Demos are a key part of what we do in sales, presales and customer success. We use demos as a key tool in our story-telling to be able to outline the challenge that we are addressing, how we approach the problem and what the positive outcomes can be for the customer.
I just read a great blog by Jonathan Friedman at Demostack that highlights some of the key challenges of building and populating data in the demo to make it believable. Jonathan makes some great points and discusses the challenges of demos, but I wanted to call out a broader topic about demos and demo data.
The challenge starts, as always, with the question “What problem are we solving for the customer ?”. I have seen far too many demos that dive straight into the amazing set of features that product A has and how it would be great for the customer if they just buy it. There are too many times when a sales rep says “Just do a demo” without any context or indication of what outcome we are trying to achieve for the customer.
Demos are a critical tool in helping customer understand what it is we can do to help solve their challenges, but we first need to understand what those challenges are – but a well thought-out demo can help to determine those challenges as well. The reality of demos is that there is not just a single ‘demo’ for a product, but multiple ways that we can show capability in a way that can educate a customer, determine what the issues and challenges are that a customer faces, and then gain acceptance of the ability to address those issues. Each of these scenarios might need different demo data to show the customer what is possible. Using the right demo at the right time helps to ensure that we continue to build trust and understanding through the sales process and ensure that we get a happy customer at the end of the process.
So the next time a sales rep says ‘just do a demo’, ask them what they are trying to achieve and which demo they would like !
If you want to hear more about how demos can be an amazing tool for gathering information and driving acceptance from a customer then get in touch.
