When presenting live, you wouldn't show the same demo right at the start of your vendor-buyer relationship as you would when they’re about to sign the deal, so automated demos need to take that into account as well.
The 6 demo types are an important aspect of creating modern buyer-focused content.
Product demonstrations are one of the most valued sales interactions customers have with vendors. Presales and technical sales teams have to make them impactful—in ways that improve the buying experience and accelerate decisions. All good demos have some common elements, but there’s a spectrum to the types of demos you should deliver based on the kinds of questions different stakeholders in the buying group have at different stages.
When you’re not aligned to those questions or to those stages, it frustrates customers and stalls—sometimes even prevents—deals from moving forward.
Quite often, sales engineers think of just two demo types: the dreaded “standard demo” or the deep “technical demo”. However, after researching thousands of demos—from interactive video demos created by customers on our platform to live technical demos—we identified 6 different types of demos, each with a unique set of characteristics that solve specific needs for B2B buyers through the buying process. You may find that your SEs are already being pulled into many of these 6 types of demos that span the entire funnel.
NOTE: In this diagram, the estimated length for each demo type are relative and are a recommendation for
the length of the demo experience when you automate the demo. We treat the subject of demo automation
later in this ebook. Note that the farther along in the buying process, the more in-depth the demo needs are.
At the beginning of the buying process, this is a presentation often delivered by Sales, not SEs, that focuses on the value proposition: the solution and benefit.
Also at the beginning of the buying process, this is a short demo delivered by SEs that focuses on the product but is very brief and introductory. Sales often asks, “Hey, SE, this prospect has 20 minutes. What can you demo in 20 minutes?”
SEs usually deliver this demo at a prospect's request to “learn more.” The problem is that, as with Micro Demos, prospects are often still highly unqualified and these often result in “wasted” demos.
This is where SEs shine. You want your Presales team to spend more time here. These are the highly customized deep-dive demos where SEs are invaluable and earn trusted advisor status with buyers.
These often come as responses to questions at the end of the buying process after the buyer has already decided to purchase but is attempting to de-risk the decision. Do you have an integration with this or that system? How do you handle GDPR? Tell me more about migration of my data to your system?
FAQ Demos are delivered in response to Sales reps asking, “Can you hop on a quick call to help explain X, Y, or Z?” They often follow after another demo type and can happen anywhere throughout the buying process.
Picking which demo to make depends on where your buyer is feeling the most pain or needs to scale the most. Don’t just pick the easiest; pick the most impactful, and your results will start rolling in strong soon!