demos aren't for pitching

In this weeks issue, I’m going to share how most sellers miss a huge opportunity with demos and how to get more out your prospect demos.

Read time: 5 minutes

Shout out to our friends at Sales Assembly: seven years ago Matt Green and Jeff Rosset set out on a mission to help GTM teams close critical skills gaps.

Today, they’re helping thousands of sales, marketing, and GTM pros improve performance across the board by providing access to skill building courses, peer groups and community, and live cohort-based learning.

If you want to get better at cold outreach, deal facilitation, demo/presentation, or sales management/leadership - go check ‘em out! They’re building things the right way, for the long haul over at Sales Assembly.

Headline: Demos aren’t for pitching, they’re for discovery.

95% of sellers view a demo as their opportunity to shine. To sweep the prospect off their feet and slam dunk a contract on the desk as soon as they finish.

In all fairness, that’s how they’ve been trained (shame on you, leadership).

But, that’s also the reason most deals die after a demo.

Buyers don’t sit through a demo anxiously awaiting to see your client logo list, number-heavy case studies, immaculate product features (or that ROI calculator you built on the back of one client).

They’re trying to answer a few questions:

1. Does this solve my problems in a scalable/repeatable way?

2. How much change management is this going to require?

3. If this fails, will it ruin my reputation?

4. Does the potential benefit of this solution definitively outweigh the time & energy required to migrate systems and drive user adoption?

5. Will my CFO and exec team see this as a mission critical purchase?

But here’s the thing - you can’t help your prospect answer these questions by showing them the product.

Here’s how most demos go:

1. Quick intros

2. Bulleted Agenda

3. Show off client logos

4. Rep demos every feature under the hood

5. Rep asks for next steps

Let’s look at the problem for each of these bullets.

Quick Intros:

These are necessary and something we will always need to do. But it’s important to be succinct and directive on the intros will go, and don’t let them drag on for too long.

You (and anybody else from your side) should keep your intros to about 20 seconds. Name, title, tenure (unless your new) and location. Anything past that and prospects stop listening.

Bulleted Agenda:

Sales 101: try not to look and/or sound like every other rep in the market.

Everyone under the sun shares a 4-point bulleted agenda at the beginning of a demo, but the bullets are always incredibly obvious like “Intros” / “Product Demo” / “Next Steps”, etc.

Your potential buyer sees these on every demo.

Instead of pulling up a bulleted agenda, share a “Ideal Outcome” slide that paints a picture of powerful potential between your two companies. Then, when the meeting comes to an end, the only logical action is for them to take next steps because you 1) set the stage by teasing a better future and 2) enabled them to show themselves how your solution answers the questions listed above.

Show off client logos:

Social proof is super impactful. Nobody questions that.

But when you pull up a slide with 50 client logos, you’re not impressing nobody but yourself. Our brains latch onto stories, not empty showboating.

Something else you need to consider is Cognitive load is a real issue to consider when you present. Your job is to minimize cognitive load for your prospect as much as possible. When you throw up a slide full of logos, their brain doesn’t know what to do with that - there’s too much going on in front of their eyes to translate it into anything meaningful.

Besides, don’t you think it’s more powerful to tell one specific client success story that’s relevant to their set of problems and/or industry?

Rep demos every feature under the hood:

As with most things and especially in sales - less is more.

The only thing you need to do is paint a picture of a better future where your prospects current problems are gone. That’s it.

Anything more and you’re losing two things - their attention and your deal.

You may know your product inside-and-out, but showing off every feature (even if you know it’ll help them) can make your prospect feel like your solution will over service their needs. Focus on what will get you in the door, then create more value later.

Classic land and expand.

Rep asks for next steps:

Once you’ve gone through all your features (probably too many), you then put all the weight on the prospects shoulders to determine next steps.

The reality is, they probably don’t know next steps. Often times we need to be able to guide them on best practices, challenges they’ll likely run into and even help them sell internally by connecting your solution to a strategic business initiative.

Instead, we’re so focused on quota and commission - we care more about getting the next event on the calendar instead of fully capitalizing on the opportunity at-hand.

How to use Demos for Discovery (and why it works)

Let’s keep this as simple as possible. It’s a two-step process:

1. Confirm you know the top three symptoms your stakeholder(s) are dealing with each day and the underlying cause for each. This way you can show them how you can take away the tactical problem (symptom) and confirm you’ll remove the strategic issue (cause)

2. After you “solve” each problem, stop and ask these three questions:

   1. Do you have any questions about what we just walked through?

   2. How do you see you or your team using this?

   3. Is there something you were hoping to see here that you didn’t?

That’s it.

If you follow this two-step process, you’ll keep the demo as simple as it needs to be by solving the issues and confirming you’ve done so.

And, you’ll use each problem/feature set as another opportunity for discovery.

Bonus: if your prospect answers “No” to question #1 above - pressure test that.

Naturally, we all have questions as we see a new product doing its thing. Your prospect almost certainly has questions but they’re unsure if they want to dive in that deep with you.

It’s important you create a bit of necessary tension to ensure there’s no room for surprise when they go back to discuss internally with their team.

Leaving no stone unturned is critical because if you don’t do it live, the stones will un-turn themselves during internal conversations - when you’re not around and therefore have no way to influence which way that conversation spirals.

Demos are for discovery, not for pitching.

Use your ability to connect pain-to-problem-to-solution as a way to uncover every last symptom, frustration and inconvenience your potential customer is experiencing.

Do that and you won’t need to ask for next steps - they’ll be asking how soon you go-live.

When you’re ready, here are three ways I can help you:

1. One-on-One Coaching (SDRs, SDR Leaders, AEs)

2. Team Training (SDR & AE Teams)

3. Premium Ghostwriting (Leaders, Execs, Founders)