A sales demo is often one of the first points of contact that your company has with a prospect. If you make a mistake or have a poor pitch, then your company might lose out on thousands of dollars and get a bad reputation. Since sales demos are such a vital part of the sales process, you must make a positive and lasting impression. Before we go through how to create a killer sales demo, let’s go over a few demo basics to help you optimize your demo experiences.

What is a Sales Demo?

A sales demo is an essential step in the B2B sales funnel. A sales demo is the process of showing prospects or even current customers a demonstration of how your product works. In this meeting you’ll walk your prospect through how they would use your product on a regular basis, optimizations they’ll want to make based on their specific needs and goals, and how the product will benefit their team. It’s important to show your prospect the value that using your product would bring to their company and the problems that would be solved. Without a successful demo, your team is less likely to convert a prospect into a paying customer. Or, if they do convert, there’s a good chance that they’ll have a shorter customer life cycle. 

How Are You Meeting?

Over the past few years, the popularity of virtual demos using Zoom or other meeting softwares has grown in popularity. There are a ton of differences between in-person demos and virtual demos. If you’re stuck on your in-person tactics, that may be why you’re not driving as much success as you used to. When conducting virtual demos, you need to ensure that your internet speed is reliable and won’t cut out halfway through the demo. You also need to practice how to share your screen and make sure that your computer will support running multiple large software. Further, you need to make sure you don’t have anything in the background that may be unprofessional, like an unmade bed or dirty kitchen (trust me, it happens!). If you’re worried about this then you can change or blur your background in Zoom. Now we’re ready to go over the 10 steps to creating a killer sales demo.

1. Refer Back to Previous Conversations

If you have talked to your prospect previously, whether it be by email, phone, or even your website’s live chat, you should review your previous conversations. If they previously had any questions, you can clarify them again. After a meeting, if prospect has unanswered questions, they’re less likely to convert into a paying customer. In addition, showing your prospect that you put in the extra effort to ensure their questions are answered will bode well in the long run. 

2. Do Your Research

Before meeting with your prospect, it’s important to research both their company and the people that you’re meeting with. Before diving into the meeting, you’ll want to break the ice. Talk about their company or any interests that they may have. LinkedIn is a great place to do your research. By researching their company, you can gain insight into their pain points and how your company will help. Then, you can give them first-hand use cases and case studies to help sell your product. Taking the extra 15 minutes to do a little research can greatly improve your meeting’s outlook.

3. Do Your Research

Managing your time is such an important part of conducting sales demos. If you go over your agreed-upon time limit, you can push back both yours and your prospect’s schedules. This can look unprofessional for both of you. Before jumping into your meeting, simply state the time scheduled for your meeting, and that you have a hard stop at the end time. In case you need more time, let them know you’re more than happy to schedule another meeting in the next day or two. If you don’t have a hard stop, ask if they do in case you go over the allotted time limit. If you know that you’re meeting with more than one person, you’ll want to increase the time limit in case your question period goes longer than expected. It’s better to have too much time and end a little early than have to cut your meeting short.

4. Find Out How Much They Already Know

If the company is using one of your competitors, then they likely don’t need to know the basics of your product. It would be a better use of your time to explain how your company is superior to the one they’re currently using. On the other hand, if you’re talking to a prospect from a small company that is just exploring their options, then you may need to go more in-depth about the setup process, what to expect, as well as how they will benefit from using your product.

5. Use a Demo Software

Demo software is relatively new to the B2B industry. A demo software, like Demowell, can help your company create personalized, attractive, and enticing demo experiences for your prospects and website visitors. You can add in popups, text bubbles, the ability to ask questions, swap images, and more to help guide your prospect through your demo experience. There are a few different ways that you can use a demo software. Next, we are going to go through a few use cases for using a demo software for marketing and sales purposes.

Demo Software for Marketing

Demos are not just for salespeople. There are a few ways that a demo can be used for your marketing efforts. The first way that your marketing team can use demos is by including a demo in your email onboarding campaign. This will ensure that your new clients will get the most out of your product. And, your company will be able to retain them for a longer period of time. This is especially helpful if your company offers a free trial. Since you can send them the demo early into their trial. The second way that your marketing team can use a demo software is to embed an interactive demo right on your website. Then, when a prospect reaches your landing page, they’ll be able to click through the interactive demo and learn more about your product. This will help prospects get a taste of your product without having to contact sales or create an account. Best of all, you can see demo statistics like watch time, how many watched, and pages viewed to help you optimize future demos.

Demo Software for Sales

Using a demo software to conduct your sales demos will take them to the next level. You can personalize your demo experiences to include your prospect’s logo, employees as users, key data points, and other use cases specific to their needs. You can help your prospects envision what it would be like to use your product. And, how they can add it into their tech stack. If they would integrate your product with another, then show them how they could do that and what the result would be. Using a demo software like Demowell will help both your sales and marketing teams drive more leads and conversions. 

6. Personalize Your Demos

Like I mentioned before, a demo software is a great way to add a personalized touch to your demo experiences. But, if you’re not using demo software, there are still other ways that you can personalize your demos. Aside from doing research on the company and knowing their pain points, you should also be familiar with their industry, standards, and their main competitors. Then, you can give first-hand examples of how they can improve their experience using your product. By going the extra mile and personalizing your demos, you will show your prospect exactly how their specific company can use your product. And as a result, you’re more likely to convert prospects into paying customers. 

7. Anticipate Questions

Every sales demo will end with a time for questions. It’s inevitable. So, you’ll need to prepare for the questions that they’ll have. Typically there will be a few questions that are consistent between your demos. So, you’ll probably already know the answer to them. But, there could be new questions based on their demographics, geographics, or other firmographics that you should prepare for. If you have more than one person on your sales team, it’s a good idea to have your team discuss questions that they get and how they answer them. If a prospect asks a question that you don’t know the answer to, be honest that you don’t know the answer to their question. Tell them that you will find that answer for them by the end of the day and you’ll follow up with them. If their questions are out of your sales scope, like very technical, then it can be helpful to CC someone on your tech team to help out.

8. Confirm Your Next Steps

When you’re wrapping up your sales demo, you should confirm with your prospect what your next steps will be. Whether you will be meeting with different people next time, moving forward with a deal, or cutting ties, you’ll need to organize what your next steps will be to ensure you’re on the same page. Your next steps will be different for each meeting you have, but you can prepare a few options. The most common next steps are setting up a second meeting, phone call, or email. When you are confirming your next steps, it’s important to be very specific and follow up exactly how you said you would.

9. Follow Up

After your meeting is complete, you’ll need to follow up. How quickly you follow up and how you follow up will depend on the next steps that you agreed upon with your prospect. You need to do exactly what you agreed upon. Because, if you say that you’re going to give them a phone call and you send them an email, it can seem unprofessional. When you’re following up, you can include a link to their personalized demo if you use demo software. You can also include key points from your meeting. As an example, you can re-answer any questions that your prospect had and reinforce that your product will benefit them. 

10. Ask for Feedback

One of the best ways to enhance your sales demos is to simply ask for feedback. This may seem very simple, but asking for feedback can help you improve aspects of your demos that you might have not thought of before. A great way to remember to do this is to set up an email within your onboarding sequence. The email will follow up once the demo is complete. This email is different from your follow-up email and should come from your sales or marketing manager and not the sales rep. This is because the prospect may not be completely honest if it’s coming from the rep themselves. Negative feedback is not always a bad thing, because you can learn how to improve. And, you can follow up with the specific sales rep that had the negative feedback. Positive feedback is a great way to encourage sales reps. Plus, it will motivate them to continue doing what they did well. 

Last Words

Any B2B company that relies on sales demos to drive sales knows how important it is to have a perfect demo. Demos can make or break your chances at converting prospects. And, if you consistently have poor demos, you can lose out on a lot of revenue. If you’re wondering where to start, I would recommend asking your clients for feedback and using a demo software. Then, you will learn how to analyze and optimize your demos moving forward. And, hopefully drive more conversions in the future.