If your Demo to Sales ratio is less than 14%, you need to read on.
Have you wondered why some of your salespeople close better at a higher rate than others? What are the top traits of Super Star Sales folks?

As I talk to so many salespeople, and having done sales demos and closed sales myself, I will tell you a key ingredient to this success: Story Telling.

What does Story-telling have to do with EMR Demos?

Without writing a thesis (each of the following bullets can be chapter in a book), I will summarize:

• You can only tell a story to someone that is interested
• In order to tell a story, you must know your audience
• Your story must be compelling enough to connect with the audience.
• More importantly, when you tell a story – I mean a real story that has passion, that has emotion. Passion and emotion connect with audiences and they will be riveted.
• Find a way to link the story with two things – audience’s needs, your product/services.

Providers are seeing too many EMR demos (mainly Web EMR demos) and they all ‘sound’ the same because most products do all the basic stuff, and most do them quite well. So, what differentiates your demo from the rest? A memorable Story that they can remember and take home. A story that connects their issues, problems with your product – how it can make them happier.

Once I showed this method (which by the way, is not easy and don’t take it for granted, because even your story can sound monotonous as if you are reading from a book) to a few sales folks that were great, their sales shot up by an average of 18%. They had all the necessary ingredients to be successful – they knew their product, they knew the market and audiences, they had been in the ambulatory clinical healthcare IT sector for a while, but they were not closing.

One last thing, a friend of mine tried the technique of ‘voice pitching’ – the same technique used by public speakers. At the end of each sentence, the voice goes up a bit, the speaker pauses, as if waiting for an applause line. It may be ok for public speakers, but not demos. It also gets monotonous – you are not giving a public speech. So, personalize and tell stories.