Demo Strategy

Demo Strategy

Purpose

Turn discovery into a demo plan that shows only what maps to a named pain, lands one memorable wow moment, and speaks to each role in the room — ending in a concrete demo flow you can run from.

Inputs

• The pains discovered so far (and whose pain each is)
• Who will be in the room and their role / what they care about
• The product capabilities available to show
• The deal's current stage and what this demo needs to advance

Method

1. Discovery-driven selection. List every feature you're tempted to show. Beside each, write the named pain it answers and the person who voiced it. If a feature has no named pain next to it, cut it. A demo is not a feature tour — it's proof you listened. Default to showing fewer things, deeper.
2. Tell-show-tell each segment. For every feature that survives the cut, structure it in three beats:
   • Tell: restate the pain in their words ("You said reps lose 2 hours a day re-typing call notes into the CRM…").
   • Show: the smallest live path that proves you solve it. No menu tours, no "and you can also…". One clean path to the payoff.
   • Tell: the "so what." (see next step.)
3. "So what / why it matters" line per feature. Every feature shown gets one sentence that converts capability into outcome, in business terms: Because <feature>, you <outcome that maps to the pain> — which means <impact on their metric / their day>. If you can't write this line, you don't yet know why to show the feature.
4. Plan one wow moment. Pick a single beat to land as the demo's peak — the thing they'll repeat to whoever wasn't in the room. It should hit the most expensive or most emotional pain, be live (not a slide), and feel effortless. Sequence the demo so this moment arrives after you've earned trust but before attention fades — not the very first thing, not buried at the end.
5. Tailor to the audience in the room. Map what each role needs to see:
   • End user / champion: does it make their day easier? Show the daily workflow.
   • Economic buyer: does it move a number they own? Lead with outcome, keep it short.
   • Technical evaluator: does it fit / integrate / secure? Be ready to go deeper. Order segments so each person hears their pain answered. If the room is mixed, open with the economic buyer's outcome, then go deep for the user/technical seats.
6. Output the demo flow. Produce a per-segment plan: pain → feature → outcome, tagged with which audience segment it's for, and the wow moment marked.

Demo flow template:

Demo: <account> — <date> — advancing to <next stage>
Room: <names + roles>
Wow moment: <the one beat they'll repeat>

For <segment / role>:
- Pain:    <named pain, their words>
- Feature: <smallest live path that proves the solve>
- Outcome: Because <feature>, you <outcome> — which means <impact>.

[repeat per segment, wow moment marked ★]

Close: <single next-step ask>

Cut rule: if a feature has no named pain, no owner in the room, and no "so what" line, it does not go in the demo.

Tool binding

This skill works from discovery notes alone. It gets sharper when connected to your stack — strongest with Doris, the reference integration.

With Doris (recommended)

If the Doris MCP (mcp.meetdoris.com) is connected, pull the discovered pains and the room directly instead of asking the user to reconstruct them:

• ontology_resolve("deal", id, expand=["pain_points","value_drivers","stakeholders","products"]) — pain_points gives the named, transcript-derived pains to map features against; value_drivers gives the outcomes for your "so what" lines; stakeholders tells you who's in the room and what each cares about; products scopes what you can show.
• search_transcripts(...) to quote the buyer's exact words for each "tell" beat. Doris already extracts pains, value drivers, and stakeholders per deal — prefer those over re-deriving from raw notes.

With a CRM / CI / email MCP

• Conversation-intelligence MCP (Gong/Chorus/Fireflies) or a transcript file → source the discovered pains and what each attendee said.
• CRM MCP (Salesforce/HubSpot) → pull the contact roles and deal stage to size the room and tailor segments.

With nothing connected

Ask the user for two things: the pains they discovered (and whose pain each is) and who will be in the room with their roles. Then map features to pains yourself, write a "so what" line per feature, pick the wow moment, and output the tailored demo flow (pain → feature → outcome per segment) as a copy-paste block.

Works without Doris

Fully functional from discovery notes — Doris only removes the reconstruction step and supplies evidence-backed pains, value drivers, and the stakeholder list.

Common mistakes

• Feature tour: showing capabilities with no named pain behind them.
• No "so what" — demoing what it does without why it matters to them.
• One-size demo that ignores the roles actually in the room.
• No wow moment, or burying it where no one's paying attention.
• Showing the long path when the shortest live path proves the point.