How to avoid boring people with sales demos

Your demo should boil down to one of the following four propositions:

- Cheaper
- Better
- Faster
- Could not be done before!

At the end of sales presentation do not forget to ask something to effect “is there anything I should be asking that I did not ask?”
The answer will usually clearly define if you have hit the pain point with them or not.

For each sales demo clearly define:

Meeting Location

Meeting date

Start and end times (so people know how much time to budget, often sales demos are canceled as prospective clients think they would take too long)

Meeting objective (Is your target to get a pilot deployment, purchase Order…)

Ask your internal champion to provide you with real problems organization has, prior to meeting. You should then use those problems to illustrate a solution in your demo.

If you will be giving promo material or printouts — do it at the end of the demo, so they don’t jump ahead of you and make assumptions.

As a rule of thumb, you will be interrupted during the demo with questions.

Great questions you should answer right away, good questions you should answer later and stupid questions you should still answer (you don’t want to insult a potential client) but answer them at the end. You can say something like “That is a valid point, I will talk more about that at the end of the demo”

How do you know a great question you ask? Great question is a question that leads into next slide or into the next few slides.

If you are demoing at a trade show, develop several “60 second” demos that you can present to prospects based on their specific needs.

Good luck demoing!