How to Give Great Product Demo

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February 2, 2022

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If you are in the SaaS space, you might already know that product demos can make or break your business.

Good demos can help you close deals after deals. On the other hand, bad demos can run your business dry.

But how do you go about giving a great demo that can actually leave your prospects impressed and convert them successfully?

It's all about using the right tools and strategies.

In this article we cover everything you need to know about giving a great product demo presentation:

What is a product demo?

A product demo is essentially a demonstration of how your product works. Sales reps around the world use it to introduce their SaaS product, its functionalities and all the main features to potential customers.

The ideal SaaS product demo acknowledges all the main challenges of the target audience and then walks them through the product to show how it can resolve all those challenges.

It is an essential part of your sales funnel because it gets your prospects excited about the product and gets them further in their sales journey.

You can use a product demo across various stages of the sales process, including:

When you get a new lead – inbound or outbound
When a website visitor asks for more information
When a lead explicitly asks for a consultation or demo

‍What are the benefits of a product demo?

A product demo is your way of showing that your product can live up to its hype.

It's one thing to claim your SaaS product is easy to use, but it can make all the difference when you can show your potential customers that exceptional ease of use in real-time.

Conducting product demos can help set you apart from competitors who may talk big but can’t deliver on quality as compared to your products.

Here are some of the many benefits of running product demos:

Show the value of your product to potential customers
Build a rapport with your prospects
Give an overview of how your product works and how it can solve customer pain points
Get a clearer picture of the internal decision-making process of the prospects.

Before the meeting: Create a winning product demo

1 - Identify your target audience and goal

Before you jump into creating a product demo, you need to determine the goal of your demo and, most importantly, what actions you want your prospects to take after the demo.

At the same time, you should have a good idea of who you are meeting with. In fact, it would be ideal to create your product demo according to the prospect you are addressing. And for that, you need to understand your prospect’s main challenges and goals.

Look into the role of the prospect who will be participating in the demo – What decision-making authority do they have within the organization? Can your demo effectively address all the questions that they might have?

More importantly, you should have a clear list of how your solution or product can help address the main challenges of the prospects.

2- Keep your demo script ready

In addition to your initial research, you should also have a product demo script to ensure you are on track and on time. A script can help you ensure you hit all the important points and don’t miss out on anything during your meeting.

But you don’t have to create an elaborate script for every meeting. The idea is to jot down bullet points of everything you want to discuss and then build upon those during the call to keep the conversation more natural with the prospects.

Ideally, your script should include the following:

An initial first few minutes for introductions
Asking prospects questions about their company – What kind of business do they have? What are their main challenges at the moment? What are the gaps that they notice? What do they wish would have been easier?
Discuss the main features of your product that can help resolve the pain points of the prospect
Show the live demo of your product. Make sure to go at a steady pace so your prospects can follow
Leave time for questions and discuss the next steps

3- Schedule a demo and be on time

Managing time is extremely important to conduct effective product demos. Your prospects are already taking time out of their busy schedules to listen to your proposal, and you absolutely don’t want to go over the already decided call duration.

To ensure you cover everything within the speculated time, you should always start your demo on time. Join at least five minutes before the meeting time and be ready for the prospect to join the call. Check your Zoom to make sure your video and audio are working perfectly.

You need to make sure you complete the demo within the agreed timeframe. Going over time can not only annoy your prospect, but it may also lead to the prospect cutting you off before you have discussed all the important points.

So, how long should your product demos be?

Ideally, your demo should be between 15-30 minutes long. Remember that a product demo is not product training. This is your prospect’s first direct interaction with your product. They don’t need to know how to use all the features of your product, they just need to know enough to be interested.

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4- Show product benefits and not features

Avoid the urge to make your entire demo just a standardized showcase of all of your product’s features. Instead, you should show that you have really researched the prospect and you understand their main business problem by giving a demo that perfectly aligns with their main requirements.

Your aim should be to tie in each feature of your product directly to your prospect’s goals and challenges. This is exactly where your initial research and questioning can help you customize your demo that perfectly fits your prospect’s needs.

For instance, instead of saying the same old rehearsed speech about a feature your product has, you can say – ‘So you mentioned this particular challenge you have been facing, here’s how our feature can help you completely get rid of that challenge and improve the process.’

At the end of the day, if you are not actively proving how your product can be integral to your prospect’s business, you are leaving it up to their imagination to decide how your product can be less or more valuable than your competitors.

Your demo is your chance to paint a picture for your prospects and show them that your product is an invaluable solution for their business

5- Personalize your product demo

By personalizing your demo, you can show your prospects that you truly care about their business and you want to help solve their challenges. It also makes it easier for your prospects to visualize how their organization could use the product.

You can start customizing your product demo by changing the data, files, images, and even buttons.

Storylane is a no-code product demo software that allows you to create interactive and engaging demos by just dragging and dropping visual elements.

With Storylane, you can:

Build a frontend copy of your SaaS product
Stitch the pages together and create a sequential flow
Customize the text, images, and other elements on each page
Create a fully functioning product demo in just a few minutes of your time

Depending on your prospect’s industry and their main business challenges, you can change the screenshots or their order. You can even change the data in your product demo to ensure it’s relevant to your prospects.

6- Make sure your demo is working and solid

Do you know what’s more embarrassing than being late to the meeting with your prospect?

When you start to share your screen to show a live demo of your product and it glitches, or worse, fails to load.

Live demos are necessary when your prospect is further down the sales funnel. But when you are meeting the prospect for the first time, you want to give them the best first impression of your SaaS product.

While product demo videos may seem like a quick way out in a situation like this, there is one big problem with them – They are not interactive, and they can often be quite boring.

Instead, you can create an interactive demo to offer your prospects a more seamless and personalized experience.

7- Listen to your prospect

A great demo is all about a great discovery. It’s all about giving your prospects what they are really looking for.

For personalizing and tailoring your demo meeting, listening is key:

Here are some of the questions you can ask:

What kind of products do you use currently?
Are you paying for any licenses at the moment?
Are you satisfied with the value you are getting with the products?
What features do you wish you had to deal with your current challenges?

While you might be eager to show your prospect how well you understand them, you must not interrupt your prospect until they have completely finished sharing their train of thought.

You want to come across as informative, but definitely not a know-it-all.

Post-Meeting: How to close the deal successfully

End the meeting with the right tone

Recap the main points you discussed in the demo and emphasize the most important topics before you end the meeting. At the same time, you should also establish the next set of steps that the prospect can take to turn the demo into a success.

If there were any questions from the prospects that you couldn’t answer, bring them up again, and promise them that you will try to get them answered as soon as possible.

Remember that a good demo will bring you closer to the final deal closing, but in many cases, it’s just the start of the customer journey.

Share interactive demo that prospects can use

Don’t just let your prospect leave after the call and hope for them to get back to you. Share an interactive product demo with your prospects that they can use on their own.

By using the product in real-time and interacting with it, your prospect can get a much better idea about how the product works and how it can be helpful for their business. More importantly, sharing an interactive demo post-meeting can help set you apart from your competition that doesn’t usually go beyond screen-sharing their SaaS solutions

Storylane allows you to create interactive demos that you can publish and share with your prospects through unique links. You can also add guides/widgets to different parts of the demo to walk the prospect through the entire interface and ensure they don’t get lost.

See how customer embeds on their website here

Once shared, you can also track the demo usage and gain deep insights into how the prospect has engaged with the demo and then use it to refine your future demos as well as improve overall revenues.