How to Deliver Product Demos that Sell

Want to deliver winning demos that close deals? This video walks through the best practices and the areas of opportunity that i’ve found while giving demos to my prospects and clients in countries like Mexico, Argentina, Costa Rica, Egypt, and Philippines.

— Ensure prospects attend your demos

— Discover why your demos fail to close the deal

— Better differentiate yourself from competitors

— Customize your demo to you prospects’ needs

— Improve you demo-win rates

Product Demos that Sell: 45 minute training video.

7 Deadly Sins of Demoing:

1. You give too many product demos
2. You haven’t sold the demo
3. You mistake product demos with training tools
4. Your demos are too long
5. You demo features, instead of value
6. You failed to capture the prospects attention at the most important point
7. You don’t end the demo with a close (a logical next step, a call to action)

Qualifying Attendees:

• Know the prospects evaluation criteria
• Customize demos to your prospects desired outcomes
• Know your audience: match their workflows
• What questions YOU want answered?
• Look for meaningful answers from your prospect, not superficial responses
• Create a feature/need matrix to better understand what to show and how to show it
• Know which features NOT to include in the demo, not everything is important or relevant

Schedule a Demo:

• Use the insights of what objectives they want to achieve
• Attending the demo = saving time and effort
• Attending the demo = being more successful
• Obtain commitment for the demo during the call with the prospect
• Invite and include the important decision makers
• Re-confirm the appointment as needed

Preparation for the demo:

• Prepare all your tools, browser tabs, app windows and pages you need
• Create a script for your demo and practice, practice, practice!
• Do a full run of the demo to one or two collegues
• Prepare selling arguments, selling points and facts ready to use at the demo
• Use placeholder information vs just “John Doe”
• Have an agenda for the demo, and follow it

Giving the Demo

1- Structure and Open your demo

• Have a general blueprint demo that you can always give. This is the one you dominate naturally. But also work and create some variations.
• Whenever you go into a pitch, take a couple of moments to prepare and be very clear about the 3 main points you want to make — these will be the highlights for the customer to take away.
• What are 3 things that will make the biggest impact on your prospect?
• Always give the big picture first: work from the macro to the micro. Give context, help them understand the benefit, confirm the features relevance.

2- Effective demo engagement

• Speak their language, make an effort to study their terminology
• Handle your mouse like a pro
• Highlight the highlights (make it obvious when it is a highlight or something important or relevant)
• Adapt the workflow and use of the product according to the prospects preferences
• Ask questions that contextualize the value you provide

3- Ensure the 3 most important points stick

Ask these questions:

• What are the highlights of this conversation to you?
• What’s the most interesting thing you learned today?
• What did you find most impactful?
• If somebody asks you tomorrow to describe what we discussed today, how would you summarize our conversation?

4- End with a close

• What’s your closing statement? It had better be strong with a clear CTA
• Take the prospect to the next step. What do you need them to do?
• Make sure to obtain commitment for the next step during the closing conversation