Every Good Product Demo Follows These 5 Steps

Last month, I wrote about how most product demos fail. The core challenge we discussed is that most sales people focus too heavily on their own product and spend too little time addressing their customer’s problems. While I shared a few best practices for a successful product demo, today I’d like to be a bit more prescriptive on how to construct a demo that wins. 

My hope is that the following steps will provide you and your sales teams with a template for running your demos. As always, I invite you to contact me to brainstorm how to apply these principles with your team.

Understanding the Framework

Below you will see how Kasvaa thinks about the stages of every demo. Let's focus first on visual real estate. The demo process is represented as an inverted pyramid because each step (working top to bottom) should require less time to deliver than the previous stage. This is important because most people skip over steps one and two and dive right into showing off the product. In fact, step one should be where you spend your most time.

Discover the Pain

As discussed in our last article on demos, everything in your demo experience should be oriented toward the customer and their problems. I heard a sales guru once share that he opens every sales call with one question: 

“So what made you take my call?”

With that deviously understated question, the sales person has opened up the customer to tell him what they need and how they need it. 

A curmudgeonly customer may reply, “Well, I wanted to see your demo.”

Your simple response should be: “Why?” 

We need to uncover the reasons for which they came to the demo so we can build the demo around those pain points.

Validate Findings

Once you have uncovered the jobs that the customer is seeking to get done, you should summarize what you heard. 

Relationship therapists will talk about the tool of “reflective listening.” The notion is to give your partner the knowledge that you received the information by reflecting it back to them. For example a sentence that starts with  “It sounds like you are saying…?”  gives the other person a chance to correct and home in on their feelings. In sales it allows the customer to know that you actually care about them and not just your product or sales commission. Reflective listening can not only improve relationships, but it’s effective in sales as well.

Moreover, you want the customer to say, “That’s it! You got it.” Once they say some version of those magic words, you will have established the objective with them. Now, and only now,  it’s time to square up your product with their needs. 

Again, before diving into the demo “show”, give them a preview of coming attractions. Remember the public speaking adage, “Tell them what you are going to tell them. Tell them. Then tell them what you told them.”? It’s just like that. Set up what they will see when you finally launch into the product features.

Be prepared to match a corresponding product, service or feature that will address each of their needs. In doing this, you will give the customer psychological stability that you plan to prioritize the aspects that are relevant to the reason they came to you. 

Customer Test Drive

It’s finally time to show the product! You must be getting excited. 

Before you nerd out too much, let’s remember that it’s not your demo, it’s theirs. 

Have you ever test-driven a car and let the salesperson drive you around? Neither have I.

The reason is obvious. You want to feel the product yourself. 

It’s no different with your product demo.

I recently sat through a software demo where the sales guy moved so rapidly that I had to keep interrupting him to say, “Can you please go back?” I was getting a bit frustrated and he certainly wasn’t putting me in the buying mood. 

Here’s the thing: he should have let me drive.

Okay, maybe it’s too soon to hand over the mouse and keypad (and it would have been logistically hard via Zoom). But he could have asked, “What do you think? Where do you want to go next?” This would have made me more comfortable with the product and more likely to buy it.

Compare Solutions

The final two stages are really pure sales tactics, but they are necessary in the context of your demo. 

After we show the demo, the tendency is to move toward the close. That’s a good instinct! 

But it’s not quite correct. 

Before they can be closed, the customer needs to know what they are choosing between. To say “Yes” is to also say “No” (to something else). 

When a customer hasn’t fully thought through the choice set, the answer tends to be, “Maybe.”

Ask your customer about all of your competitors and alternatives. Ask what would happen if they do nothing. 

Don’t be an arrogant jerk and assume that the customer should choose between you or certain death. That’s not how this works. They have options, help them understand the options and honestly weigh the trade-offs. Now it’s time to close them.

Close them!

Ok, good job. You did it. If you have done all of the above, it’s time to ask them if they would like to move forward. If you have done all the work above, then it’s “yes/ no” time. Help them see the competitive set and remind them of the costs of inaction. If they still aren’t ready, it’s time to walk away.

A Final Word on Timing

I can almost hear you reading this and saying, “That’s all great, Stephen, but doesn’t this seem like it will take a long time?” I mean if they show up for a demo and you start asking them a bunch of questions about their business, won’t they get frustrated?” 

It’s possible but I think if you are honestly trying to help them with their problems, they will give you the time to do it. Remember, no one wakes up in the morning and says, “Gee I need a demo!” But they do need to solve a problem and that’s what you have helped them do.

Even if you are selling something relatively inexpensive you still need to go through the steps, albeit more rapidly. Everything starts with identifying the customer pain points, which in turn leads to how you will ultimately close the customer: by reminding them about all the problems they need to solve. 

At Kasvaa, we contend that if you slow down and go through these five steps, you will have not only increased your close ratio, but you will have decreased the sales cycle. 

An Invitation

Is your demo ready for an overhaul? At Kasvaa, we have designed, implemented, and improved 100s of demos using these five steps.

We invite you to reach out so we can learn more about your business and demo process

Connect with us at 323.384.5710 or email info@kasvaa.co

Best,

Stephen