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Why I don’t take notes anymore in demos.

You know how it goes.  Someone in the audience asks a question, or wants to see a specific feature.  We do a little ‘discovery on the fly’ to confirm our understanding.  Then we address the question with an answer and a quick demo of the feature.  Straight forward so far.  My problem comes in the follow up.  Obviously if someone asked about a specific feature, it’s important to them.  This should be used by your sales rep as they reiterate value and move to close.  But here’s the rub.  I suck at taking notes.

So when it comes time to debrief with my rep, I have to rely on my memory, which is no good either in these situations.  It’s not that I can’t take notes, it’s that I don’t multi-task well.  I can’t take good notes, while actively listening, making eye contact, and planning my follow up without big uncomfortable pauses in the action.  Maybe it’s a male thing.  There have been several studies that show how men can’t multitask as well as women.  Even if I did take notes, I can’t read my own handwriting half the time.

So one demo, I’m fielding a question and I look over at my rep and he’s in the corner pecking away at his phone and he looked like a stenographer.  He might have been playing Candy Crush for all I know, but it dawned on me, if this guy isn’t doing more than getting the coffee once the demo starts, the least he can do is take some notes while I’m up here dodging bullets!

(Now I’ve been in the big team demos before and lots of people on your team are taking notes, but in my demos, it’s usually just 2 people.)  So from then on, I make the reps take all the notes.  Some may call it being lazy.  I call it WINNING!

When it comes to web demos, it’s even easier.  Just record the darn thing.  Notes suck.

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