What was your best or most recent ‘light bulb’ moment working with Demand Metric tools?

When I first started out as a consultant, I mentioned to one business owner that I was using Demand Metric tools and templates and described as best I could at the time what they were, his response was, ‘how can you get excited about spread sheets?’  At the time, I knew that there was this wealth of high quality information to be tapped into, but at the time, I unfortunately couldn’t give him a deserving answer.

Well time has gone by and I’ve got to know the tools better and last week there was one of those moments in business when you just know that you have made a major breakthrough in a client consultancy meeting.  There was what I would describe as the ‘light bulb’ moment.  The one where after many questions and discussion, that point where you can clearly see the change of expression, then the pause and then the comment that, ‘yes, I now really understand how I can go forward’.

The spread sheet responsible for this breakthrough was … the Product Applications Worksheet.  ‘How can you get excited about that spread sheet I hear you ask?  Well, the answer is it that it was this spread sheet, (combined with some tenacity using rolling, probing questions), that was the difference in helping this client to realise the benefits of understanding his products in far more depth than he had ever thought necessary to consider before.  By focusing on the wide range of applications that the products would be suitable for, this would help to identify the types of markets and businesses which he could target.  This in turn would help me greatly in my task to produce a more advanced marketing and communications plan, leading to generating and retaining more customers and sales revenue.

The point is that spread sheets and similar tools will never initially appear exciting in themselves.  But like most things in life, it is all about with a little effort and working with others, what it is that they can do for you, what problems they solve, what opportunities they identify and by doing so how they make you and others feel.

Thank you for allowing me to share this with you.  I am sure that you also will have had the same type of experiences, which have illuminated your preparations for a meeting, or the meeting itself, brought a client, boss or colleague onside and moved things forward with an enlightened spring in everyone’s step.  If so, please share them.  … Which spread sheets have got you excited?