Giving a demo is a critical part of the sales process in the SaaS niche.
B2B decision-makers want a demo as they believe seeing the product live in action will help them make better purchase decisions. Sales engineers like to run demos as they get to show the “good stuff” and close the deal faster.
There’s a catch, though.
Your SaaS demo has to be customized, engaged, and relevant to help you succeed. Otherwise, your prospects will lose interest and you’ll lose the deal.
What makes a good SaaS demo?
A SaaS demo is a means to an end—a tool that facilitates meaningful conversations between you and your prospect. It’s supposed to:
- Highlight your prospect’s main pain points
- Position your product as the best fit to solve those pain points
- Have the prospect believe your product is indeed a great solution to the pain
- Earn the prospect’s trust and move the sales cycle forward
If you want to give a successful SaaS demo that ticks off all the above four pointers, you have to understand and implement a three-part demo structure presentation. We've outlined each stage in more detail below.
Stage 1: Pre-Demo Preparation
Before giving your SaaS demo, you need a deep understanding of your prospect—their pain points, budget, likes and dislikes, and desired outcome. To know the answers, you need thorough research, which you can then use to personalize your sales pitch.
Know your customer’s journey
CEB found the typical B2B buyer is already 57% through the purchase process before reaching out to a sales rep. So if a prospect shows interest, you’re already halfway through the battle.
Treat this as a critical learning opportunity. Try to learn more about these prospects and drive the sales further. For starters, find out what web pages the prospect viewed, which e-books they downloaded and case studies they read, and how did they hear about your brand and offering.
Think of these interactions as data points that can provide you with critical insights, which can help you deliver a more personalized demo experience to prospects.
Tailor your demo to each prospect
When you’re craving Italian food, you’ll obviously want to go to a restaurant that serves Italian. The same logic applies to your prospect.
Your product demos should be laser-focused and tailored according to your prospect’s requirements. Give a SaaS demo that isn’t tailored to who you’re talking to, and you will lose.
If you want to catch their attention, you have to prove your product can solve their problems and help them achieve their goals. Here are a few pointers to help you create tailored demos:
- Research your prospect’s company. Find out who their competitors are, what industry they are in, and what they do.
- Know everyone who will be attending the demo and their current roles. This will help you envision how the demo might go.
- Prepare customer success stories where businesses have found success using your product. Even better if the business belongs to the same industry as the prospect.
Based on the insights above, create a demo that’s prospect-focused, builds trust, and includes a solid CTA.
Look up their technology stack
B2B decision-makers prefer solutions that can fit easily within their existing software system.
Knowing your prospect’s current software stack will help you fit your offering into their ecosystem better, and hence, improve your chances of closing the deal. If they’re indeed using a competitive product, you can prepare beforehand and come up with solid talking points, proving your product’s superiority.
Plus, when you confirm their technology stack while on the demo, the prospect will know you mean business and be more likely to trust you.
Use lead enrichment solutions or free database solutions like Siftery to find out what software your prospects are already using. While these tools may not be 100% accurate, they can provide adequate information to make your SaaS demos more effective.
Stage 2: Demo execution
You have to figure out a way to reinforce your solution's value and build a connection with your prospect to take the deal towards its conclusion.
Keep it prospect-focused
Most SEs and AEs make the mistake of starting their demo with a product tour. They make the demo about the product when it should be about the prospect.
Don’t show 25 slides of sales deck outlining your company history, value proposition, and your employees. Instead, use only three that focus on your solution's most relevant features that you think would benefit the prospect most.
Consider the following questions to personalize your product demo and make it more prospect-focused:
- Why did the prospect sign up for the demo?
- What are their evaluation criteria?
- Are they evaluating any competitors?
- What problems are they trying to solve with your product?
- How well can your product solve those problems?
- How is the prospect currently dealing with those problems?
When demoing, hone in on the key aspects of your products that resonate most with your prospect. Try to align your solution with the prospect’s desired outcome as much as possible.
Set the stage
You don’t want the prospect to be distracted while you demo. Make sure:
- Your screen is clean
- Unnecessary tabs are closed
- Notifications are cleared
- Dock is hidden
- Right pages and applications are open and ready to go to avoid delays
Additionally, don’t move the cursor around too much. Concentrate on the part of the screen you want the prospect to look at, and orient them to what they’re seeing.
Follow the less is more policy
While presenting a demo, dial down on the unnecessary talking and flexing. You want to deliver the most value to your prospect using the least amount of words.
Treat your demo like a discovery conversation. Keep checking in with your prospects and let them speak and ask questions during the demo. Try to follow up and dig deeper after answering their questions.
When giving the demo, don’t try to mention every single feature of your product. Keep it relevant and prioritize only those features that solve your prospect’s pain points. In other words, discuss your product from the prospect's context.
Adopting this approach will also make you look less “salesy” and keep the prospect engaged.
Swap the script for use cases
While sales scripts are recommended to eliminate demo anxiety, they can feel a bit generic after a while. To make your SaaS demo more effective, consider sharing use case stories relevant to your prospect.
Instead of giving them a feature-centric pitch, mention a use case that captivates your prospect and discuss how your previous customer achieved success with your product. Touch on the challenges they faced, preferably similar to your prospects, and how your solution helped solve those challenges.
In addition to the business success, be sure to talk about the personal success the protagonist of your use case achieved. Doing this will help you close the deal faster as personal successes appeal to human emotions.
Stage 3: Post-Demo follow-up
The post-demo follow-up stage is a crucial aspect of good demo anatomy.
It begins after you finish your presentation and give prospects information tailored to their needs. You should’ve also engaged with them in a two-way dialogue and covered how your solution would be the perfect fit for them.
All that’s left is to discuss pricing and give the prospect a solid next step.
Provide the prospect with a clear pricing structure, but make sure they're willing to consider your deal. Also, think about where you want to focus the conversation next to move the sales cycle.
You don’t want the prospect to “think about it and get back to you.” You want a clearly defined time frame and next steps. Ask your prospect how you can move the project along. You can also offer to schedule a follow-up meeting within a week if they want to involve additional stakeholders.
Lastly, prepare some documents, videos, or a link to the actual demo environment to hand over to the prospect, reiterating your solution to their unique problems. These materials will enable your buyer to share details about the solution across internal stakeholders.
So that’s how you deliver a solid SaaS demo that converts and accelerates revenue. You can use Demostack to improve, stabilize, and customize your demos and accelerate growth.
Book a demo now and find out how.
