Why Your SaaS Product Demos Suck!(And What You Should Do Differently)

Recently I asked for a demo of a product that we are interested in purchasing for our customers. In reality, we are at the very beginning of the buying journey and I was looking to be educated a little bit more about the product and how it has helped others in a similar position.

Despite feeling appreciated and valued in the lead up to the demonstration call, as soon as the rep started the demo they lost me. It seemed like they disengaged and just hit autopilot. They lost me immediately!

Instead of understanding my unique situation, and tailoring the demonstration accordingly, they simply jumped in and started to show off every single feature they had in their arsenal. Even though a large number of those features were not relevant to my situation, and the problem I wanted to solve.

This experience left a bit of bad taste in my mouth. Unfortunately, this is something that SaaS sales reps are doing all of the time, and it is killing their conversion rates. They simply go through the same old demonstration that they learned when they first started in the role, rather than focusing on what is right for the customer.

Not only is this approach boring and ineffective for the customer, but it is also boring and ineffective for the sales rep. You hear it in their voice that they are simply reading from a script. There is no enthusiasm and no excitement - and the customer can feel it.

Instead of turning on the autopilot switch, your reps should be asking three questions throughout the demo focused on solving the customer's specific challenges:

• Does this address the questions you had?
• Can you see yourself using it?
• What would be the impact on your business?

It’s also important to be able to use these questions at the right time, so let’s take a look at a blueprint you can use to keep your prospect engaged during a product demo...

A Blueprint for Running an Effective SaaS Product Demo

I’m sure you’ve been in a situation when you feel like a customer just isn’t engaged during a product demo. They are tapping away on their keyboard, probably replying to emails or doing something completely unrelated to what you are talking to them about. They’ve come into the call disinterested from the get go - but it’s not their fault, it’s yours.

You haven’t set the right expectations, they didn't think that someone was going to talk at them for the next 30-60 minutes. What value does either party get out of that? Bugger all!

The product demo blueprint I’m going to walk you through today will help you minimise the chance of this scenario taking place, and set you up for success in every demonstration you do.

Instead of showing up to a product demo and throwing down all of the information you’ve got, this blueprint will help you run demos that are targeted towards your specific customer. More importantly, it will help you truly understand the impact that your product can have on their business and smooth out the selection process to follow.

Below you will see a visual representation of the product demo blueprint:

Now let’s take a closer look at each component.

Preparation

You need to start this process prior to the demonstration call itself with adequate preparation.

If you are having a demonstration call with someone, you have likely already had a conversation with them to diagnose their challenges. If you haven’t, stop the demo immediately and ask them some questions.

Diagnosing their challenge is really important. Think if you were a doctor and didn’t diagnose a patient, but instead prescribed a drug that could have a negative effect on their health.

In this case sales is just like healthcare, prescription before diagnosis is malpractice!

Sales is just like healthcare, prescription before diagnosis is malpractice!

Your diagnosis may have come from a prior meeting, them responding to some of your product content, clicking through on your website, or even having an initial discovery call. During your diagnosis, your prospect have been leaving breadcrumbs for you. These breadcrumbs are like little clues to the potential challenges you might be able to solve for them.

Before you jump on the demo call, aim to research their business, summarise these breadcrumbs, and send an initial scoping email to the prospect outlining the areas you believe would be most important to cover on the demo call. Make sure you ask for their confirmation about this information, and encourage them to provide further information based on your assumptions.

Open the call

If you have adequately prepared for the demo call, things should get underway pretty smoothly, and you can more quickly move towards the big questions.

But even with this preparation work, you can’t skip some key things at the opening of the call. Obviously you want to exchange pleasantries, and you may ask if it is ok to take notes or even record the call. Nothing revolutionary here, but it is amazing how many people gloss over the human element.

Orchestrate the call (ACE)

With the pleasantries out of the way, now you need to kick off the call. Your goal at this stage is to take charge and orchestrate the call. I find it helpful to use the ACE acronym for this:

• Appreciate: I appreciate you taking the time for this demonstration.
• Check:  Are we still good for 30 minutes? The last thing you want is to schedule a 30 minute call and find out 20 minutes in that the decision maker has to leave.
• End goal verification: Typically at the end of this call we agree to… Does that sound right?

Before the call you will want to try and determine what you want the outcome of this call to be. Is it a proposal? Another deep dive? A referral internally?

Then to confirm the direction of the call and get buy in, ask them; “Do you think that is a good use of our time?”

Agenda

If everyone is clear on the outcome you are trying to work towards, the next step is to set an agenda for the call. Your agenda should mirror the breadcrumbs that you identified in the preparation and diagnosis part of the process.

But if you set the agenda, you don’t want to assume it is agreed on by everyone… ask all the attendees for confirmation that you are on the same page, or if they would like to add anything else.

Then, as a final little trick for determining the most likely decision making priority of the attendees, ask them to determine which area is most important so that you can begin the demonstration focusing on that. Going through this process will help you uncover their desired impact, with that in mind you can start to show them how your product can address their challenges.

Layout

At this stage, most sales reps will jump right in and kick off the demonstration. But you have to remember that the customer is looking at a completely new interface - they need to familiarise themselves with it. What you need to do is help orient the customer with what they are looking at, and where the key parts of your product are - as they relate to their problems.

Bonus tip: Make sure you pre-load the different areas you are going to discuss in different tabs on your browser, so you can quickly jump between each of them when you need to.

Product demo questions

Now you are finally into the actual demo, where you’ve prioritised their challenges and can really focus on how you are going to address them.

This is where you start to get into the three core questions I mentioned earlier in this article, as you are addressing each of the customer pain points with a feature in the tool. For each pain point and or feature that you are discussing, ask the three magic questions:

• Does this address the questions you had?
• Can you see yourself using it?
• What would be the impact on your business?

You will need to go through this process and ask each question multiple times to illustrate how your tool can solve multiple pain points for the customer.

At each stage of the process we need to ascertain whether or not we are going to be able to positively impact their business and then ask them to quantify that impact. That is why these questions are so important, when asked during a demonstration that is targeted on solving their challenges customers are a lot more open to sharing.

By understanding the true impact solving of these pain points has on their business, it is going to be much easier to see what is important to them and progress to the selection process.

Summarise/next steps

As you are closing out the demo, you should summarise the key points and reiterate the impact your product could have on their business. Ask the attendees; “Did we address all of the questions you had?” Anchor back to the ACE from the beginning of the call and the agenda that everyone agreed on.

Finally, your job isn’t done if you don’t ask the big question; “Are you ready to move forward with…”

Follow up

This is a simple and effective blueprint for conducting a customer-centric demonstration that prescribes a solution to their pains, rather than just rolling out a stock standard demonstration that everyone else is doing. But once you’ve finished the demo it’s absolutely essential that you pre-empt and follow through with the next steps, otherwise all that hard work has been wasted.

The demo can’t happen in isolation, you need to orchestrate the next steps in order to progress the sales agenda. “What else needs to happen now for us to progress this forward? What’s the best way for us to make that happen?”

Good luck implementing this process on your next product demo, and don’t forget to orchestrate the follow up!