Generic sales demos miss the mark with their flaws, potential risks, and constant issues. These static presentations make it more difficult for sales reps to close the deal. Don’t waste leads that marketing and sales development attract and nurture until they’re ready to experience your product.
Today’s buyers expect more from sellers, especially now that they spend less than 5% of their time engaging with a few solution providers. When buyers finally meet with sales reps, they expect sellers to be prepared to meet them where they are in the buying journey with personalized insights and experiences.
McKinsey’s recent survey found that 60% of buyers expect a 3-D/virtual product demo. One that’s been customized would undoubtedly be ideal, enabling prospects to see themselves using your product daily. So, don’t drop the ball with a homegrown demo experience that falls flat.
The in-house demo environment is far from perfect
Admittedly, no demo is perfect, but one created in-house and used by your entire sales team is quite imperfect. The many flaws, risks, and potential issues that can occur during a live demo in your in-house demo environment jeopardize your business.
It’s often a step behind your actual software instance, missing some current features or the latest user interface version (UI). This prevents sellers from putting their best foot forward during demos, making them show slides or images to depict new features instead of enabling prospects to experience the best version of your platform.
Besides not being up to date, demos developed internally are tied to a bulky backend and may freeze up or contain glitches that negatively impact the customer experience. This creates additional stress for sales reps in a highly competitive market while diminishing the odds of closing the deal.
Personalizing your in-house demo instance for each potential customer is costly and time-consuming, unnecessarily adding days or weeks to the sales cycle. This eliminates the chance of closing the deal when the prospect is ready to move forward, giving the competitors an advantage if they provide a customized demo sooner.
A third-party demo environment is better
The demo experience should enable your prospect to test drive your software platform. Like an automobile test drive, the buyer doesn’t want to experience last year’s model; they want to drive the model they’re evaluating. So, it needs to have all the same features, functionality, and appearance as the one they’re considering.
A demo experience platform makes it possible for sales reps to provide buyers with a test drive of the latest instance of your software, tailored to their day-to-day environment. This includes charts, data, and labels that might realistically appear on their screen when using your solution.
A third-party demo platform facilitates a personalized, up-to-date demo experience without the bulky backend, risks, and issues of a homegrown demo. The ability for reps to quickly customize demos enables sales to advance without hesitation due to engineering delays. And prospects can interact with your software platform like it’s their own, which is what they need to make a confident buying decision.
