Juancallclose

Director

AE vs SC demo

I, an AE, have noticed a recent phenomenon where the AE is pretty much expected to demo and the SC comes in when there are quite a few technical questions. In SMB, I think this makes sense. In enterprise, I've noticed a lot of enterprise AEs who say "I don't demo, I listen while the SC demos. I will not be demoing."

My take, there's no right answer. AE should know enough to do a harbor tour of the platform but I feel like SCs are tired of demoing. Maybe, AEs aren't setting them up for success? demoing

👑 Sales Strategy

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CuriousFox

WR Officer

🦊

A great AE leads the call and lets the expert talk about expert shit.

Sunbunny31

Politicker

Sr Sales Executive 🐰

I find my job is to make sure the right people are in the room to keep things moving along. If that person is the SC, a VP or the CEO, that’s who goes.

butwhy

Politicker

Solutions Engineer

I have noticed this trend too, and I HATE it. I vastly prefer giving demos 1) because I know the product well enough that demoing is muscle memory and I can spend my time doing subtle discovery and value selling instead of the AE reciting a parrot script and getting flustered because a question took them off track from said script while they were also simultaneously trying to qualify and 2) I believe AEs are better able to take notes and read the room (even virtually) when I am demoing and they are asking the questions they need for qualification. SC qualification and AE qualification are two very different bananas.

I also hate just hovering there on mute waiting to be called on, as well as the proclivity of that situation enabling me to be called "the brains of the operation" at the top of the call.

AE/SC should be a real partnership with the goal of selling, and I just don't think it is possible for the AE to be everything and be truly selling value at the same time. It's just too much.

TennisandSales

Politicker

Head Of Sales

i use to do my own demos and then i got into ENT sales and have a SC run demos. and i LOVE it. not because i get to relax a bit during the demo but because i can focus on other things.

i can read the room if cameras are on, see who is asking what questions at what times and gauge any sort of non verbal ques. I can also spend more time figuring out what questions need to be asked, what next steps should be and researching the account instead of prepping for the demo.

the best SC relationship i had, i would meet wiht them for 30 minutes. Tell them about the customer, what the goals are, what the pain points are and what they want to see.

then i would ask the SC for their suggestions on what and how they would present the platform.

then we would tweak it together if needed.
it worked SUPER well.

Gasty

Notable Contributor

War Room Community Manager

It's about the customer. Period.

ThatNewAE

Big Shot

Account Executive - Mid enterprise

@CuriousFox answered it right. Let the expert answer the questions that he / she knows best.

I’m in SMB right now. I started as a silent spectator in demo calls. Then I saw how the call goes south sometimes because SCs aren’t that smooth talkers. So now I lead. I politely let the SC lead when there is technical shit coming in. And then take the handle back.

trusted.advisor

Manager, Solutions Consulting

I'm not sure I see any real argument in favor of having AEs give demos unless you're in the SMB space or at an early stage startup before there is a presales function.

In the enterprise market for a series B or later company, SCs should be doing the demos. The only exceptions I can see would potentially be if you sell an extremely simple, commodity type product with very high volume/low price deal cycles, or if your presales org is too resource constrained to support demand gen/tire-kicking type demos with super low level stakeholders. But in the latter case, you're probably better off investing in some kind of demo automation solution for the demand gen type stuff because it scales better.

inci

Valued Contributor

SC? Why are you all saying SC? Isn’t it… SE or in some cases SA? What am I not getting?

Corpslovechild

Politicker

Inbound Sales Manager

Depends on how technically things are

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Juancallclose

AE vs SC demo

9 comments

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