How to Make Software Demos More Cost Effective

What SaaS and software companies can do to increase sales with demo videos.

Show, don’t tell.

Free demos have become an industry standard for SaaS and software companies. Customers expect to see a software application in action before making a purchasing decision.

The use of demos has helped companies increase sales and conversion rates.

However, the effectiveness of a software demo depends on many factors and there are challenges you need to overcome in order to get the most out of this sales technique.

Live Demos Aren’t Scalable

Although crucial to the sales process, live demos aren’t scalable. A sizable team of sales reps needs to be hired, trained, and coordinated to cover the grounds and deliver a presentation of consistent quality.

If you do business in different countries, you may need to present in different languages. Finding demo specialists who have extensive product knowledge and are fluent in other languages can be a major hurdle.

In addition, not every prospect who requests a demo is ready to make a purchase.

You may find your sales team demoing to a lot of people who may not be ready to buy or aren’t the right fit for the product.

Not to mention, without the ability to predict the quality of the prospects, your team could be spending valuable time with a less qualified leads and miss out on opportunities to demo to high-quality prospects.

As a result, companies are often wasting resources on demoing to poor-quality prospects or missing out on closing high-quality leads and losing businesses to their competitors simply because they don’t have the resources  to do all of the demos requested.

This is an opportunity cost that could add up and impact your bottom line.

Repeating Demos Over and Over Stretches the Sales Cycle

Another common challenge for closing deals is the long B2B sales cycle that results from drawing in different stakeholders with different needs and having to demo to each one.

Companies are rarely selling to individuals anymore. On average, 5.4 stakeholders are involved in the decision-making process. Such complexity often drives down close rates and stretches out the sales cycle.

Since each of these stakeholders have different priorities, you also need to tailor your content to their needs instead of showing the same demo with generic information.

Product Demo Design: One Size Doesn’t Fit All

A software company often faces a lot of decisions when choosing to allocate resources and setting up demos.

• Should you offer a demo to everyone who requests one?
• How can you better qualify leads so you can get the most out of the resources you have at your disposal?
• Should you just get all prospects to watch a product walk-through video demo first or should you get them straight to a live demo? If so, how can you automate some of the discovery and personalize the self-directed demo experience?
• How can you address the different priorities and concerns of different stakeholders within the same company?

Most sales professionals have the answers to many of these questions. Yet they lack the ability to personalize the video content and delivery method in order to fully leverage the power of a product demo.

• Wouldn’t a demo be more effective if you could customize the content and length to match each stakeholder’s role, priorities, and customer lifecycle stage?
• And wouldn’t it be a much better use of resources if you had the ability to figure out who you should be scheduling a live demo with?

Improve Product Cost-Effectiveness with Intelligent Demo Automation

It’s now possible to leverage your resources more effectively by using demo videos that include interactive elements so viewers can tell you exactly what’s important to them and what information they want with the use of intelligent demo automation.

The innovative technology allows you to show different types of demos to suit the priorities of the stakeholders and their buyer journey stages.

For example, you can use a mini-demo to communicate the big picture idea at the awareness stage, a qualifying demo to help prospects decide if they want more info at the consideration stage, and a deep dive demo at the decision stage.

By delivering personalized information targeted to different stakeholders involved in the decision-making process, you can drive consensus, shorten the sales cycle, and increase close rates by as much as 44%.

In addition, you can collect metrics on how the stakeholders interact with the videos to fine-tune the messaging and improve the response rate.

With intelligent demo automation software, prospects can watch a short intro video, and then answer a few simple questions to customize the subsequent demos and ensure that the information presented is most relevant to them.

At the end of the carefully-curated video series, your prospects will have a good idea of whether your product is a good fit.

As a result, those who request a live demo will be high-quality leads who are ready to talk specifics about your product.

You’ll make  better use of your resources because your sales team will be having conversations with prospects who are more likely to make a purchase.

Consensus’ intelligent demo automation software can help you increase the effectiveness of B2B sales with customized videos that integrate seamlessly with your workflow while allowing you to collect viewer statistics so you can fine-tune your messaging.

See how our cutting-edge application can help boost the ROI of your sales team here.