12 Best Sales Demo Practices

These are the 12 best sales demo practices, from researching the prospect before the call to running a hands-on demo and a useful Q&A at the end. Most of them happen before the demo starts: a good demo is mostly preparation.

The 12 practices are:

Research the Company
Gathering Requirements
Understanding Priorities
Accessing their Current Environment
Demo Sales Script
Get your Sales Demo Agenda Ready
Providing Sufficient Sales Demo Training
Becoming a Product Champion
Tailoring your Sales Demo
Scheduling Time before the Demo
Prepare a Hands-On Demo
Question Answer Session

Research the Company

You need to know what your prospect does and who your actual customers are that you need to impress for the work. The more you learn or know about the company, the better your chances of success.

Gathering Requirements

You must first jot down the problems they face that need to be resolved. If you know their problems, you will be in a better position to know the solutions.

Understanding Priorities

You need to list the problems the prospect faces and then prioritize them. The more you focus on the highlighted areas, the more you will be able to make a deal.

Accessing their Current Environment

In order to present the best solutions, first, you need to know their current scenario, which products they are using, and their results.

After knowing your prospect better, you can simply start working on your sales demo.

The remaining practices cover the demo itself: the script, the agenda, the people presenting, and how you run the session.

Demo Sales Script

Script is the heart of any good demo. A consistent message should flow throughout your demo. You shouldn’t just memorize the script and read it word by word in front of the sales force; you just need to know the things that should be part of your demo. Your salespeople need to be familiar with the entire script to understand better and stay connected to you.

The demo needs to start with the problem your prospect is facing; the solution should follow that. Your demo script needs to answer all the problems of the prospect. This way, you can keep them attentive. You can follow the following pattern for your demo script:

Introduction
Problems
Background of company
Your solutions
Product specifications
Q&A
Wrapping Up
Next steps

Get your Sales Demo Agenda Ready

Setting an agenda is an essential part of any meeting. Without a specific agenda, your meeting can easily fall off your hands in minutes. Using an online booking link lets prospects pick a demo time that works for them, so you spend less effort coordinating schedules. For example, a team can create a "Product demo (45 min)" meeting type in SchedulingKit with a Zoom link added automatically; on the Pro plan, Round Robin assigns each booking to the next available rep, and Zapier can create the deal in the team's sales CRM. Your agenda needs to be clear and accurate as per the prospect's problems. You can refer back to your demo script to build a good agenda. The more you delve into it, the better chances are to improve your demo and script.

Providing Sufficient Sales Demo Training

A well-trained and skilled person can work best for you and present your product in a much better way than a novice one. Training is integral to every job; you need to bring in an experienced and trained salesperson. You should properly conduct training so your team can run a good demo. Practice and training can do wonders for you. You can follow the simple steps for this:

Only let salespeople present demos after they have completed your internal demo training and a manager has signed off on a practice run. This is an internal readiness check, not an external certification.
Call new hires to the demos, so they can learn.
Arrange regular training and workshops to get hold of new techniques.
Perfect demos are delivered by the people who use that product.

Becoming a Product Champion

Just knowing about your product is not enough. Your salesperson should be the one who knows your product inside out. The people who use your product know its outcomes and perfect usage. They are the ones who can create a lasting impression on your clients. You have to turn your salesperson into a champion who can help you sell your product.

Tailoring your Sales Demo

You shouldn’t ever use the same demo for each client. No! You need to tailor it as per the requirements of the prospect. Your demo should be tailored in a way that a client thinks is only designed for his company. Here is a list of the things that can help your tailor your demo:

Recheck the names of brands, etc.
Use the prospect's logo to make them feel valued
Visualize your products
Screen size as per your prospect’s space

Scheduling Time before the Demo

Before going for a demo, you should run a pre-test to help you know everything is fine. With a pre-test, you can avoid falling into the devil's hands and losing your first impression. Always reach 30 minutes earlier to run the demo slides and check if everything is working fine or not. Here is the checklist that can help you a lot with this:

Internet connection is stable
A meeting room is vacant
Demo logins are working
The battery is plugged in
Everyone knows the agenda
All the dates are updated

Prepare a Hands-On Demo

Just reading off the slides is boring for both - the presenter and the viewer. The simplest yet effective way to keep your audience engaged is to let them practice it themselves. This may be challenging for each feature, but you can still get them hands-on with a few features that can get them attentive and involved. You can ask, “Who wants to try it now?”. The hands-on experience also helps you solve their problems on the spot.

Question Answer Session

Questions mean that your prospects were paying attention. Leave real time for them, and use the session to walk the prospect through the next steps for trying or buying your product. Afterward, log the questions and agreed next steps in your sales CRM so your team can follow up and move the prospect through the pipeline.

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