Ferrying humans to and from Mars, and to other locations around the solar system, might not seem at first glance like an urgent priority, but a recent tweet from Elon Musk might have you thinking again, and perhaps even give you some insight into your sales demo solution, believe it or not!
SpaceX is building floating, superheavy-class spaceports for Mars, moon & hypersonic travel around Earth https://t.co/zLJjz43hKw
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 16, 2020
Later, in a company-wide email, he let his employees know that the Starship should be considered the top priority for SpaceX at the moment, with the ultimate goal of enabling humans to live on Mars.
One Small Step for Man…
Interplanetary travel is probably a lofty goal by anyone’s standards, but for SpaceX, one of the first steps is these spaceports, allowing for initial travel to Mars. This will allow early flights for spacecrafts, and later astronauts and eventually civilians to visit the planet, for planning, collecting information, and to gain a better understanding of exactly what us Earthlings are in for. Elon Musk himself admits (regretfully) that the time frame for a Mars trip is probably too great for him to make it there himself during his lifetime, but it won’t stop him planning ahead, and essentially – giving people a chance to “Try before they fly”.
Here are some of the goals of the Mars trials, and how you can incorporate those lessons into your own software sales enablement sessions and demos.
3,2,1… Blast Off for Sales Enablement!
Mars aligns with Earth for the best chance of a successful spacecraft mission about once every 26 months, a window which happens to fall right now at the time of writing, during July/August 2020. That’s why so many missions have planned ahead to launch over the next few weeks.
Sales Enablement in a new word: Challenges, Skills and Tech – Webinar
Of course, the months leading up to a launch are the busiest of all, so that when the rocket leaves the ground, everything has been planned to perfection. The best sales demos have the same idea behind their execution. When you hit ‘go’ for a prospective customer, you want to know that everything is going to go off without a hitch. That means creating the perfect real-world replica of a software environment, complete with impressive touches like white-labeled branding, or specific mirroring of custom architecture like switches, routers, or additional network elements.
Light Years Away from Human Touch
Another parallel between the missions to Mars and your own sales demo solution is the automated handling that they both require in order to succeed. The Mars Starship program relies on spaceports that pass on fuel and information, all set up to work without human touch, and yet giving engineers and scientists insight into what’s happening in the solar system.
After setting up sales demos or POCs for your prospective customers, an intelligent virtual sales enablement solution will also give you eyes in another location; the ability to see which environments have been utilized and how, which POCs are in danger of abandonment, and increasing stickiness through real-time support for problems at the exact time it’s needed, rather than after the fact.
From Pluto-sized Sales Demos to a Jupiter-scale Proof of Concept
The order of events is also a great learning opportunity, and will speak to anyone that is looking to sell software with same success that Musk sells ideas. Paul Wooster, principal Mars Development Engineer at SpaceX knows what a long journey they have ahead of them. “This obviously is a very significant endeavor, something that will take many years, many decades even, to really achieve.” It starts with unmanned spaceports, followed by small crews to allow for more cargo, then fully manned ships with as many as 100 astronauts, and eventually, civilian passengers. It’s all about building infrastructure and equipment that’s ready to scale.
Sales enablement is a similar beast. Whether you’re looking to show a specific stakeholder a virtual demo, roll out a Proof of Concept to a team, or even allow an organization to train on the software cross-department after they’ve onboarded, it should be seamless to scale once you have the initial environment. That’s why CloudShare virtual labs are created to be able to replicate to as large a group as necessary, up to hundreds and even thousands of users.
Present more than an Alien Idea for a Sales POC
Elon Musk knows the importance of a great trial, and is not only mapping out a plan to get us to Mars, he’s starting with a plan to get us to know Mars, with Spaceports that are made for reconnaissance and exploration rather than a simple one-way trip. Give your prospective customers the same advantage.
CloudShare’s virtual labs are made for seamless sales enablement, offering a chance for users to really test and explore your software in a hands-on way, while allowing you to retain granular control throughout, showing off your solution to its full potential.
Take me (or email me) to your leader, and let’s schedule your own hands-on demo so you can see how it works.
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