Demos Don’t Close Deals

For decades, “Book a Demo” was the default sales play. But today’s buyers don’t want a demo - they want clarity, credibility, and collaboration. Modern sales leaders know that demos don’t close deals - relationships do. The sales process is no longer a handoff; it’s a conversation built on education and shared insight that helps buyers see value before they buy.

This week on SalesTV, we unpack what it means to lead with learning instead of pitching. When sales teams shift from “showing features” to “showing value,” they transform from revenue generators to growth enablers across the entire business.

Join us live as we ask:

* Why don’t demos close deals - and what actually does?

* How do I help buyers see value before they buy?

* What makes buyer education the new sales advantage?

* How do I align sales and marketing around shared buyer learning?

Sales isn’t just about revenue anymore. It’s the engine that connects insight, learning, and customer relationships across marketing, product, and success. When sales leads with teaching instead of pitching, the entire business benefits - forecasts get cleaner, product feedback gets sharper, marketing alignment improves, and customer retention rises.

Our guest, Alex Blakeway, knows this shift firsthand. VP of Sales Transformation at Forterro and author of “Blueprint to Sales Mastery”, Alex has led teams past £1 Billion ARR. In the process, he’s helped sales leaders turn field experience into organizational learning, teaching companies how to make sales a strategic voice inside the business - not just the team that brings in revenue.

Join us live and be part of the conversation.

This week's Guest was -

• Alex Blakeway, VP of Sales Transformation at Forterro and author of “Blueprint to Sales Mastery”

This week's Host was -

• Adam Gray, Co-founder of DLA Ignite

Transcript of SalesTV.live Mid-Day Edition 2025-10-21

Adam Gray [00:00:02]:

Hi, everybody, and welcome to another exciting episode of SalesTV. And this week, I'm lucky enough to be joined by an old friend of mine, Alex. We worked together. It's a decade ago now, isn't it, that we started working together at Oracle. And it's. Yeah, I mean, it's. It's. It's fascinating how sales has changed over.

Adam Gray [00:00:28]:

Over that decade. Well, I say sales has changed, but actually, has it. I mean, customers have changed. I think in many ways, sales probably hasn't changed a whole heap. Anyway, before we get into that, Alex, why don't you introduce yourself?

Alex Blakeway [00:00:45]:

Yeah, hello. Alex Blakeway here. I'm VP of Transformation at Forterra. I'm also the managing partner of the NetSear Capital Investment and Advisory and a long history. Everything I've done has always been in sales and author of the book Blueprint to Sales Mastery, and also the founder of the Alex Tenex Sales Growth Academy. I wanted to do a couple of projects to give things back because my frustration of being a sales leader in many companies has been you work with a bunch of people and you assume they can be really good at selling, and of course, no one's really helped to upskill them. And again, part of what we'll talk about with Adam is how perceptions and how people can be really good, but a lot of times they just go about it the wrong way.

Adam Gray [00:01:33]:

Yes. Thanks, Alex. And it's interesting because I often say to people, you are the best salesperson that I have ever worked with.

Alex Blakeway [00:01:42]:

Because I'm not a salesperson.

Adam Gray [00:01:44]:

Yeah.

Alex Blakeway [00:01:45]:

Yeah. Well, that's.

Adam Gray [00:01:45]:

That's kind of the point. Isn't you're one of the most successful salespeople I've. I've ever worked with in terms of closing deals and stuff. But you do that not by selling per se, because, you know, when we work together, we would constantly come up against people that, you know, will rush to get a demo. We'll talk about features and functions, and we'll try and close the deal. And your conversation was always much more about adding value and trying to educate and upskill the client and I guess, do the right thing by them, you know, provide them with something which is really going to give them some value, and they would see some benefit from buying the product and service that you were selling. But that seems in many cases not to be the norm. Although companies pay lip service to doing that, it often isn't the norm, is it?

Alex Blakeway [00:02:39]:

No. It's interesting. I was lucky. I had some really good mentors early in my sales career who were very Clear about if you're going to stand out, find ways that you can be authentic and then can actually make you stand out. And I found one of the best ways was by trying to just be a helpful, normal, friendly person and don't try and be this alpha salesperson who comes across as trying to win the order and do anything at all costs, because we all don't like that person when we walk into a shop. You don't want to be hassled by somebody that's trying to force you into something. If somebody educates you and seems as a normal person you can have an intelligent conversation, then why wouldn't you engage with them? And yes, in the background, they may be using some good mirroring and pacing tricks. Maybe they are kind of always looking for and storing away really useful bits of information.

Alex Blakeway [00:03:32]:

But that's all happening on the inside. But on the outside, what you're projecting is just the normal you. And that does make a difference. And you're right, Adam, I think it's changed. There still is. Sales hasn't changed. One of the things that I think happens is if you look at my analogy is back in the day when we were watching tv, there was four channels or five, Adam, and you probably were three. And with those channels, you had to watch what was on.

Alex Blakeway [00:04:06]:

Best thing you could do is put the VCR on. You have this cassette recorder. You record it. You'd hope your sister doesn't record over the program that you've recorded. And that's kind of what's happened in sales. It's been, if you look at the viewing market, we now want everything on demand. We want to see things when we want to and consume. So our way of viewing has changed.

Alex Blakeway [00:04:32]:

And so has the kind of delivery mechanism where if you look at sales, what's happened is in the buyers have changed, but the actual delivery model of salespeople has traditionally stayed the same as 20, 30 years ago. And that's kind of quite annoying because you then have these two worlds colliding. The people, the buyers that now do more research and want to engage differently. But salespeople, like you said, a lot of time it can be very much go straight in, try and get the deal, want to do a demo is just not what the end customer wants these days. Yes.

Adam Gray [00:05:12]:

So you said about, you've got a couple of projects, you know, your book and your academy that are about putting something back and helping to upskill people and gain from your. Well, you're only young, so 15 years in, in the business world, but so, so, so how, how do you coach salespeople and give them some of this knowledge? I don't necessarily mean with the book and with the academy. What things are you trying to teach them? Because it strikes me that oftentimes the, the whole kind of continuous professional and personal development of salespeople is a very overlooked thing. You know we're going to train you on Challenger or we're going to train you on Medic, we're going to train you on Band or whatever the sales methodology is and it's all about closing. But the whole pretext inside which those sales methodologies fit is based on the fact that you can just pick up the phone and speak to somebody, you can send someone an email and they will respond. And actually the reality is they don't anymore. So how do you teach salespeople to be relevant and to be operational in the modern world?

Alex Blakeway [00:06:19]:

Yeah, it takes time. That is the, it's hard to find the quick wins. It depends what you're doing. If you're a volume business, there's one way of working. So the correct answer Adam, is there's different approaches depending on the size of customer you do. If you're in a mid market to an enterprise one you can afford to play the longer games. So that's the relationship building and I always advise people to go with. If you lead with learning and, and lead with educating and show that you're trying to help then that's a massive change.

Alex Blakeway [00:06:51]:

Talk about the things that the end clients want to, which is, God, how much is this going to cost us? What could go wrong? What are the challenges when putting this on and try and make sure the content that you're putting out is going to educate them rather than sell to them. Because what you find is when we educate them and that's remember Adam, when we work together and we would go and see some of these crowds, great organizations that are very sophisticated global banks in different places and we'd have sessions on just teaching them why social media is important. How do you connect with your audience if you provide opportunities to educate and for people to learn more? Of course when they're looking the next obvious question is well, who am I going to go and talk to for more information and who do you think can help me? And it's always going to come back to that first person that try to educate them and try to help them. So specifically looking at tools and things that you can do to try and educate rather than going out with a sales message.

Adam Gray [00:07:58]:

Yeah, I think that makes perfect Sense. But I mean, one of the challenges that I see when I talk to organizations is that, and you said about big deals, you've got longer Runway, longer.

Alex Blakeway [00:08:13]:

Expected.

Adam Gray [00:08:15]:

Line of sight of the deals and what you need to do. So you said you can play the long game and absolutely, that makes perfect sense. If you're selling a million dollar transformational deal, it's not going to close in three weeks. It's an 18 month, two year, maybe a five year sales cycle for this yet salespeople are still whipped on a quarter by quarter basis. You know, you've got this new account, it's a new opportunity in a new region. You need to go and sell them something. Okay, so what are you going to bring in this quarter? So how do we get away or how do we teach the sales function within an organization that actually they need to be realistic? If it's an 18 month deal cycle, you need to sow the seeds for something that's going to happen in 18 months and you can't expect something to happen today.

Alex Blakeway [00:09:03]:

Yeah, and it's like you say, sowing the seeds and being able to. Everything's got to be linked to their business and their business challenges and problems. Unless you can provide a really good return or investment or some clear benefit, then you have to ask yourself, if you're in their position, would you do it? And I think this is where we finding things going up against each other, where we're just told to go and say these things and a client will love it and buy it. And the reality is it's not. If you haven't built the relationship, had the effort to find out the specifics of how that company works, what really is their problem, what lies behind that, and you can't then show them a clear path to making an improvement for their company, then why would they do it today? So it's having that realism of unless you can prove that what they're going to be buying from you is going to make a fundamental difference, why would they sign tomorrow? Doesn't mean you should stop trying. What it means is you should have in your pipeline a variety of deals. From ones that you are doing the warm up, setting the seeds early, through to ones that you're pushing along and those that you're closing. As long as you have a variety, then you can hit that quarterly monthly cadence of not having the spikes.

Alex Blakeway [00:10:21]:

Because that's where a lot of salespeople start to get challenges. They have a big deal and it goes all the way back down again. They have this spiked performance because they haven't had this spread of different types of deals at different stages in the pipeline. Because once you get a big deal or you can see a few things are going, your time's more focused on that rather than keeping the nurturing early stage pipeline going. So it's all coming back to can you prove beyond doubt that your solution is going to help someone? If not, as you said, why would you push them? You're trying to get them to work on your time scale for closing for the quarter, not theirs. That's good for their business and that rubs people up the wrong way.

Adam Gray [00:11:06]:

Yeah, I mean that's really interesting, isn't it? And I joked when we worked together some time ago that this concept of customer journey mapping is rarely about customer journey mapping, it's more about your sales journey mapping. And you know it's always from your perspective and you know that that's a fundamental shift that needs to happen. But the theme for this month was sales being more than just generating revenue. And I think what's really interesting is that the salesperson is often the main point of contact with the client. So there's an opportunity to do more than just close the deal, isn't there? I mean you said about educating and upskilling and showing them things. So do you see that as an integral part of the salesperson's job to build that relationship?

Alex Blakeway [00:11:55]:

Yeah, true. I think if you look at depends what market. But if you take the tech market as one and if you take a big subsector of that on software, any of those solutions, most of the time you've either got another product to sell after you've sold them one, or there's an upscale. So there's either more users, more locations, more offices, there's usually something else you've got to go and sell to. The old way of selling used to be especially if you've only got one thing, sell it, take the money and walk away. Big thing that changed of course with the SaaS market and subscriptions is you've got to keep the customer happy or else why would they continue spending money on a subscription? Yes, I know if we're in the mid market enterprise we should be a minimum getting 12 months, 3 months, 3 year deals. However, you will still have other products you can sell, other upsells, other opportunities. So unless you've built that relationship where it works really well, Adam is if you've got customer success building a relationship, you've got your on site delivery team building relationships and that multiple touch points, that's what really makes a company work but the person that's fronting it and where I've been in to help companies where things have gone wrong.

Alex Blakeway [00:13:13]:

And I go, all right, I'll go and talk to some of the customers, go and sit in front of some of the customers. And it's interesting. One of the first things they say is it was all that they spent time and effort and loved me. Soon as they got my money, the phone would ring, the email wouldn't be. I'm like, ah, no surprise there. Then you gave them the money. But it's like, yeah, in today's modern, you know, professional world, yeah, that shouldn't happen. Surprisingly, it does happen quite often.

Alex Blakeway [00:13:43]:

And until we change the way we incentivize our salespeople, that will always be a negative result. But the majority of salespeople are fairly intelligent and do get the keeping the relationship going because you will have more chance to sell them upsells and other products. They will want to come back and buy more. So you can't just disappear with so much great content out there. Even when they bought something. The most important bit is how you use it, how you implement it as we did in Oracle. It was not about the software. Everybody's got same software, it's just got different buttons in different places.

Alex Blakeway [00:14:23]:

The absolute thing that makes the difference is how you use it, how you execute and how you kind of push it in the organization to bring out that business value. So after you've sold something, there's always an opportunity for a salesperson to go back. Worst case, go back and ask for just a reference to kick off that re engaging stage. Go back and ask for a 20 second video on why did you like working with me and would you recommend me to someone else? Just kick off that relationship and said worst ways, if they don't want to have it, you do come away with a reference or a short video because some clients, yeah, maybe they just don't want that relationship and that's fine, but you've got to make an effort for it.

Adam Gray [00:15:09]:

Yeah. Thank you. So you said that early on in your career you were really fortunate to have some great mentors and people that coached you. And now you're much more senior, you've got loads of years of experience and you, you've learned from what you've been told, but also you've learned from the school of hard knocks what works and what doesn't work. So what kind of advice do you give salespeople that are in the kind of still the upward trajectory of their career. You know, they're building their career, they're trying to get some successes, they're trying to build their own name and we come onto Personal brand in a moment, maybe. But, but, but. What kind of advice do you generally give these people?

Alex Blakeway [00:15:52]:

Yeah, a few things. Firstly, find a mentor. I was lucky. I had some really great ones. I worked for some top companies. James Kahn, we know of old Dragons Den, a famous investor I worked for. One of my first kind of proper corporate sales job was in IT recruitment, working in James Kahn's company. And he was all about giving back the training and the support and mentorship as well.

Alex Blakeway [00:16:18]:

So, so find someone. Sales, yes, is complicated, but there's always somebody that's already found a way to do it. And I had somebody else that was a good mentor that said, go and sit next to the best person you can in the company. And that was before I did my first proper role at James Kahn's Alexander Mann. Luckily, everyone was changing seats because we were moving office when I joined. And I said to my new boss on my first day, can I sit next to the best person you've got? And they kind of went, sounds very good. The best person that was in the team. So, one, find a mentor, but don't just copy them, work out what you can do to improve in their process because sales is always changing and you've got to find your own way.

Alex Blakeway [00:17:05]:

So find a mentor, then improve on the process. Next thing is, I call it analogy. Don't be an ants, be a meerkat. So many people have their heads down and continue on their job. Like if we're doing the same journey into London, we look out the window of the train, but we don't see any detail. You need to be that meerkat, put your head up. Because when you start looking around, there's opportunity. Half of being successful is just showing up and being there.

Alex Blakeway [00:17:34]:

And if you're not looking around putting your hand up for any opportunity for extra training to solve a problem, be the person that's always pushing their hand up. So find a mentor, don't be an ant, be a meerkat. And thirdly, invest in your own training. I found lots of companies really struggle with how do they enable their sales teams. And this is a forever challenge that will always go on. Even with the work that I do at Forterra, we're doing great things. However, my honest answer is it never will be enough. You've got to kind of take learning, take sales like it's a degree.

Alex Blakeway [00:18:15]:

Go and spend hours there's so many subjects that make up sales but you have to invest in your own learning. And for me Adam, that was where the reading the books, talking to the people and that was, you know, when I started, you know, 30 years ago you had to go and do the hard yards of getting a book out the library or buying one or talking to someone. Now you look on YouTube, there's a phenomenal amount of really great free sales help on there of anything from how to come across on presentations to the words you should use to opening a pitch to sales, strategy, methodology, everything. You've got to go and do that. So summary would be. Yeah, find your mentor on improve, don't be an out, be a meerkat, look up for opportunity and invest in your own self learning.

Adam Gray [00:19:06]:

Yeah, I, I absolutely concur with everything you said there. However, and there's always a but isn't there? However you, you have a very open mindset.

Alex Blakeway [00:19:18]:

Yeah.

Adam Gray [00:19:19]:

So you know, you said you were very young, you started in, in Alexander man, they were having a reshuffle. You said to your boss, who's the best person, can I sit next to them? And your boss is like wow, this is the kind of guy we want in the business because he's, he's eager to learn. Now now that, that springs from a certain, not exactly self confidence because, because although you are confident, it's self belief, you know, it's the fact that I don't know everything and I'm prepared to put my hand up and say I don't know everything. So who can I look at and who can learn from. But that's quite a rare thing in the world in my experience. And, and a lot of people are either not empowered or they, they're too busy. I mean I think, you know, the ant and the meerkat is a really good, good thing because in so many roles, particularly when you're new enrolled, you've got your head down and you're trying not to make any mistakes and you're trying to learn the ropes and actually you might be doing something which is a pointless exercise because it's a kind of legacy from something that we used to do years ago and if you stop and look around but it requires a degree of bravery to do that. So how do you teach people that they must have that self belief.

Alex Blakeway [00:20:45]:

Bravery? There's no easy answer to how you teach people because you are one where you have your makeup. The best way is to inspire people and say if you're going to do something, why don't we be the best 1% at doing it. Why would we settle for anything less? Sales is one of the few industries that you can map out and control your own financial freedom. That gets to like, I've managed to travel the world, do incredible things, but you've got to stand up and you've got to put the effort in. And I think for early people in early careers, I think it's what I try and do is go, look, you can come from. I didn't go to university. I was always not great at English of average intelligence. But I managed to make it to the top 1% in the industry and my business look.

Alex Blakeway [00:21:36]:

And all I did was have that right ability to ask questions, want to be really good, find really good people that I could copy, then trying to improve. But you're right, Adam, it is hard if it's not within you. Is it trainable? That's the, the question. And my, my, if you can't find that hunger.

Adam Gray [00:22:06]:

Yeah, I mean the, the hunger is a thing. So there is, there is a chap who you and I have worked with in the past and, and know and he's extremely good at using social media and he has been spotted amongst his peers within the large tech organization that he now works and some of those peers, and we have trained him and some of those peers have come up to him and said, yeah, how come you're really busy and, and you're like, you've got five times as much pipeline as anyone else and you're generating all of these new conversations. How are you doing that? And he says, I'll show you. Here's what I've been shown to do. And I do this, and I do this religiously. Every single day and every single week I do this. And that generates all of these different conversations and those resolve into some opportunities and those resolve into pipeline and ultimately revenue. And now bear in mind that this is a guy that's, that's 180% of his number and people that are coming up to him are 70% of their number.

Adam Gray [00:23:12]:

And the response that he often gets is, oh, that looks like a lot of work. And actually to a certain extent there is a, I guess a lethargy in all of us, isn't there?

Alex Blakeway [00:23:26]:

You know there is. And you're either sometimes born with it or you have to do it. When I did that job in Alexander, man, I lived out in Clacton in Essex, so I had to get, it was an hour and 25 minutes into Liverpool Street. So you had to be motivated to get up, you know, 40 minutes before that, get to the train station, do an hour and a half into London and still be wanting to be one of the first in the office to show that you're eager. You either have it, some people naturally have it. But I think the worst thing is if you don't want to try and what I say to people is, why don't you try? Just do it for a week or do it for a day, get up here at this time, try and set these routines again online. There's real good help about how to get into how you build a habit. You just have to get through the first day, then the second day, then it becomes a week and a month.

Alex Blakeway [00:24:24]:

But you're right to try and get people to do it. And, and the reality is, when you look at my 1% formula, spent a lot of time working with our top sales teams and individuals to work out, well, what is a formula? If you were to try and write it down, what does the top 1% make? So I went on a process, interviewed loads of people, came back, distilled it all down. It was very, very simple. Is what do you do that's extra, what do you do? What's different on what do you do? That's marginal gains, because marginal equals monumental. So these people, extra, they did something that was the, the marginal gains, they did something that was different. And underlying that on the equation was simple and scalable. I said, it doesn't set the world on fire. But you talk to all these rigs, you know, really, really successful people, it was because they did something extra.

Alex Blakeway [00:25:21]:

And that was maybe the longer hours of work, it was doing something different, finding a way that works because they know that their way gets better results. But then the marginal gains, like I say, get everybody yourself to do a 20 second video of why they want to work with you. Over the course of six months, you'll build up a fantastic bank of videos that you can use to send out to people. As long as you make sure it's all scalable and simple, then you have a really great way of doing it. So say to someone, look, this is what definitely works. If you're going to achieve it or not, it's down to you and it is super hard to try and motivate that. I know that with Harry is doing his A levels at the moment, getting him out of bed before 11 o' clock and getting him to do five days a week in college is a huge challenge and I was probably like that at that same age. That is when you then, Adam, try and work out that you've got to try a bit harder, else you're not going to make anything.

Adam Gray [00:26:23]:

Absolutely. Alex, amazing. Thank you very much indeed. I love, I love that line that you said, marginal equals monumental gains. Absolutely. So thank you so much for being a guest today.

Alex Blakeway [00:26:36]:

Thank you for having.

Adam Gray [00:26:37]:

Thank you, everybody. That's, that's watched. If you would like to sign up for our newsletter, you can scan the QR code now. And until the next time, thank you very much indeed. It's goodbye from me. Thank you very much, everybody.

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About SalesTV: SalesTV is a weekly talk show created by salespeople, for salespeople. Each episode explores sales, sales training, sales enablement, and social selling, bringing together sales leaders, enablement professionals, and practitioners from across the globe.

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