reorganization, my job function was moved to post-sales support, and my days of assisting pre-sales work end. However, every so often I mulled over those meetings. What did we do wrong? Didn’t they see the value of the tool? Why would they think Altium Designer would replace them?
Eventually, I joined Nine Dot Connects and was again exposed to pre-sales activity. We needed to differentiate ourselves and the challenge was to come up with a way to do so. We were in overlapping territories and the other VARs had far more labor and marketing resources. We noticed that they presented webinars, and this was something that did not require a huge monetary or labor investment.
We observed that it was always the ‘golden demo.’ This was based on the demo that I initially developed and had attempted to use in my two sales outings, as related above. Granted, it had gone through several iterations based on who ‘owned’ it at Altium and the new features that needed to be demonstrated. Though the various VARS who presented it may have changed the names, they generally stuck to the same script.
In typical Nine Dot Connects fashion, we decided that if we going to do webinars, it had to be different and unique. We were going to take a function of Altium Designer and explain it. We knew that the folks buying Altium Designer were already users. The EDA market is very saturated and most of the new seats were coming from companies that already owned the tool. We settled on the Design Rule Checker (DRC). At the time, users were struggling with the feature and we knew of ways to make it easier to create rules. (I will note that Altium has vastly improved upon it.) In February of 2013, we decided to give this webinar a go. It was so successful that we had to give an encore presentation.
There were several takeaways from this webinar that still drive us today. First, we realized that we had information that customers wanted and appreciated. Second, rather than hold this information tight to our chest, we decided that this information is our marketing. In the end, we want to be recognized as an organization known for our expertise in PCB design and process knowledge. Like a good dentist or auto mechanic, good service sells by reputation. We want PCB designers to know who to turn to when they need training, consulting, or services. We do not worry about giving this knowledge away. There is so much information, that even a 1-hour webinar only scratches the surface.
The third takeaway was that this event answered the questions from so long ago. The failure of those two meetings stemmed from the fact that we tried to sell a tool when the customer was looking to improve their process. Without us having a meaningful conversation about their process and their pain points, we had no credibility. In fact, we at Nine Dot Connects have made it a point not to present products as a live webinar. Yes, we will do a golden demo for any of our products, but that can be recorded and placed on YouTube for viewing when needed.
That’s the secret sauce: Everything we talk about is in the context of the process, and more so, we are trying to address the pain points that we all experience in the PCB design process. The PCB is certainly an odd creature since there is no formal training. We are all learning by calculated guesses and flat out mistakes. If we can shed light on this process, then we add value to both you and the industry.