Demo Experience: A Definition
When delivering a software demo or a product demo, the aim is to entice, entertain and inform your prospects about a new product that you want them to invest in. Creating the right demo experience is the difference between landing the sale and getting the door shut in your face.
The term ‘demo experience’ could be used to define the way your sales demo is structured, the platform you use to deliver it and the content you choose to share. It’s what demo attendees will remember and associate your product with. Create a memorable demo experience and your prospects will remember you positively, bore them for 30 minutes and you might not hear from them again.
Improving your demo experience
How can you improve the demo experience to impress prospects and drive sales? Here are three steps:
Personalization
Personalization is a crucial part of the demo experience. Using persona information you’ve collated about your audience, or specific pain points that your prospects have mentioned, you can tailor your demo experience to better suit those taking part.
For example, if you’re doing a SaaS product demo for a group of IT technicians, you’ll most likely need to involve some technical specifications and a run through of admin controls, back-end capabilities and compliance information. Demonstrating the same software to a marketing team will likely focus more on front-end functionality and usability. Knowing who your audience is, and what they want to see, will create a much more focused and helpful demo experience.
Immersive demos
The whole point of a demo is to give potential customers a preview of your product. When your product is complex computer software, it can be difficult to fully convey its value without showing the prospect some of the features first-hand. By making demos immersive and realistic, you’ll show potential customers how well your product matches their needs.
To take this a step further, consider introducing dedicated virtual lab environments to your demo experience. Virtual labs act as replica of real-world environments for testing your software. They can be configured to behave in different ways depending on your product, the audience you’re addressing and the features you want to showcase.
The beauty of this is that the software essentially demos itself. Prospects can see what using your product on a day-to-day basis would be like and see how it handles some of their pain points, by trying it out in a sandbox environment.
Feedback
Don’t forget to collect feedback on your product demos – on both your product and the demo process. This helps you to hone your process and create a better demo experience in the future. This is best done at the end of the demo itself, as you have a captive audience. Here’s how to make this process as useful as possible:
- Keep the feedback segment of your demo concise
- Ask what your audience liked about the demo experience and what can be improved
- Ask them to describe the demo in a single word – if you get words like ‘brief’, ‘confusing’, ‘lengthy’, it’s probably time to rethink your approach.
- Ask how much the demo experience has helped them with their decision
- To collect more in-depth product feedback, ask your audience to consider filling out a questionnaire afterwards
