Have you ever had the want to purchase something or sign up for a service but held off because you wanted to wait until you could see that product or service in action? Maybe it was because you were unsure how it operated or whether it would help you with a problem.
A sales demonstration is helpful in this situation.
What is a Sales Demo?
A sales demonstration, or a sales demo, will give a presentation to a prospective customer to highlight the product features, benefits, and value of the product or service. This is known as a sales demonstration or sales demo. A sales demo’s goal is to close a sale.
Generally speaking, a sales demonstration should last no less than 20 minutes and no more than an hour.
Understanding and utilizing the perks of sales demonstration has to be a top priority for companies that offer products and services.
The outcome of a sales demo can determine whether a contract is closed or a prospect is lost. However, who delivers and receives a sales demo? What is comprised? What time and place do they happen? Why are they required? How do you make sure it completes the circle and generates the sale?
Before we start the sales demo process, let’s clarify the difference between a sales demo and a product demonstration, as the two terms are sometimes used interchangeably.
Sales Demo vs. Product Demo
The most crucial step in the sales process for B2B SaaS companies is the sales or product demo. It’s a unique chance to show a prospective customer the value of your goods.
For example, the core of any software sales procedure is the product demo. Product demos that are poorly done cause closure rates to slow down dramatically. On the other side, they can be pretty successful if done correctly.
The demo frequently determines whether a deal is closed or a prospect is lost. A strong demo demonstrates to potential customers how your product alleviates their problems and boosts their productivity at work.
There is a difference between a sales demo and a product demo, but only slightly.
To restate, giving a prospect a demonstration of your product or service is known as a sales demo. The approach is the same process for a product demo, but a current customer is involved.
The goal of a product demo is to demonstrate how to utilize a product or service to a prospect, as opposed to the goal of a sales demo, which is to make a sale.
Who delivers a product demo? In most companies, the sales rep – or more specifically, the account executive – is delivering the demonstration.
Your offering extends beyond the thing you’re selling. You are an expert in it. Your commitment to seeing that your prospective client uses your technology successfully and receives a promotion demonstrates your commitment to this goal. Check out the guide about sales prospecting.
Sales Demonstration Basics
Let’s now address a few more queries that can surface when you consider your company’s process as you prepare to start giving sales demos to prospective customers.
Let’s review sales demos’ Who, Why, What, When, Where, and How.
Who Delivers a Sales Demo?
A sales rep will almost always give a demo to a prospective customer.
Business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-consumer (B2C) sales demos might differ significantly. For example, B2B sales demos are frequently lengthier, may involve many demos, and are witnessed by the entire buying panel. On the other hand, because they are selling less sophisticated products to a single consumer directly, B2C sales demos are frequently shorter. An example of a B2C sales demo might be a salesperson in a department store demonstrating how to operate a vacuum.
Why Deliver a Sales Demo?
To seal the deal, you present a sales demo. With a sales demo, you can demonstrate to the prospect exactly how your product or service fulfills their unique needs and may help them with the pain points they may be having. This encourages your prospect to purchase your product or service or at least want to learn more about it so they can convert later.
What is the purpose of your sales demo? To close more deals! Before engaging in a sales demo, it is essential to understand your prospects’ specific demands and pain areas. According to sales thought leader Jim Keenan, there is no place for “if” in your demos. There is no justification for displaying a feature that is not pertinent to the particular business and is not specifically catered to the buyer’s operational requirements. Consider this while you create your next sales demo.
What Do Sales Demos Include?
What is the name of your product or service? Is it a new style of tracksuit or a software package? Again, the sales demo aims to close a deal; thus, it is essential to do all of the product’s wow factors right at the start of the demo presentation. Before providing a demo, you should research the features that will be most useful to the target market to present your product in the most favorable light.
When Do You Deliver a Sales Demo?
Sales demos usually take place once a visitor turns into a lead. However, there are a few specific times when you might give a sales demo, depending on where the prospect is in the buying process (or ask if your prospect is interested in a demo).
- When a customer makes a small conversion (signs up for your newsletter or requests more information)
- When a prospect gets in touch with a member of your sales team to inquire about your product or service
- The moment a lead asks for a consultation
Where Do You Deliver a Sales Demo?
There are many different places (or ways) to do a sales demo, including in-person, over the phone, online, and in-store. It’s up to you to determine which is most appropriate for your brand or business. For B2C businesses, in-person or in-store demos are a terrific option because they allow customers to interact with and test your product directly. However, because B2B sales demos sometimes include numerous parties and scheduling meetings takes time, automated demo films or internet meetings are frequently employed.
Remember, a critical piece in the sales process is the sales or product demonstration, which can be delivered more efficiently than ever using various methods, such as video or a web conference. Also check out, SaaS sales and tech sales.
How Do You Deliver a Sales Demo?
Your sales demos can be delivered in a variety of ways. To be adaptable and accommodate your prospects’ needs, you might provide them with various options.
Ensure you are equipped with all the tools required to provide various sales demo delivery techniques. Ensure you have access to programs like Google Meet or Zoom, which enable simple screen sharing, face-to-face video chat, messaging, call functionality, and more. As an illustration, if you decide to deliver a sales demo via video chat.
Here are a few more instances of typical channels for delivering demos:
- Make a call
- Email
- In-person
- Pre-recorded or automated video
- Instant video chat
Let’s look at how to deliver a sales demo now that you are more familiar with the fundamentals of the sales demo process.
Sales Demo Steps
The following steps are needed or required to deliver a sales demo.
- Research your prospect
- Confirm the sales demo
- Plan your sales demo before the meeting
- Humanize the sales demo
- Set an agenda for the demo
- Summarize past conversations
- Provide background
- Explain the product or service
- Address any questions the prospect has
- Set expectations for the next steps
Step One: Research Your Prospect
Researching your potential customer is the first step in the sales demo process. You, the sales rep giving the demo, should be thoroughly aware of the prospect’s needs, pain points, and the work their employer does.
A critical component of a successful sales demo is the ability to adjust and customize the demo to the prospect’s unique wants and circumstances.
Before giving them the demo, you should determine which features are essential to that audience to present your product in the most favorable light.
Step two: Confirm the Sales Demo
A sales demo is typically prepared in advance; therefore, it’s crucial to remember to confirm the demo before it takes place. Verify if the prospect can still attend the demo at the scheduled time and provide them with an opportunity to cancel if they unintentionally double-booked or if anything else came up.
As soon as the time and date of the demo have been confirmed, send a calendar invitation (don’t forget to include any necessary dial-in information). Find out whether anyone except the individual (or people) you invited will be there so you can add them. Then, the day or a few hours before the demo, send a follow-up email to confirm.
Step Three: Plan your Sales demo before the meeting
Depending on your presentation medium, there are several ways to organize your sales demo to improve it and make it more interesting.
Use tools like the ones we described above to share your screen during the call, make a personalized slide deck (using Canva, for instance), and have any relevant links loaded and ready to use in tabs on your browser so you can easily incorporate them throughout the presentation. A few examples of these materials are a client case study, an educational infographic, and any other websites you think would be helpful during the demo.
To ensure your prospect is paying attention and comprehending the information you provide, you should also prepare statements around each tool or service you intend to demonstrate. It would help if you also had any tie-down questions ready, which elicit agreement and invite the prospect to define further the value of a particular tool or solution for their business.
Ensure your prospect follows along, comprehends your descriptions, and understands how these tools may help them solve their problems, including tie-down questions for each tool or segment in your demo. To help them see how your product or service may help them overcome their specific challenges, you should lay out the steps from A to B.
Step Four: Humanize the sales demo
For example, if the demonstration begins with, “Hello, I’m Daniels. The sales demo can now begin.” You have the voice of a sales zombie.
Make sure you are approachable and demonstrate your compassionate, human side at the beginning of the conversation to prevent coming across as pushy, unreliable, and possibly disagreeable. After all, you and the prospect are probably still getting to know one another at this point in the sales cycle. Ask the potential customer how they’re doing, how their most recent project went if their dog has been successfully housebroken, or anything else. Relationships are valuable, but so is time.
And the relationship doesn’t end here. To start a human and trustworthy relationship, build it at the beginning of the call and ensure it’s continuously injected throughout the rest of the sales demo.
Step five: Set a sales demo agenda
In your presentation, don’t forget to include an agenda slide.
Always have a plan while conducting demos. Before the demo starts, prospects should be aware of this agenda, and they can be reminded of what stage of the agenda they are now in at any time during the presentation. This establishes guidelines and keeps everyone on task and organized. In addition, the prospect will feel more at ease if they understand what will happen throughout the demonstration.
Be sure to emphasize that the prospect will have the opportunity to ask specific questions after the demo (but you can also stress questions are welcome at any time).
Step Six: Refer to previous conversations
Mention any preliminary talks you’ve had with this potential customer when you start the demonstration. This will remind them of their initial need for your aid, why they previously thought about doing business with you, and how you determined you could assist them.
Outlining the prospect’s goals, plans, difficulties, and timescale is one elegant method to accomplish this. Once they are satisfied that this information is accurate, you can utilize this slide (or a brief conversation) as a jumping-off point to begin the demonstration.
Step Seven: Provide Background
Gaining the prospect’s trust is essential for closing any company as a representative. Give some background information about your company to accomplish this. This will help the prospect see your business as a trustworthy and creative possible partner.
Avoiding generalizations and including specific information about your business and its goods and services that meet the prospect’s needs and their company is critical in this situation.
But with so many scheduled demos and prospects, it might be challenging to keep track of your progress. Your company data is organized into orderly deal records using customer relationship management (CRM) like Sloovi. You may find the history of each client’s multichannel interactions in these records. Following that, several automation capabilities, including lead generation, campaigns, alerts, and notifications, are available.
Step Eight: Explain the Product or Service
Now, it’s time to explain your product or service. When doing this, you’ll want to ensure the explanation is both specific and tactful.
Start with an overview of the product and its essential features. Then, explain why this product exists, and link it to the prospect’s needs. Each feature presented in the demonstration should explain why the product is the best solution for the prospect’s challenges.
Next, bring in the “wow” factors. This should answer the question, “What unique value does the product offer?”
To ensure everyone is on the same page at this level, you can always reflect on any previous discussions and plans you worked on with the prospect during earlier talks. You may also ask a tie-down question.
Additionally, if your company offers first-rate customer support to assist with the onboarding procedure and beyond, mention it in this demo section. A skeptic can be comforted by knowing assistance will be accessible when required.
Step Nine: Address any questions the prospect has
As previously said, you should make sure that every demonstration includes time for questions at the end. In addition, try to anticipate the prospect’s potential pain points during the demonstration by observing their tone of voice and, if you’re meeting in person or on a video conference, their facial expressions.
You can tailor your responses and responses by paying attention to these feelings and worries. You can also choose whether or not to include a supplementary infographic or provide a case study of customers who used the resources mentioned to solve the problem, which resulted in success. This increases social proof, establishes credibility, and demonstrates to the prospect that others have found success by working with you.
Step ten: Set Expectations For the Next Steps
Your delivery of the sales process is now complete. Therefore, the primary question at this juncture is: Is the prospect interested in continuing the dialogue and perhaps closing a deal?
Let the potential customer know up front what is needed from them to make the solution work. Show a summary slide, for instance, outlining the prospect’s commitment, knowledge, time, openness to learning, and financial resources needed for the prospect’s specific solution to be a wise investment.
You can schedule a follow-up conversation if they want to know more or continue the chat. Or, even better, if the demonstration successfully persuaded the potential customer, it might be time to start a closing sequence to seal the purchase.
Ensure you have their email address, phone number, and other possible means of following up 0n your demo call.
Extra: It should go without saying that you require training to conduct a successful demo. No one may join your sales team and demo your product on the first day.
You won’t be able to do a successful demonstration if you don’t train your team or yourself on your product. The same is true if your crew isn’t trained to conduct the demo.
Do not waste time or money on subpar or even average demos. Regularly practice and train.
Sales Demo Best Practices
To satisfy the needs of your prospects and create a standardized, efficient, relevant, and repeatable procedure for you and your fellow sales reps, there are several best practices you’ll want to make sure you adhere to and take into account while you work on your demos.
Let’s take a look at these sales demo best practices requirements for sales reps:
Personalize the Sales Demo
Make the sales demo unique to the demands of the particular prospect you are communicating with. Therefore, you should constantly streamline your demonstration and include the necessary material for your audience’s circumstances.
To do this, ensure your demonstration highlights your product’s suitability to answer their needs and problem points. Only the elements that positively influence them are essential to prospects and consumers, so you should focus your demonstration on those.
Ensure you Explain the Why
Throughout the demonstration, you must explain the “why” behind what you discuss and offer. For example, why is your product superior to those of your rivals? What makes your product or service the best option for solving the prospect’s problem? Why should your potential customer want to work with you? Why do the customers you currently have to adore your product?
They set you apart from competing businesses and make your demonstration more compelling. These points and remarks can convert your prospect from an interested lead to a brand-new and devoted customer.
Listen
Listening to the prospect and your fellow reps before, during, and after delivering any sales demo is essential.
You must pay attention to your prospect’s requirements, problems, worries, reservations, and compliments or criticism. This will enable you to adjust the demonstration and all subsequent interactions to match their needs and make sure that the points you make during the demonstration emphasize how your solution may help them overcome their problems.
In addition, pay attention to what your sales team has to say. You are the individuals dealing with prospects, talking to them about their problems and requirements, and giving the demos every day; thus, your demo process is constantly evolving.
Therefore, your team’s other members would be the best people to get input from regarding the present demo process (what should remain the same and what may be improved) because they might have discovered something you hadn’t considered or come across (and vice versa).
Insert Real Data
Data reveals a great deal about what you offer and the capacity to have a positive influence on your clients. Don’t be afraid to include actual facts in your demonstrations about your company’s success, the proportion of current customers who have used your products or services to address problems similar to those of your prospects, and more.
You can also access facts about how your method operates if a prospect asks for precise details about one of your product’s capabilities. Check out some sales related, sales productivity, sales analysis and sales funnel templates.
The Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Tool You Need
To hit the nail on the head, Sloovi is that tool you need to help store information.
All background information needed to help your company’s sales cycle can be effortlessly monitored via Sloovi.
For example, Sloovi helps gain insights with data-driven reports. Using actual data creates trust and better understanding between the company and clients.
Its features offer an all-in-one outreach platform to help sales activities and automate these data, which could be tedious and confusing.
Be a part of those who trust Sloovi. So hurry now to Sloovi and start closing more deals.