Your customers ask for a demo because they believe that seeing the product will help them make a decision faster than talking to a sales person.
We salespeople like to run demos because obviously our solution is awesome, and the customer will find it irresistible as soon as we show them the good stuff.
But here’s the trap: if I show a generic demo, they may lose interest. But if I start by asking questions to learn what’s relevant, they may feel like I’m withholding something valuable.
Catch 22.
We all want to get to yes or no as quickly as possible, but the customer vs. sales approach seem to be polar opposites.
When you’re selling B2B SaaS solutions leveraging a Solution, Consultative, Strategic or a SaaS Sales Methodology, you must align your solution to your customer’s desired business outcome.
If you don’t, customers will churn, and that is expensive.
This is a legacy issue caused from the misuse of sales decks regardless of what they uncovered during the Perfect Discovery Call.
Demos need to be more than a well choreographed pitch. Elon’s Tesla and Steve’s iPhone can get away with it because they are selling direct to consumer through a transactional sales process.
Most sales demos suck because they are treated as a monologue – and it’s the same for every potential customer. The best salespeople use a demo to continue to diagnose through the discovery phase.
We love talking about ourselves – and as Dale Carnegie described in 1936 – the best way to get someone to like you is to ask them about themselves, listen and be responsive to what they say.
As counter-intuitive as it seems – stop talking so much about yourself during a demo. Instead, paint the picture of your solution in your customer’s context based on what they are trying to solve.
When it comes to the demo – salespeople tend to go on autopilot. We become enthusiastic and tend to speak faster because we’ve done this part of the call a thousand times. It’s showtime!
Your customers are engaged when you first pull up a screen or begin to show something. They lean in, they listen and their curiosity is piqued.
Then something happens. Maybe you said something that didn’t resonate, maybe a text/email/slack popped up on their phone. Their attention wanes. That’s natural.