Demos That Sell: Five Tips & Tricks

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Your product is different. It offers a new perspective. It solves customer's problems. It is targeted to the right market. Now, you need to win in the marketplace–you need to educate your prospect and show them how you are different and why they should purchase. You need to gain market share and be ahead of the competition.

Product demos can help.

Product demos are digital media stories that outline to your prospects a problem in the marketplace and how your solution solves that problem. A good online demo can drive your sales forward by educating prospects and generating leads. By integrating product demos into your overall marketing strategy, customers attain easy access to product and service information, company messaging and your product's features and benefits. With the smart use of quality online demos and Flash presentations, businesses shorten sales cycles and increase ROI.

Here are five tips & tricks to accelerate the sales cycle with product demos.

1. Begin With the End
   Jumping into a marketing campaign without forethought is a dangerous game. You need to start with the end in mind—before investing time and resources into a product demo. What are the business objectives of your product demo? What action do you want your target customer to take? How many customers can be reached, and what type of conversion rate are we aiming for?
   
   Product demos are digital multi-tools, offering a variety of benefits to your business—branding, lead generation, sales cycle acceleration, analytics, SEM enhancement, landing page content… the list goes on. Different goals mean different content, image, and functionality of your demos.
   
   Asking what your business wants from its product demos, and the message it needs to carry, can help shape your overall strategy. This is an opportunity to consider all possibilities as you move your business forward—to make sure the means justify the ends.
2. PROBLEM Knowledge, Not Product Knowledge
   Sales conversions can only occur when the customer has a true understanding of what they are buying. Prospects also need a true understanding of what their problem actually is—there are many solutions for problems that we don't even know we have. How are costly problems solved through your innovative offerings?
   
   Descriptive, under-the-hood information clearly explains what the problem is, how the offering solves customer problems, and how it does this differently. Screen captures of software applications using story scenarios, diagrams of system workflows that are tied to ROI, and 3-D representations of physical products are just a few examples of what can move your product demo.
   
   Keep a subtle combination of problem knowledge on both logical and emotional levels. At Viewstream, we like to say a purchase decision is 51% logic and 49% heart.
3. Be Short and Sweet
   Corporate marketing departments often make the unintentional mistake of saying too much—they want to broadcast to the world every single detail that makes their product great and different. This can be a fatal strategy because it communicates an unfocused message that says, "We are apprentices of everything, masters of nothing." Product marketing divisions are particularly vulnerable to this weakness, and it simply conveys an inappropriate message to prospects.
   
   Most good product demo are on the shorter side. The exact length depends on the nature of your product offering and the attributes of your customer. You need enough time to deliver your message, but not enough to bore your audience. Keep the messaging quick and clean. A good rule of thumb is to spend about a TV commercial length of time communicating your high level brand positioning, including who you are, why you are different, and what drives your company to solve customer's problems. Keep the features and benefits portion of your demo to three main points, and always leave the viewer wanting to know MORE.
4. Leverage
   Like the message itself, distribution channels are available to move your demo clearly and quickly using high user-adopted technologies, such as Flash and Windows Media. These technologies can offer clean delivery, streaming your demo to clients worldwide at the click of their mouse.
   
   The ease-of-use and quality of delivery that product demos enjoy mean they are scalable and flexible, easily integrated into your horizontal marketing strategy. Demos leverage across your campaigns, starting with your website. From there, they can become a key part of your tradeshow booth, webinar programs, e-newsletter content, mail marketing campaigns, and sales presentations. You can even put a link to the product demo in e-mail signatures.
   
   By integrating your product demo across your marketing and sales strategies, you are leveraging the overall story that comes out of it. When developing your demos, document the high-level messages that you come up with, as well as the specific product-focused messages. This language can be very valuable for sales team members, product marketing and other constituents—forming a cohesive messaging strategy from the get go.
5. Track Everything
   Successful companies track everything. At Viewstream, we have worked with two of the leading software companies in the world (Autodesk and Microsoft), and the level of detail we put into metrics is truly astounding. Product demos can be a very valuable tracking tool for your business. Customers view product demos to collect information about your offering. In much the same way, their viewing of your demo allows you to collect valuable information about them.
   
   Adding multiple offers to a product demo is an indispensable tool in generating a list of quality leads for your sales team. Analytic tools also allow you to keep track of how the demo is being viewed. These metrics offer insight into what the customers are looking for, and how they are responding to your information. This is invaluable information you need in targeting your efforts and developing next steps and new strategies.

Product demos generate demand, shorten sales cycles and increase sales. By fully integrating your sales and marketing messages; offering the right problem/solution and product information; keeping the message clean; leveraging your message across campaigns; and gathering key customer information, product demos can be the secret weapon to help the sales team clinch more clients while allowing quality leads to find you. And product demos are scalable and repeatable, making them a cost-effective way to attract leads again and again.

At Viewstream, we have helped hundreds of leading companies obtain competitive advantage by developing product demonstrations that help companies gain market share. We have a tremendous amount of client experiences and best practices to share. Give us a call -- we'd love to help your company succeed.