What’s the most important step toward creating an effective sales demo environment? 

Is it developing accurate customer personas? What about onboarding your sales team? Or is it choosing the right cloud lab to support sandbox demos?

It’s all of the above. But it’s also none of the above. See, there’s one foundational process that underpins all of the steps described above: analytics. 

Sales is a data-driven profession. The more you know about a prospect and their engagement with your brand, the better-equipped your sales team will be to close the deal. One of the benefits of using a virtual sandbox environment is that it gives you access to a deep well of information.

Pair that data with the right metrics, and your sales team will know everything they need to succeed. 

But how do you know which metrics are the right ones? What product trial analytics should you focus on to maximize your chances of success? And which analytics are the best for measuring ROI in your demo environment? 

Below, you’ll find a list of the most important demo performance tracking metrics, followed by guidance on which ones you should use. 

Key Takeaways:

• Analytics data is essential to running successful product demos, sandboxed or otherwise.
• Sandbox demo ROI and performance are interconnected. 
• Key metrics include user engagement, sales KPIs, and platform performance.

The Top 20 Metrics and KPIs for Product Demos

Rather than dividing metrics along the lines of ROI and performance, you’ll find them arranged into three categories, each reflecting a key aspect of the demo process: engagement, sales, and operations. 

Engagement Metrics

These metrics look directly at how prospects interacted with your demo, providing a window into its effectiveness and usability.  They also give insight into potential bottlenecks, quit points, and weak spots. 

• Time spent in demo
• Demo completion rate
• Key features explored
• Time spent on each step
• Repeat visits
• Quit rate

Sales Metrics

Sales and sales enablement KPIs can, alongside demo engagement metrics, give you a good idea of a demo’s overall ROI. Key metrics in this category include:

• Post-demo revenue growth
• Qualified lead rate
• Demo-to-deal conversion rate
• Demo-to-meeting conversion rate
• Post-demo customer satisfaction
• Post-demo sales productivity
• Post-demo churn rate
• Time to first value
• Time to close
• Customer acquisition cost

Operational Metrics

Operational metrics are more technical in nature, focusing more on platform health and performance than on demo environments themselves. They include:

• Platform costs
• Load time
• Uptime and availability
• Resource usage
• Latency
• Device types

Making Sense of Product Demo Analytics

Context is the most important thing to keep in mind when looking at the data associated with your demo. A sandbox might have multiple repeat visits because prospects want to keep exploring your software. On the other hand, it may be because it’s unstable and keeps booting users. Similarly, a poorly designed demo might appear to improve sales if your team goes above and beyond when connecting with prospects. 

The reality is that no metric exists in a vacuum. 

Choosing the Right Metrics to Measure Your Demos

So, which metrics should you use?

Truthfully, that’s a bit of a trick question. While the data you prioritize will vary based on your current goals and the nature of your product demos, all of the KPIs listed above provide valuable insights into your sales process from the standpoint of both performance tracking and ROI. If you’re using a platform like CloudShare, there’s no need to choose between them.

If you’re ready to see how data-driven demo environments can accelerate your sales pipeline, book a demo with CloudShare today.

Related: The 7 Best LMS for Product Training