Ilya Semin of Datanyze on Value of Great Demo Workshop

We reach out to past attendees of the Great Demo workshop and ask them how they have applied the principles and techniques covered and what the impact has been on their business. Ilya Semin, the founder of software startup Datanyze, attended a Great Demo workshop in 2012 and sent us this detailed response. It is reproduced here with his permission.

Ilya Semin of Datanyze on Value of Great Demo Workshop

My name is Ilya Semin. I’m the founder of Datanyze (www.datanyze.com). Our product provides competitive intelligence for certain types of companies (Web analytics, Widgets, CDN, DNS, etc). It helps answer questions like “Who are the biggest customers of my competitor?” or “Who of my customers is currently evaluating one of my competitors?” The tool is very powerful and the best way to prove that is to demonstrate it to our potential customers.

My background is Computer Science and I’m used to dealing with computers, not humans. Perhaps that’s why sales is not something that I’m comfortable with, but as a founder of a small start-up I have to be involved in sales almost every day.

When it comes to demonstrating a product most people present it in a very fuzzy, unclear way. I’ve seen that so many times but I did not have the answer on how to make this process better. What I’ve learned during the Workshop completely changed the way I demonstrate our product.

Peter gave a very clear explanation and lots of examples on why traditional demos don’t work. What I really liked about the workshop is that not only it gives you a theoretical knowledge about why some demos are more efficient that the others, but it also provides a clear process for organizing demos and forces you to work on your own demo and make it better during the day. We were working in pairs to improve our pitches and everyone had a chance to present their products.  I really learned a lot from this workshop, I feel like it will be useful for everyone who is in sales, no matter what their level. We had some very experienced folks in the group and people like me who just started to practice it and I feel like everyone was very excited at the end of the day.

Update-Jan-20-2014: DataNyze profiled in VentureBeat: “This Startup Tells You When Companies Try Your Competitor’s Software.”

Related Blog Posts

• Great Demo Workshop Attendee: “Holy Crap! My Demos Have Too Much Detail”
• Recap of “How To Give a Great Demo” at CoFounders Club Wed-Apr-16-2014
• A Great Demo Is A Conversation Driven By Mutual Curiosity
• Chris Kane: Great Demo’s Impact On The VendorRisk Sales Presentation

 Great Demo! Public Workshop October 15-16, 2014

October 15&16, 2014 “Great Demo!” San Jose, CA

Our next public Great Demo! Workshop is scheduled to take place October 15-16 in San Jose, California.

This is an excellent opportunity for individuals, small groups or for teams that have new hires.

We’ve found that these events are most productive when there are two or more participants from each organization (singletons are also fine). This helps to mimic real-life interactions as much as possible, both when preparing demos and delivering them in the role-play sessions.