Six ways to improve your demo and stop prospects freezing you out once it’s finished
It’s happened to just about everyone, and it’s real disheartening when a prospect who you thought was as good as on the hook suddenly goes cold after seeing you or your sales rep demo your product.
What happened? Your demo was gold, right?
Perhaps not. Whilst we know our products are a great fit for a prospect, we may not be doing a good job of convincing them that they are. Here are some ways you can go about changing that:
1. Prepare properly — First of all, the planning is of paramount importance. First impressions last, so you need to make sure that you have done the requisite amount of research into your prospect and what they have said that they want from your solution, and build the demo around this. This ensures that you do not end up boring the prospect with stuff that they don’t care about. You would sit down and fully prepare if you were giving a speech — why aren’t you doing this for your demo?
2. Think about time — Honestly, this is more important than many would realise. Practise going through your demo and see what the average time for one of them is, inform the prospect of this at the start and make sure you are able to adhere to this. The prospect will greatly appreciate respect for their busy schedule, and if you’re taking too long their minds will start wandering.
3. Don’t be self-absorbed — Hey, guess what? Your prospect doesn’t care for your extended diatribes about your company! A good concise story is nice, but what they really care about is the problem you solve for them, so make sure you stay focussed on how it will benefit them and elevate their business.
4. They’re not going to buy “This has never happened before!” — How many times has the software failed you on a demo, followed by the customary awkwardness? I think it’s happened to just about everyone and there’s only so much you can do in some cases, but you need to practise through and minimise the chances of this — it really pours cold water on a potential customer’s enthusiasm. Whilst you know it’s an extremely rare thing, your prospect doesn’t, and is going to be of the mindset that if you can’t get your system working on a demo then you’re never going to be able to.
5. Encourage participation — Always come back on each point and ask the prospect questions about how they think a certain feature will be useful for them and make sure you note it down. Let them do plenty of talking as it keeps them immersed and heightens their feeling that you are offering them a very personalised service.
6.Coaching and feedback — Nobody is perfect at delivering a demo, and theres always room for improvement. Ask for permission to record your demo and sit down with someone in the company or collaborate with analysis of each individual moment to ascertain your strengths and weaknesses with the goal of addressing these going forward.
I can pretty much guarantee that applying the following principles to your demo process will keep those prospects coming back. Take them onto the front lines and enjoy!
