Win more deals in 2022 with an interactive product demo experience.
What is an interactive product demo?
An interactive product demo is a sales demo that gives prospective customers a walkthrough of a product or solution. Moreover, with the keyword being interactive, the demo should provide said customers with the ability to either use the product directly or see its functionality.
The interactive demo is a crucial part of the sales process and is often the determining factor when it comes to purchasing decisions. When it comes to your demo, the more interactive and engaging it is the stronger emotional connection your prospects will form with your product. This excitement and desire can overcome pricing objections, unseat competitors, and create loyal customers for years to come.
Many sellers likely consider their demo to be interactive, but with changing buyer demands, shifting purchase habits, and the prevalence of PLG, the definition of an interactive product demo has evolved.
Interactive demos previously could be defined as any demo where there was a discussion between the buyer and seller. Meaning, interaction with the actual product was minimal, if at all.
Now, buyers often want to experience the product on the first call of the sales cycle. They want to see what it can do, and how it solves their pain points. Therefore, now an interactive product demo must now include actual engagement with the product in some form. This interaction can be conducted by the buyer themselves in an unsupervised situation (as within PLG) or with the guidance of a sales rep (in a traditional sales process.)
Regardless, today’s interactive product demos must include the product in action in one way or another.
How to make an interactive sales demo
To create an interactive product demo you need to have a channel through which the interaction can take place, a value to display, and a well-rehearsed plan to showcase as much benefit as possible.
Interactive sales demo channel
Today, the vast majority of demos take place remotely via video conferencing, most often, Zoom. However, there is a second layer when it comes to holding your interactive demo… The vehicle through which your actual product is shown.
For this, there are many different channels through which your actual product can be shown.
The product itself
Many companies opt for an in-house demo instance. While showing the actual product on a call is commendable, it comes with many inherent risks.
To begin, many companies create a demo instance and then forget about it. To be the most convincing, prospects need to see your product in a live state.
This means that data like dates, times, locations, etc. must all appear to be active. With an in-house demo, this information is typically piped in once, then forgotten about. This leads to out-of-date information being shown on demos and is far less convincing.
Second, access control to these instances is usually pretty poor. Any other seller or team member can make changes, delete reports, mess with data, change screens, or otherwise disrupt your demo environment at any given time. A seller in the middle of an important demo does not want to see a surprise adjustment to their flow.
Also, these in-house demo instances might not be updated with the latest UI or product features. What is the point of an interactive demo if prospects do not even get to see the latest version?
Finally, the entire point of an interactive product demonstration is to make it as engaging as possible. In-house demo environments are difficult to personalize, and may even take weeks to customize. Today, each and every demo should be personalized to not only meet the needs of that individual prospect but also include their company name, clients, numbers that meet their expectations, etc.
Demo experience platforms
Demo experience platforms guarantee the very best interactive product demo by removing the issues caused by in-house demos but providing the same benefits.
However, the benefits to your team depend entirely on the demo experience platform that you choose.
Many demo experience platforms rely on basic screenshots to capture the various screens of your product. These are better meant as a simple product tour for your website and do work in a software demo situation. Unfortunately, these simple images do not capture the true functionality nor do they provide an actual user experience, watering down the “interactive” part of your demo.
These platforms simply take pictures of your product’s various screens, and then a user must manually input where to click, and what screen should be gone to when a click happens.
Rather, a true demo experience platform like Demostack instead scrapes your product's actual UI, creating a 1:1 replica of your solution, without the backend. Creating a sales demonstration in Demostack is as easy as visiting the pages you wish to include within Demostack, everything is automatically captured, clicks, graphics, movements, and all.
This means that you can showcase your actual product during an interactive sales demo, and provide prospects, sellers, and users alike the ability to interact with what looks, feels and behaves exactly like your real product. The benefit is that any changes made within the demo experience platform do not impact your product at all, since it is merely a clone and is not connected to your backend in any way.
Compared to an in-house demo instance, Demostack automatically keeps dates, data, and other time-based information refreshed so it always looks “live.” Further, it allows for the endless creation of one-off, access control demos. This means that only sellers themselves can access and change the instance unless they choose to share it with someone else.
Further, Demostack allows text, images, graphs, numbers, data, charts, and anything else displayed within your product to be customized with just a click. Change names, dates, titles, and logos. Click and drag charts, and more for endless customization of and personalization for more interactive demos that convert prospects into paying customers.
How to make an interactive product demo that converts
The key to an interactive product demo that converts is to make it as personalized and engaging as possible. It's all about catering to your target audience as much as possible. Your product’s sales demonstration instance should not only reflect who you are demoing it to, but what they plan to do with it.
One of the most crucial aspects of an interactive product demonstration is limiting the number of distractions and creating as much inversion in the product as possible. When it comes to things like numbers, charts, and graphs, it's actually incredibly easy for a prospect to see amounts that are too large or too small and feel that your solution is too small to fit their needs or that it's meant for larger companies.
What should you include in an interactive demo?
To be most effective, your product demonstration should include:
- Prospect’s name and title
- Company name and logo
- Their client names
- Their geographic locations
- Numbers/charts that make sense for their business
- Desired results displayed live in the product
Meaning, all of the above factors should exist within the product demonstration itself as if your prospect already has a live instance that they are using.
Of course, an interactive product demonstration wouldn’t be interactive if the prospect didn’t get to experience the product in some way. Therefore sellers should allow their potential buyers to either use the product (within a Demo experience platform) or direct where they would go within the demo and what they want to see.
When it comes down to it, your sales team should be focused on delivering the most customized, personalized product demos as possible.
