Founder of @copyhackers and @airstory. Stoked to help the changemakers of the world do what they do best.

Jun 22

Everything I Wish I’d Known Before I Started Demoing SaaS

I had spent 25 minutes showing a content team the many ways Airstory would improve their lives when their manager looked at me and said:

But you guys aren’t funded.

It was then — in that moment — that I realized this: I suck at demos.

I knew that to be an absolute fact because I had spent nearly 15 years as a copywriter before starting Airstory — I can tell a legit objection from a shit objection with my head underwater. Poor sales copy leaves the reader with BS objections like “it’s too expensive.” Poor demoing leaves the viewer with BS objections like “you’re not funded.”

My demo was so bad that the decision maker ended up telling himself (and me) this: self-funding a SaaS solution, with money in the bank, is a weakness.

Tail between my legs, I closed the Zoom meeting and hoped no one on my team had overheard.

Humility, The Mother of Education

That night, I added these books to my Kindle. I hungrily consumed them over the next couple of days, while traveling for conferences:

You should buy those 3 books. It’s a $25 investment for a ridiculous sales education. And they’re quick reads.

While those are syncing in your Kindle, you should read this and do these things, too — all of which I wish I’d known a year ago.

For starters, your SaaS demo isn’t a demo at all

Quoi?! But it’s called a “demo.”

Yes, you will demonstrate your product’s features and benefits.

No, you will not think of it as demonstrating your product’s features and benefits. And the demonstrating may only take a fifth of the total “demo” time.

Like [almost] everything in business, the demo is an act of persuasion. It’s not about the features — it’s never, ever about the features, even when it is. Your natural inclinations to demonstrate features X, Y and Z can actually harm the sales cycle.

Contrary to popular opinion, the primary goal of a demo is not to demo your product! Let me say that again: the goal of the demo is not to demo your product. — Rob Gonzalez

So what is your goal when demonstrating SaaS? Like in copywriting and perhaps in all things marketing and sales, your goal in demonstrating is first to identify your prospect’s pain. From there, you further qualify if your product is a good fit to solve the pain.

Fully qualified?

Good — that’s where the demo begins. It could happen 15 minutes or more into your scheduled time.

But that doesn’t mean that, once you’ve identified their pain, you simply start showing off your tech. As Rob Gonzalez notes in this fantastic article, a demo isn’t a software tutorial — the only time your prospects will even see your software is when you’re showing them exactly how it crushes their pain. And that may not actually take more than a few clicks — a few minutes — inside your app.

Your demo is not about your product.

Your demo is a sales conversation. As Vengat Krishnaraj puts it:

Don’t waste time showing [prospects] the step-by-step process of doing something. Create a vision of what benefit they can get by using your product. Then demonstrate how they achieve that benefit. Only if they ask for more should you get into the “step-by-step” process of how to set things up.

The demo is the backdrop for the main event: the conversation. Greg Meyer explains in a Quora thread:

Great demos sound like engaged conversations between prospects and buyers where we arrive at a shared agreement to learn something new. If that solution is a good match to the buyer’s need (and indeed the art of the demo is helping the buyer to see how the solution meets their need), the buying part is simply negotiation.

So if you’re not much of a conversationalist, it’s time to get practicing — or perhaps it’s time to hire that “annoying guy” who’s always asking you questions about your ski trips and taking strangely keen interest in your life.

Turns out, it comes down to what it’s always come down to: people like to do business with people they like. Sure, your prospect may buy after seeing one key feature well-demonstrated. But you won’t even get to that demonstration if s/he doesn’t like you first.

People don’t buy features, they buy solutions, trust, and relationships. — Rob Gonzalez

Okay, so that’s the foundational stuff.

Now let’s say you get a meeting booked for a demo.

How do you actually run the demo?

Turns out the demo doesn’t begin when you hop on the call or show up at the office. There’s a whole world of advice on the “pre-demo.” Have you given much thought to the pre-demo?

The Pre-demo, or how not to look like an idiot

You should do a little research before you talk with anyone in business.

But the demo pros know that the pre-demo phase is not to be taken lightly. A “little research” is just scratching the surface of what you’ll want to do before the demo call starts. Some people, like Rob Gonzalez, suggest that the pre-demo work is the most important part of the entire demo.

In a thread on Reddit, user StarkSell notes that you need to know three things before you can even consider running a demo:

Why your prospect wants a demo
How they will make a buying decision
What their budget is

To get this info, StarkSell suggests that, that day before the demo, you call the person who booked it and use this basic script for your pre-demo call:

Hi, I wanted to call to check I have everything straight for tomorrow’s demo, if that’s ok?

We’re meeting at X Location for X Amount of time, right?

You won’t be the final decision maker and she won’t be attending right?

OK awesome. So I can ensure we tailor the presentation for you, what are you hoping to get out of tomorrow’s demo to look back and say “that was a good use of my time”?

OK, so if I’m hearing you right, we achieve X and Y you’ll be happy with our time together?

What will happen after our time together?

What do you think are the most important points for her?

If everything goes well and she’s happy with your feedback, will there be an opportunity for us to meet with you and her together, to answer any questions that come up after?

Raj Nadar adds that you should not give a demo until you’ve had a call and prepared a deck:

The [pre-demo] call you gives you the ingredients you need most: Context and Priority.

Precede the product demo with a small 2–3 page deck. Ideally it would talk about the prospect’s company and the perceived problems, a page on a high-level describing how your software solves those problems, and third page building trust and confidence in you as a firm as well as your company, customer logos, a wee testimonial, founder creds won’t harm.

I personally had no idea you were supposed to hold a pre-demo call. Big revelation. (The script above helps!)

Once you know that you should do the demo, here’s what to do to nail your pre-demo work:

On scheduling: Confirm exactly who needs to be invited and what their roles are.
On scheduling: Niti Shah says to send a calendar invitation with clear directions on how to join the demo, including any notes on tech they may need to install (e.g., GoToMeeting). For best results, avoid using software that needs to be installed, says Vengat Krishnaraj. Make sure everyone who should be at the demo is invited.
The day before: Call the person who booked the demo, as above.
The day before: Sell the show-up by email. That means, instead of simply sending a meeting reminder, email your prospect to reiterate the benefits of attending the demo and of ensuring decision-makers are present. Booking a demo and attending one are two very different things.
The day before: Create any slides you may need, should you use slides to help guide the conversation and prevent wandering.
The day before: Rehearse. Brooke Harper says you should prepare and you shouldn’t stop preparing. Make an outline or list your talking points. Record yourself practicing, and watch it back — or practice with someone else. As Brooke says, nothing beats a well-rehearsed product demo.
The day before: Review the company website and the LinkedIn profiles of the people scheduled to attend the demo. Alex Yamamoto adds to review competitor sites and content. Identify the most relevant case studies to mention, based on what you know about their industry.
15-minutes before: Load relevant links in tabs in your browser, and close irrelevant links, says Niti Shah. Vengat Krishnaraj suggests setting up your demo environment with rich data — avoid showing an empty version of your software. SalesLoft recommends having tabs, pages, websites and pricing open to reduces the amount of clicking you have to do during the demo.

So good. You know your audience.

You know your talking points.

You’ve got your browser all set up and everyone properly invited.

Next: time to nail that demo. Yup, it’s time for your meeting.

(Bonus tip: Hit record as soon as you join the demo room, like your Zoom room.)

The demo starts… buuut we’re still not showing the software yet

When the demo starts, you won’t launch into your software demo.

Some sales people, like Adrian Diaconescu, like to hold off on showing the product as long as possible. Here’s one key reason you want to delay the reveal:

The strategy was to spend time with the buyer, understand their objectives, buying criteria, buying process, qualify financially and agree on a solution.

You won’t show your software immediately — you may or may not share your screen, though. If you do share your screen, don’t have your app showing. Instead, consider sharing either:

A slide featuring the agenda (source), or
The company’s website, which can create a sense of familiarity and comfort for your prospects (source).

As people join the meeting, you’ll want to start building rapport.

Yup, this means small talk.

Authentic — not weather-based — small-talk. As SalesLoft suggests:

Be sincere and ask them how their day has been. Reference an article you read about them. Do something that will make them remember you. In a competitive market where solutions are similar, it’s ultimately you that will be the tie-breaker.

You’re not just chit-chatting to build rapport, though. Director of Sales Jordan Rackie notes that you need to combat all the distractions your viewers could be facing, and a conversational approach to the demo can help with that:

When you’re doing a web demo, you want to get the client involved early because there’s so many things they could be doing while on their computer (checking email, browsing the web, etc). For the first 10 or 15 minutes, make sure they’re speaking for about 80 percent of the time. Ask a lot of questions up front, learning about their business, keeping them involved.

The keyword: questions.

Ask lots and lots of questions. Follow the 80/20 rule: 80% of the demo content should be about your customers, and 20% should be about your solution. Summarize past conversations. Ideally you’ll already know what your prospect is struggling with when you head into the demo, but this early part of the live demo is a good point at which to get greater clarity on their pain and remind everyone in attendance of the challenges their team faces.

Some questions you need to answer, courtesy of Alex Yamamoto:

Why did they sign-up?
What are the evaluation criteria?
What other competitors are they evaluating?
What problems are they trying to solve with you product?
How are they currently dealing with these pain points?

As you ask questions and they answer, your prospects are bound to come up with questions of their own. This is a great opportunity, as Yamamoto explains:

Treat a demo like a discovery conversation and make sure you are constantly checking in to give your prospects time to speak and ask questions. When they ask a question, follow-up and dig deeper to get at the heart of their issues.

And here’s a cool bonus: the question-asking period of your demo is a great way to learn about your market in those early growth stages.

A direct line to uncovering the pain is this question, suggests Rob Gonzalez:

“Just so I make sure I focus the demo on what’s most important for you, why did you take this call? What are you hoping to see?”

Once you’ve identified their pain, stop pushing for more. Instead, try dimensionalizing that pain. Steli Efti explains how to do just that with this script:

Sales rep: “So, currently your company is losing out on sales opportunities because leads are falling through the cracks. You’ve got tasks and notes and reminders in your system for hundreds of leads, and it’s just a big mess right now. None of your reps are able to consistently complete all tasks on time and follow up as planned with every lead. That sounds like you’re losing out on a lot of potential deals, right?”

Prospect: “That’s right, that’s why we’re looking for a better system now.”

Sales rep: “I see. If you would just make a guess, how much revenue do you think you’re missing out on just because of ineffective lead management?”

Prospect: “Well, I haven’t really run the math yet, but I’d say roughly $2,000 to $3,000 in deals per rep each month.”

Sales rep: “Wow, and you’ve got 16 reps working for you currently?”

Prospect: “That’s right.”

Sales rep: “So we’re talking hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost deals every year. Well, I’m now going to show you a feature that’ll make you hundreds of thousands of dollars over the next twelve months. Do you want to see this?”

You know what will excite them about your product — so you know what your “dinosaur feature” is. Let me explain.

How to start showing your software in the demo

Don’t save the good stuff to the end, as Steli Efti notes.

Start with the killer feature that most obviously addresses your prospect’s identified pain. Your first 2 minutes should wow them — and to do that, SurveyGizmo recommends you take a page from Jurassic Park:

Grant and Elle drive up to the meadow and there is a brachiosaurus. The look of awe on their faces is priceless.

Notice how Hammond doesn’t just take them into the lab right away and show them the genetic cloning process. He orchestrates this moment to shock their senses.

While a software demo rarely blows people away to the extent of this example, any sales person should be aiming to emulate that initial experience.

Only after they’ve seen the highly desirable outcome should you walk them through how to get there. This is especially important for winning over the key decision makers, who are less likely to care about what’s behind the curtain and more likely to be looking for end results.

From there, the goal should be to highlight what’s unique, says Brian de Haaff. Let your audience guide you through the details you should show, if and as they’re interested. As Sean Burke says:

Let them steer — one of the reasons that SaaS products have such a low usage rate is that users don’t take the time to understand how to use the product. If your product is intuitive(big if) — then hand over the control of the demo and let them use it with your guidance. Why? You want them to personalize their experience with using your product. If they find it easy to use and valuable, then you maybe able to skip the trial and go right to the proposal stage.

When you’re demoing the feature level, Steli Efti recommends you always go from macro to micro:

When you’re demoing a feature, always give your prospects the big picture first. They should never watch you demo something and not know what the purpose of it is. If a prospect wonders, “Why is this guy showing me this?”, then you haven’t properly explained first what it is you’re going to demonstrate.

Question-asking doesn’t stop once you’re demoing features. This is a great point to get feedback and buy-in from your prospects. Before you show a feature, try this formula:

Remind your prospect of what they told you they were struggling with
Tell them you have a solution to that very problem, and mention a great benefit or outcome
Ask them if it sounds interesting / if they’d like to see it

You can also learn a lot about your prospect — while avoiding interrogating them — by asking them about their business as you demo. Rob Gonzalez gives this example:

“You can see here we have 3000-some widgets loaded into the system from some of our customers like XYZ. How many widgets do you have?”

And while you’re demoing only the features your prospect needs to see, based on what you know about them, remember this: slow down. Sebastien Bonnier explains that you may know your product inside and out, but this is the first your prospect is likely seeing of it — so go easy on flying all over the screen.

If you’ve reached the end of the pains they’ve identified but you have more to show them (because you know they’ll really wanna see), consider adding this to your demo script, courtesy of Hampus Jakobsson:

“Do you want me to show something else — I can take you through a general product tour if you want, it just takes 5 minutes.”

Side note A: What if your prospect wasn’t forthcoming about their pain?

If you’re unclear on the pain your prospect needs you to solve, start your demo with a real world use case, says Alain Mevellec. Jason Lemkin fleshes out that thought:

The best way is to demo using actual data/instance/etc. if permitted — how a real paying customer is using the service. Connect that to a great story about the customer and the real ROI.

Side note B: Consider using one of these frameworks to shape your demo

The You-They-You Framework is highly recommended by Robert Falcone, author of Just F*ing Demo!

“You need to show your prospects only the specific features that they need to achieve what they want, so that you can get the result you’re aiming for. The success of a demo depends on your prospect’s understanding the value you could add.” (source)

Brooke Harper recommends the WIN approach:

W — rite a personalized demo

I — nitiate a discussion

N — ever stop practicing

Also consider EQCRC: Encourage Question Confirm Respond Check. Rob Gonzalez uses it to develop empathy with a prospect. Here’s the script he uses to explain it:

Prospect: “Getting started seems like a lot of work.”

Me (Encourage & Question): “Yeah, I can totally understand that reaction. It does take some effort to get started depending on how many widgets you’ll be loading. About how many widgets do you think you’ll be maintaining?”

Prospect: “Maybe about 40.”

Me (Confirm & Respond & Check): “Yeah; 40 can definitely seem overwhelming. But the good news is that it’s a one-time effort that our Customer Success team really helps you out with at the beginning. We have customers with well over 100, and the started getting lots of value after the initial handful to their key retailers were set up. That make sense?”

It’s time to wrap up the demo — so set expectations for what happens next

Raj Nadar recommends finishing a demo with this question:

On a scale of 1–10 how much have we covered of what you wanted to cover?

If you don’t get a ten, ask what else they were hoping to see. Continue the demo.

Then, in the final five or so minutes, talk about next steps.

Do you want to execute the contract? Ask for it.

If you have a slide deck prepared to help you through your demo, the final slide could begin your closing sequence, suggests HubSpot.

Although there are different schools of thought on the ultimate goal of a demo, it’s a sales tool — so unless the sales cycle continues beyond the demo and there are more stakeholders to involve, go for the sale. As Annie Musgrove puts it:

Don’t just thank the prospect for their time. Go all the way to the sale. That’s the ultimate goal, after all. And if the sale doesn’t go through, there are still other tiered goals you can aim for. If not a sale, then a trial sign-up. If the customer doesn’t even want a trial of your product, then you should leave the conversation with precise feedback on why not. This could be invaluable insight into the product and also the sales demo itself.

Don’t hesitate to push for the close. Be clear on what is the next step and get your prospect to commit to it.

Also feel free to ask the prospects what they believe the next steps are.

You’ve survived your SaaS demo! Now what?

After everyone exits the demo, it’s time to follow up. Stat.

If you haven’t already, immediately connect with all parties on LinkedIn.

Here are some top tips for an awesome post-demo email, courtesy of SurveyGizmo and InsightSquared. Make sure this is in your email:

Genuine thanks for their time and interest
A link to the recording of the demo, if you remembered to hit record
The answers to any tough questions you weren’t able to answer during the call
The delivery date for answers you just don’t have yet
A recap of their pains and how your product solves them
Additional dates to note and deliverables
Links to any relevant case studies or whitepapers

If the person you demoed to has to sell their boss on your solution, your job is to help make that conversation very, very easy — and persuasive. Consider sending them a competitive analysis, says InsightSquared, featuring a clear comparison of your pricing vs theirs and your features vs theirs. Don’t forget to bolster its persuasiveness with testimonials, case studies and influential logos.

UPDATE: If you’re using Airstory (or considering trying it), grab this Airstory template to get a pre-written email you can send post-demo

Tools, software and tech for demos

At Airstory, we use Acuity Scheduling to help teams book their demos with us online. And we use Zoom to run the demos because it doesn’t need to be installed, it has great screensharing, it has great recording — and everyone can see each other’s smiling faces.

Here’s what the pros recommend for demo software:

GoToMeeting for scheduled demos (this is one of the most recommended of all the tools)
Join.me for impromptu demos
Mouselight to add a spotlight or focus to where your mouse is
Refract for training and feedback after demos
ReadyTalk
DemoSheet
Chorus, Fileboard or Gong conversation intelligence software (to see where viewers stop paying attention)
Visual.ly
Prezi
Slideshare
Hangouts
Skype
Zoom

And now for the great big list of better practices in SaaS demos

Because not everything fits nicely into the flow above.

If your user is already in a free trial, then take control of your user’s environment and setup parts of their application — so that you can take them closer to activation (source)
Invest in serious, systematic sales training (source)
Think of a demo as a closing tool, not a sales tool (source)
Don’t expect to be good at demoing until you’ve tried 20, 30 or 50 times (source)
Never presume! If you make a statement, ask your prospect if it’s true for them (source)
Don’t be afraid to say no or I don’t know — your solution doesn’t have to have every little thing your prospect desires (source)
Answer questions with questions — if you’re asked how your product handles X, reply with “How our product handles X is one of the things our customers love most, but tell me — how do you want your software to handle X?” (source)
Beware of jerky mouse movements when people are watching your cursor (source)
Going into the demo, have a plan on where you expect to move the sales cycle (source)
Think of yourself as a partner and advocate in their business — not a salesperson (source)
Don’t be afraid to pause and hold the silence when you want feedback (source)
Help them uncover problems they didn’t even know they had (source)
Remember your time is just as valuable as your clients’ — don’t waste yours or theirs (source)
Don’t expect the viewer to make the connect between your feature and their problem (source)
Get confirmations along the way that your viewers understand and are following (source)
Power statements: Make parts of your demo REALLY memorable by using bold statements (source)
Memorize your case studies so they’re always at your fingertips (source)
Memorize a 30-second, 1-min and 2-min version of your pitch, and practice them with anyone who’ll listen (source)
Create a demo “playbook” for your team, featuring recordings of demo variations, key points to cover for various personas, short pitches everyone needs to know and any virtual leave-behinds (source)

Are you better prepared to start demoing now? Have I missed anything worth noting? I’d love to hear it — it could be the difference between a killer demo and another “we’ll use you when you’re funded” comment.

~jo

PS: I researched this post in 4 hrs using the Airstory Researcher. The result was 79 cards and nearly 7000 words, which I organized in an outline in 8 mins inside Airstory. Then I switched from Outline to Document to write. If you don’t factor in dinner or spin class, which I certainly don’t, I took 4.5 hrs to turn my cards into this blog post in Airstory. Then I pasted into Medium. All told, that’s less than 9 hrs to write a 4277-word post. Try Airstory for your work writing