8. Building a powerful product demo - 4 step framework

Introduction

As a business owner, you know that delivering a successful demo is critical to closing deals and growing your customer base. But how do you create a demo that really connects with your audience? 

The Authentic Marketing Podcast provides step-by-step demo plan. By following just four simple steps, you can transform your demo from a dry, technical presentation into a powerful story that engages your potential customers and showcases your product's value. 

We've all been there - you're trying to showcase your product, but your audience's eyes start to glaze over. It's frustrating and disheartening, but it doesn't have to be that way. In this episode, Simon Harvey and Daniel Kleber will share how with our demo plan, you can capture your audience's attention and keep them engaged from start to finish.

Listen in now to learn how to create a demo that resonates with your customers and drives results. Let's create a memorable experience that your potential customers won't forget.

To simplify your demo creation process, download the free demo script canvas.  By using our template canvas, you can create a memorable and effective experience that will leave a lasting impression on your audience. You can find it here (or copy and paste the link below): 

https://www.demodia.com/product-demo-script-canvas

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Episode Transcript

You know what it's like trying to deliver product demonstrations. Sometimes your viewers listen, other times their faces just glaze over and you know you've lost them. It can be painfully disheartening. Whether you're selling software or a physical product, demos are an essential part of any sales process. They help potential customers to understand the detail of your offering. and provide them with the comfort that you can really do what you say. Building a demo that clearly communicates your capabilities though can be challenging, especially if it's not something that you do every day. That's where our step by step demo plan helps you out. In our last season, we looked at how storytelling helps your sales and marketing teams to communicate clearly in a way that prospects and visitors can understand. In this season, We're going to take a closer look at how to use storytelling within your demonstrations. Successful product demonstrations are more than just a showcase of features and functions. They tell a story that connects with your audience and makes them part of something memorable. So on today's episode, we're going to introduce the demo plan and see by how following four simple steps. You can radically improve the impact of your demos. Hi there and welcome to the Authentic Marketing Podcast in association with Demodia. I'm your host, Simon Harvey, and I'm joined today by my co host, Daniel Kleber. Hi there, Daniel. Hi,

Simon. Hi, listeners. So,

it's great to see you again in person, Daniel. It's been a couple of weeks since we were here in the studio last, recording the, the last series. Um, how's things? And what have you been up to since we last met? Yeah, it's going

well, thanks. I've been out skydiving again and got my first jumps of the season in. I was also out hiking with friends last week. We were just up in the mountains near the Austrian border. So, I didn't really think too much about what I needed to take with me. I know a really nice scenic place where we stop for lunch. It has a great view out over the Rhine Valley, and the plan was to build a fire and

enjoy the peace. Oh, that sounds great. I know you're quite an enthusiast when it comes to the great outdoors, so I assume you had a good time? Yeah,

I've done a few of these trips in the past. Anyhow, it came to lunch and we managed to find some wood. But it's still spring, and it was all pretty damp. Stupidly, I only had a small box of matches with me, and I didn't bring a lighter. So, I tried for around an hour to get the fire lit, but it just wouldn't go. And in the end, we all ended up heading home hungry. Because raw sausages just aren't too good. Oh

no, doesn't sound like fun.

No, it wasn't too bad at the end. But you know, what I have learned is to make sure I take some dry wood and a lighter with me to start the fire. I need to be prepared and plan a bit better next time.

Yeah, that sounds sensible for me. Having a plan and following it's always the best and safest way to go. And that's what our show is about today. Uh, making sure that when it comes to delivering demonstrations, that you follow the right steps and you have the right tools and information available to best showcase how your product solves your customer's problem. So a demo is just like when you're lighting a fire, you need to bring the right things for the right conditions. A dry wood, a lighter, and so on in your case. But in the case of a product demo, you know, things can also go wrong. So you need to be prepared. Software can crash, your customers can come up with new requirements that you weren't ready to show. But if you come prepared, you're always going to be able to deliver your best demo. If you're ready

to start creating product demos that will engage your prospects and clearly communicate how your solution solves their problems, we have prepared a four step plan for you. This plan will act like stepping stones to guide you to success. Let's take a look at the framework that you can use to build a

great product demo. So in today's episode, we're looking at the steps that you need to follow to build product demos that clearly communicate how you're offering solve your prospects challenges. in a way that they can understand. So what we're going to give you is a plan that will ensure that you hook your prospects every time. So let's take a look at how that works. Give us a quick run through Daniel. To ensure your

product demo is successful you need to follow a simple four step plan. Today we will have an overview of this plan and in the next few episodes we will go over each step in detail. Firstly, step one is to define the purpose and target audience of your demonstration. Secondly, Think about when the prospect is going to encounter this demo in their buyer journey. Choose the right approach for the stage. Third and most important, plan out your demo script. And finally, deliver your demo. Don't forget, not all demos need to be done live. And that is really it. Four easy to follow

steps. That sounds pretty simple, certainly. So, let's start by having a look at step one. So, step one is to think about the purpose and target audience for your demonstration. This is all about understanding your audience and what they want to achieve. So, at this point in time, you would need to understand and define clearly who your hero is. You need to understand what they want and also what's stopping them from getting that. We talked a lot about the problem in earlier episodes. Going back to the hero though, it's important to make sure we're talking to the right people here. So, for example, if we're creating a demo for a B2B product, we want to make sure that we're targeting decision makers and stakeholders rather than end users. You know, end users are never going to be the people that are paying for this. So you're never going to sell to an end user. If you're creating a demo for a B2C product on the other hand though, you want to focus on the needs and pain points of that individual consumer. So the individual is the key person to focus on then.

Yeah, that's definitely true, but it's also important to keep your demo simple and easy to understand avoid using technical jargon or Overwhelming your audience with unnecessary details stay focused on the key problem that your product solves and keep it simple We need to talk about the pain that they've got find the one pain You don't want to have lots of different things covered in the same demonstration You want to try and keep your demonstration focused? And stop once you've shown that you need to close out the section, and then you go on to the next problem that they've got, and that becomes a new demo or a new section of your presentation. If we're talking about live demonstrations.

Yeah, that's great advice, Daniel. I completely agree. Keeping it simple is the key to a successful demonstration. It's all about understanding your audience. And tailoring your message to their specific needs and don't just flood them with features that aren't related to the problem that you're discussing. Otherwise you're just going to confuse them. So now we've got our audience and problem defined. It's time to move on to step two, I think. So this is where we want to decide where the demo is going to be used within the sales process. If you're familiar

with the buyer's journey. You know that there are three key stages that every prospect goes through when they buy something. These steps are, number one, education. When they are just browsing and trying to understand their problem. Number two is consideration. Where they know they have a problem and now they're looking for a solution to it. And number three is decision. Where they now want to know that their preferred solution will work. You should build different demos for these three stages.

Yeah, I think that's key. Building different demos to each of these stages makes sure that your prospects gets the right type of demo and hence the right information at the right time. So in the first stage, the education phase, the prospects have some idea of what the problem is that they're trying to solve, but at this point they really don't have any idea of how to do that. They don't have any idea of exactly what they want. So keeping this in mind, what you need to do at this point in time is something very, very simple. So something like a video or an animation that explains how you solve the particular problem that the prospect has. This way we let them know that we understand their problem and we understand the circumstances around that and then when they're ready we want them to know that we can offer them a solution. In the

consideration stage, prospects are clear about their problem and they're working out how exactly they will solve that. They want to learn about different types of solutions that they could use to solve their problem and start to consider which one to pick. At this point, you want to create a demo that introduces your product and shows the prospect how you solve one or more of their high level problems.

And then the last stage is where the prospect has to make a decision. This is where you need to prove that your product can do what you've said it can do. You know, where you need to show that it does what it says on the tin. So it's crucial at this point in time to show your prospect how they can use your product to solve that specific problem that they have. Here's where you want to be able to show the detailed features of your product and show them how those features are used to solve that specific problem.

So, now we have defined our audience and established a problem. We have chosen the right type of demo to show. Now let's move to step 3. Plan out your demo script. This is actually a very important step of our plan. Yeah,

that's correct. It's time to create a demo script that will effectively showcase your product. The most effective approach to delivering a demo is to use storytelling. So you want to use a narrative structure to frame your demo. So just to run you through that briefly, you want to start by introducing the character that you're playing. So, you mean

in this case, the person is the problem you're solving, right? Yeah, that's exactly right. Alright. For example, if you were demoing HR software, one part of your demo might show the solution to a problem that the HR manager has, and another part might show the solution to a problem that employees have. Yeah,

that's precisely what I mean. So once you've done that and introduced the character, then the next step is to introduce the problem that they have. Things like, they can't see what recent training the employee's done, for example. The thing you need to remember here is that if there's no problem, there is no story. You know, the whole story is just boring and bland. If you think about films, any film or book without a problem, you'd be sitting there and thinking, why the heck am I watching this? Why the heck am I reading this? You know, there's no point, there's no take home. And that's even more true when it comes to demonstrations. There needs to be a problem and you need to be showing the solution to that problem, not just showing features.

Exactly. Then you want to show how your product solves these problems. Use your script to demonstrate these benefits in action and show how your product can make their lives easier, more efficient, or more enjoyable. The whole idea of telling a story is to engage your customers and make them feel like they're part of it. So many companies talk continuously about features because it's easy and what they know. Features don't excite real buyers. Solutions to their problems do.

You're absolutely right. People are looking for solutions to their problem. And that leads us up to the last step of the plan, and that's delivering the demo. So this is the point that you want to think about the way that your audience is going to consume your demo. This could perhaps be a live demonstration, you know, something that's done on site or through a webinar. But it doesn't have to be. If your demo is focused on the earlier education part of the sales funnel, then you might want to use pre recorded screens or an animatic style video, for example, in there. But on the other hand, if it's focused on that decision stage that's later in the sales process, you might want to bring in a more expensive sales rep.

That's right. You want to select an approach that fits your budget, skill level, and the expectations that your prospect would have at this stage of the sales process. Some popular tools for creating pre recorded demos include Loom, Camtasia, or Walnut. Other demos may be done live over platforms like Zoom, Teams, or Google

Meet. Absolutely right. One thing I would say, though, is however you deliver your demos, it's important to make them interactive. You need to encourage your audience to participate in there. So, I would make sure I include things like questions or solicit feedback from them at various points in the demonstration. You know, you want to keep them engaged and invested in the process.

That's absolutely true. Another important point is that for decision demos that are later in the sales process, you need to customize the demo to match the branding and vocabulary of your prospect. This can include customizing the look and feel of the demo, as well as adding their own content and messaging. Yeah,

you're right. That's really important. One other last thing that I'd make sure you don't forget as well, and I'd really recommend this, is to make sure that you consider how your demo is integrated with other tools that you use as part of your sales process. So don't forget things like your CRM, for example, here. If your sales people are able to see what demos people have looked at, then it can save both you and your customers time later in the process and mean that you have a much better customer experience.

To add to that, if you've got analytics and insights coming from your demos that it's also easier to see how your demos are performing and which ones are the most interesting to your

customers. Yeah, I think that's essential. If you're spending a lot of time and money creating demos, it's really important to know which are the ones that are working and which are the ones your customers are interested in.

So that's it. With these four steps, you can now create an effective product demo that showcases your product to its audience as the best solution to the problem they have.

Ah, thanks for your time again, Daniel. It's great to be back again, and I'm really looking forward to some more discussions over the rest of this series. So in today's conversation, we talked about the core steps that you need to follow to create a great product demo. And I'm going to go into more of those with you next week. For now, though, if you're having problems creating demonstrations that engage your audience, and you need somebody to help you create a demo script or capture a full demonstration for you, then you can hire an authentic engagement coach. Just go to Demodia. com to hire a coach that will show you how to increase the effectiveness of your product demos and give you an easier way to grow your business. So, listeners, at the end of each episode, I like to give you a set of concrete actions. These are practical steps from today's episode that you can take to immediately improve the effectiveness of your sales and marketing. In our conversation today, we talked about the steps that you need to follow to build demos that people understand and remember. So today's action is a simple one. I want you to choose a page on your website that includes one or more product demonstrations. So it could be, for example, your homepage or a specific product page. When you've done that, I want you to review each of the demos on that page and ask yourself the following questions. So firstly, is it clear whose problem this demo solves? You know, ask yourself what person or role this demo is targeted at and do you show a solution to their problem? Secondly, does the demo deliver the information that the visitor to your webinar might expect at this point in their journey? Is it just an animation when they might be expecting more product detail? Or perhaps you're just providing them with a link to book a demo when maybe they're not ready for that and something like a click tour might suffice. And finally, does the demo tell a story that highlights a problem and its resolution? Or is it just a feature dump? So if you aren't able to tick all of the boxes for those, Don't worry. You know, we're going to be covering detail in the next couple of episodes as to how to resolve those issues. Just make a note of the problematic demos or the pages you find on your website. And then I'm going to go through and show you how to fix them in the next steps. When you've spent so much time getting prospects to this point in the sales process, you deserve a product demo that communicates effectively. With a well defined demo plan, your demonstrations will resonate with their audience and you will close sales more easily. So that's all for today's episode. I thank you so much for listening to the Authentic Marketing Podcast, where we help you to create a sales and marketing plan that will get you new customers and grow your business. Follow us and rate us wherever you listen to your podcasts. And don't forget to join us on LinkedIn. We love to hear what you want to know and how we're helping your business succeed. See you next time.