How to run a successful product demo
How to run a successful product demo
Its less about knowing your product and more about asking the right questions
If you’ve ever had a product demo that you thought went amazingly well only for your buyer to subsequently lose interest and ghost you, this post is for you.
Sellers who lose buyers after demos do so because they don’t realize that running a great demo is less about knowing your product inside out and more about the questions you ask during the demo.
This guide lays out exactly which questions to ask, when to ask them and what the answers tell you about your likelihood of closing a deal and covers the following topics:
Common mistakes that sellers make in product demos
How to kick off a demo call to get your buyer engaged
How to keep your buyer engaged during a demo
How to surface buying intent and objections during a demo
How to wrap up a demo call and maintain momentum
Common mistakes that sellers make in product demos
I’ve watched founders and salespeople give hundreds of product demos and no matter what they are selling or to whom, these are the most common reasons for ending in failure:
Jumping into the demo without setting context. Many sellers are way too eager to jump straight into a demo, either out of enthusiasm for their own product or out of a desire to honor the “Request a demo” call to action on their website. The reality buyers don’t want a demo. They want a solution to their problem and are hoping your product is the answer, so the better you understand their problem the more effective your demo will be.
Dominating the conversation by talking too much. I’ve watched hundreds of product demos where the seller talks 70+% of the time during the call. You can’t persuade anyone to buy anything from you if you don’t know what they are thinking and you’ll never know what they are thinking if you don’t give them a chance to speak.
Showing too much of the product. Sellers love to talk about the shiniest features of their product — the algorithms, the AI, the machine learning — because those are the features that get talked about in all hands meetings. However, buyers love to talk about solving their problems and to understand how the product fits into their workflow, which is often addressed by one or more of the more mundane features of the product — the reporting, the integrations, the support.
Not asking enough questions to surface objections and buying intent. It’s a universal truth in sales that if your buyer ain’t objecting, you ain’t selling, yet many sellers treat product demos as an information session, forget that its a sales call with a prospect and hope that they’ll magically be asked for a contract to sign. The reality is most buyers aren’t going to voluntarily tell you their objections in a demo because its easier to just stay quiet and avoid confrontation. Not asking the right questions is the surest path to getting ghosted later on.