9. Effective demos: The right demo at the right time

Introduction

We all sometimes struggle to create the perfect product demo that resonates with our potential buyers. Many businesses find it challenging to showcase their products in a way that speaks to their customers' needs. 

The Authentic Marketing Podcast provides a plan for an authentic approach to customer engagement that creates clarity within your sales and marketing, generating more leads and closing sales faster. 

In this episode, Simon Harvey and Daniel Kleber are joined by Noam Horenczyk, Head of Partnerships at Walnut.io, who will guide you through the art of creating the perfect demo to discuss the power of storytelling in marketing. He shares his thoughts on how to find the right way of building your product demo. With our Authentic Marketing approach, we show you how by understanding your customer's needs and the questions they're asking during the sales cycle, you can create a demo that addresses their specific pain points and showcases the benefits of your product.

Listen in now to learn how to create a demo that resonates with your customers and drives results.

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 from your own buying habits, when it comes to purchasing products, seeing is believing. We all love to touch and play before we buy, just to make sure that things fit our requirements and do what they say on the tin. When we don't get the comfort that we need, we leave. Sale lost. With so many different ways to deliver demonstrations, finding the most effective option at the right point in the sales process can be overwhelming. So in today's episode, We dive into the sales cycle and look at how to create the right type of demo for the right point in the buyer journey. I'll be joined by Noam Horencik from Walnut. And we'll hear how his career as a pre sales engineer has taught him how to build the perfect demo. So, let's get the show started. Hi there and welcome to the Authentic Marketing Podcast in association with Demodia. I'm your host, Simon Harvey, and joining me today is my co host, Daniel Kleber. Hi there,

Daniel. Hi, Simon. And hello, listeners.

So it's been a frustrating week for me, Daniel, this week, I must say. Why is that then? So for our listeners out there, I've been trying to purchase a new learning management system for us here. And there's so many platforms out there. There's loads of them out there. And I must admit, Daniel, I'm becoming a bit of an expert now. Oh, anyhow. Um, I'm one of those people, um, that likes to learn about stuff by trying things out for myself. I hate having sales reps and people push me to buy something that I'm not ready to commit to. I know

that feeling too.

I'm with you there. So I think I've finally got us down to a short list of companies, and I've started going through the process of trying to understand a bit more about the details of how these products work. I'll tell you what, the trouble is, there's just such a different mix of ways that all these websites and companies go about delivering demos. And I've got to be honest with you. I'm finding it really difficult to work with. I can't work out what half of them do. And that's the ones that actually even bother giving me a demo. Yeah,

I can completely understand you there. I've seen so many companies that just dive straight into all the features of their product within their webpage and videos, and others don't give a demo at all, they just link it to a form to request a demo, to be honest. I just get confused. Yeah,

that's certainly a problem. Yeah, I won't name the company here as well. But just the thing that's frustrated me most the worst experience that I've had with a company Was one of those companies that actually had a really quite good looking website Yeah, it was clearly presented and it did get across the point In fact, I even got to the stage that I clicked on the booker demo link and I filled in my details You know gave them all the info that they asked for inside there, but then Having put aside 30 minutes to learn about their product, I turned up to a Zoom session and guess what? I didn't get a demo at all. It was just a call that was run by a really junior assistant and they basically just sat down and ran me through a whole set of basic qualification questions. I'm afraid that after that I was so fed up, after 15 minutes I made no excuses and left. You know, it was just a real waste of time, a real waste of my time and his. You know, they could have learned so much about my interests from other places. I was there for a demonstration of the product, and I must admit, they lost a serious prospect through

that. Yeah, I know what you mean. It's a waste of everyone's time when expectations aren't clearly set. And you don't get what you were hoping for. It reminds me of a conversation that I had with one of our other consultants only last week. She was telling me about the experiences she has had recently with schools. Her kids are just about to start primary school and they are currently looking around for schools in their area. Oh

yeah, yeah, I remember those days. Yeah, thankfully that's long gone

now. Yeah, she was saying that they've been to a few open evenings with the schools and a couple really stuck out. At the first school she said that all the parents were huddled into the school hall and then they were bombarded with presentations from the head teacher and other stuff telling them about how great the school

was. They sound very familiar. I got to have sat through half a dozen of those in the past too. The trouble with those is that you can never remember one school from the next. You just get them all mixed up. They're all so similar. Yeah, she

was saying the same thing too. In fact, the one they are going with is the one that really showed them how the school actually worked. She said that before they got there, all parents were sent an email with a short video introducing the school. Then for the open evening, instead of death by powerpoint, all the parents were split into small groups and taken into classrooms. They were then given a 10 minute lesson by a teacher before another teacher came in and gave them another 10 minute lesson on something different. Instead of just telling them how great the school was, the parents were given a real experience of what life at the school was

like. What a great idea. Yeah, I think I would have made the same choice as her to be honest there. And that's really what a good demonstration's about, too. It's about giving the right type of information at the right time. You know, showing how something works in the right way. I guess the video introduced the school and the high level concepts. Then they had a real experience of what the classroom was like that they're going to take away and remember. That's very clever. Hats off to the head teacher or whoever came up with that concept. But you know, that's the thing. Demos really are crucial in the sales process, and most companies include something on their website. The problem is also that most of those demos confuse more than they convince. Yeah. They present the wrong information at the wrong time. So earlier this week, I had the opportunity to sit down and speak with one of our partners, Gnome Forensic from Walnut. And we talked about the different ways that listeners can demonstrate their products at different places in the sales process. I think you really enjoy this interview and pick up a lot from it. Hi there Gnome, it's an absolute pleasure to have you here today. Thanks very much for joining us. Before we start, maybe perhaps you can tell our listeners a little bit about yourself and what you do. Yeah, of course.

I'm Noam Horenczyk. I'm born and raised in Israel, living in San Francisco for eight years now. I was a solution engineer, solution architect for probably 10 years, uh, before moving into this partnership role at a company that sells demo, uh, software for demos and software that helps SEs become better. It was an interesting and, uh, natural transition. So the idea is that I was always in like B2B marketing and sales tech. Uh, my whole career has been around like either demoing as a solution engineer or now as a partnership professional. Working with companies that want to improve how they demo

their product. Solution engineers. One of the best ways to go. That's my background as well. Originally coming in through that side of things.

I love it. Cause I think the, the, the nice thing about a solution engineer is that like it is part business, part product. Uh, so it's a very unique role where you have to be technical enough to understand the product really well so that you can, you know, improvise if you need to, or just like be creative, but also have that, you know, sales and marketing mindset, um. Which is, I like that combination. I think it's a great

combination. So during the podcast today, we've been talking a lot about different ways of doing demos. And I know I talk a lot with our customers about three main types of demos that we tend to see. So the first of these I talk about is this education stage demo. You know, this is a general information demo when visitors are just browsing around. They're just trying to understand more about the problem, I guess, that they're trying to solve. The second of these demos fits nicely into the consideration stage of the sales cycle. This is what I call the product overview demo. This is the one where they have a specific problem that they've identified and now they're looking to try and find a solution to it. You know, they're looking for the product that could potentially help them solve that. And then the final one that I talk to our customers about is this decision stage demo or the product interest demo. This is the one where they now know what they want. You know, they've identified one or a couple of products that they think are going to solve their problem. And now they want to see the solution that's going to solve their specific problem. So they're looking for more details about their specific challenge and how that particular product solve those problems. So from your perspective, Noam, I'd like to know some of your thoughts on this and, you know, how you see the journey working and what people want. So maybe we can start at the beginning and look at the start of the journey and you can tell me, you know, from your side, what are people looking for when they visit a company's website for the first time? Yeah, I

think people need to realize that people go on the website and there's like X amount of seconds, usually. It's probably not in minutes, where you have to, you know, hook them, and like, make them engage with your website. Because the problem with a lot of websites these days is that they're just SEL machines. I still see on a lot of websites, first of all, I see those, like, generic videos that just, you know, make no sense anymore. I remember seeing, like, going on a website and then, like, the first frame was, like, the, Man walking on the moon like the the footprint on the moon. I was like immediately two seconds in I know i'm not going to get anything out of that video like it's going to be just like, you know a vision Generic thing like I came with a specific problem. I want to know if you can help me solve x Uh, if you talk to me about like the vision where the company's going in footprint on the moon It's just not going to solve what i'm looking for Um, if you have a demo that's 20 minutes Someone will click play and they see it's 20 minutes. They're like, oh god. Hell no. I just came with my very specific Problem, but if you let them, you know, understand that very specific problem, how you solve that specific problem with an interactive demo, obviously, I'm biased, but like with an interactive demo with like, choose your own adventure, like, Hey, what's your problem? Click here, click here. Okay, here's how it's gonna look like in our platform. But other methods can work too. You can have a great video just saying like, If this is your problem, here's how solution solves it. But I think just the fact that make it very targeted and try to help them get what they want in a minute or less. Right? I think that could be like a good rule of thumb. Like, can I come with a problem to your website and in a minute or less understand will they solve it yes

or no? Yeah, I think that's great advice for our listeners knowing, think about what the problem is and then use a very short demo of less than a minute or around a minute to show how they solve that. Yeah, I really think you hit the nail on the head with that one. So now we've got people onto the website and they know that we can help them to solve their basic problem. The next step of the process is to introduce them to our product as a solution to this. So this is the point, uh, where people want to start to see the product, you know, they want to see what it can do. So. No, as you mentioned earlier, one way to do this is using video. So, you know, something like Loom or Camtasia as a screen cam, perhaps. So one of those things that shows a presenter doing a demo of the product. So you mentioned though, interactive demos, uh, and that sparked my interest. Is that something that you'd recommend using at this point in the sales process or is that too early? Yeah,

that's a great question. I think, I think interactivity as a whole throughout the whole funnel is just something that needs to be adopted by more and more companies just to, you know, make sure that they're aligning with the new wave of buyers. Like, uh, the new wave of buyers is going to be millennials and Gen Z. What people don't realize is that Gen Z, people think there are babies, but Gen Z, uh, technically starts in 97. So Gen Zers can be 26 years old and 26 year old people could be founders, could be, you know, VP levels at companies like they have. They're now in the workforce and in the decision making world. Uh, and, but they think very differently than us. They're used to. Everything being, uh, very engaging, very interactive, very immediate. Also, all their B2C experience has been around that. Like, uh, you know, everything is on demand. Everything is very, uh, reachable and you can, you can touch things and you can try them out and then B2B has to do that. So I think interactivity as a whole has to be throughout the entire funnel. Where do you put each asset? That kind of depends on the product and you know, which companies you sell to. I feel like you have to show some sort of. Uh, teaser of your product as early as possible. And again, there's a lot of people saying like, Hey, I don't want to lead with features, and I don't want, I, I get that, and I agree with that. You shouldn't be on your demo on your website saying like, Hey, here's this feature, you click here, you click here, you click here. The, the idea is to use the interactivity to tell a story. While people are walking through that, uh, experience. Right? So it's not like, hey, click here, click here. It's like, hey, here's how we solve use case X with our product. And so, here's your pain point. Here's where you go in our product to solve that pain point. Right? So you're telling a story. A story that actually matters for them of how you're going to solve their pain. But instead of just using static... Things like a deck or a screenshot, you're using a way to engage them in an interactive way, right? So it's not like they're sitting back and watching a video because then you're static, right? You're literally sitting back watching a video and you can't do that If you're interacting with a product you have to lean forward literally Like physically lean forward and do stuff which just makes you more engaged and makes you more You know, you're going to soak more of the information that way than if you just watch the video for three minutes. Um, so I think I have to introduce that on the website. I think you have to do things like bite sized. That's just how people consume information these days. If you see a video that's, or if you see anything that's more than two, three minutes, you're like, I don't really want to do that. But I think there's room for all the different

ways. Yeah, I completely agree. It's not a one size fits all thing for definite. But I think the point you made about the difference between video and something interactive is, is absolutely right. When it's interactive, you can't just lean back. If companies offer interactive demos at this point in the sales process, then people have to be awake in order to operate them. It's much more like a choose your own adventure type of thing.

Exactly, and like, based on this conversation now, like you asked me in the beginning, like, when should people use different things? Now, after we've talked for a couple of minutes, like, I can, I actually have a better answer to that. Where it's like, if you don't know who that person is, if it's like anonymous on your website, use whatever. We still think interactive demos work well, but you can use a video because those analytics are not tied to an individual. So it won't help you with the next levels of the, the sales cycle from you as a rep of like, Hey, that person, I don't know who that person is. It's an anonymous visit. So if it's still, when it's still in anonymous stages, use whatever works best for your target audience. And again, testing is super easy with these things. Once you actually know, like once they fill out a form, or you have other tools, you know, giving you the information about who these people are individually, so that when you talk to them later, or when you email them later, you know that it's this person, it's this email address. That's why I think the benefits of interactive demo are huge, because of the analytics, right? Because that's where the analytics are actually actionable, because when I talk to that person, I'm like, hey, you went through this, you didn't go through that, versus the more generic video

stuff. So. Moving on to the last part of the sales process. We've talked about education and consideration. Um, now we're at that decision point. You know, we're at the point where they're looking for more information on their specific solutions. Uh, and I think people are really wanting to see how your product is able to not just solve the general problem, but more specifically solve their own problems. So, at this point, they tend to have their own use cases in mind. And they're going to want to see stuff that relates directly to their company. So I guess rightfully at this point, this is where many companies want to bring in a salesperson, an SE, whatever you want to call that in your business and get them involved in the meeting and start more personal conversations. But thinking about ways that this experience could be optimized, though, I talked in my introduction to this session about an experience that I'd had recently where I booked a meeting and then spent the whole of my, let's call it demo session, getting spammed with qualification questions when really what I wanted to see was a product. No. So to you, what are your thoughts on something like that? You know, how can companies optimize this part of the demo process and make it more interesting, make it a much better experience for prospects and make sure they get the information that they need? So

you might still want an SE on a call being able to demo and a lot of organizations still have that. Like, okay, we need an SE on every demo and then, you know, just SEs. First of all, they're expensive. Uh, and just they get burned out by just doing the same demos. They're like, you know, I'm better than this. That's what SE is like, I'm better than just doing this exact same thing every time. Like, you've been in SE, you know the frustrations that like all SEs have to deal with. Um, so I think just making sure that you're using their time better. But also, one thing you said is like, I'm saying like, let's use interactive demos to flip it. So instead of booking a meeting to show a demo, you can use a demo to book a meeting. Right? Cause, and that like, goes to the, the more old school where you're like, Oh yeah, book a demo and then you get all that like, that long form. Uh, and then you know, you're basically trying to get them into a meeting to show them a demo. That's basically what everyone's trying to do. And if they already saw a demo, and you have the analytics for it, then the next meeting will just be so much better. Cause you can... The AE can get like, Oh, now I have a meeting scheduled with Acme. Let's look at what they saw. Okay, they saw this demo. They had three flows in it. They have the flow for this persona, the flow for this persona, and they went through the whole flow for this one, and didn't even touch that one. Or they can even communicate it. They can even like comment on it and say, Okay, what is this? What is that? So you come to the next meeting and instead of a generic demo, You can actually get right to the point of like, okay, I saw you were interested in this. I saw you weren't interested in this, so we're not going to talk about it. And you're just, it's, it's a much better experience for everyone, right? Because no one has to run a generic demo and just like. Say the same things over and over and the buyer doesn't have to listen to stuff They don't care about because their interaction Which was on their terms and did not result in any you didn't have to put any resources from the company side Their engagement with whatever they were doing that platform Influences the next parts of the funnel and as buyers you just see them. They love it. They're like, oh wow Like how did you know that? Oh you engage with my demo and you did this this and that so we'll just talk about this And we'll dive deeper into that they're like Awesome. Like, you just saved me 30 minutes of boring, you know, questions and a generic demo. And we're just like diving right into this. And then if you're looking at KPIs, that's just like a, you know, they're higher chance of converting to a customer, faster sales cycles because you don't have to go all around like, Oh, do you care about this? Do you care about this? You know what they care about based on their engagement. And honestly, just everyone wins. Everyone has a better

experience. Yeah, you're absolutely right. I wish more companies would listen to your advice. I really do. Not only would it save the money, but it's just a better experience for the customer overall. And that's what we should all care about most. Absolutely. So, Noam, I think we're drawing to the end of our time now. I know we could go on talking for another hour or so if we had the time. I'd just like to say thanks very much for joining us today. It's been great to hear your thoughts and great to have you on the show. Thanks very much. Of course. Thanks,

Simon. I appreciate it. And, uh, thanks for everyone that was listening.

That was a fantastic conversation. It's always great talking with Noman. I usually come out with something new that I'd never thought about before. I don't know about you, but I think the nugget for me today was in relation to interactivity. Um, I think we've all dozed off watching YouTube demonstrations. So to me, it makes complete sense that when visitors are empowered to run the demonstrations themselves, then they're going to be much more invested and are absorbed more in the messages that you're feeding them. I'd really recommend listening to that interview a couple of times as there's lots of great advice in there. Gnome, thank you so much for joining us and hopefully maybe you'll join us again sometime. So, if you're having problems creating demonstrations that capture your audience and keep them engaged, or you need somebody to help you write a demo script and capture that perfect demonstration, then you can hire an authentic engagement coach. Just go to Demodia. com. And you can hire a coach that will show you how to increase the effectiveness of your product demos, and they'll 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 the practical steps from today's episode that you can take to immediately improve your sales and marketing. So in our conversation today, we talked about the three stages of demonstrations. There was the general information or education stage demo, you know, the one where they're just browsing and trying to understand a bit about what the problem is that you help them solve. There was the product overview or the consideration stage demo. where they know that they've got a problem and now they were looking for a solution for it. And there was the product interest or decision stage demo. This was the one where they've now got a good idea of what you want to do and they want to see how their preferred solution will solve the specific problem that they've got. So for your action today, I want you to go to your website. And I want you to look at the demos that you're using on the site. And I want you to ask yourself whether or not they're being used correctly within the journey that your visitors would experience. So by that, I mean that if the first demo, for example, on your homepage goes to something that shows product features and details, then maybe you want to consider replacing it with something more general that explains the overall problem that you're solving. Or, uh, for example, on your product pages, if you've just got screenshots, then I want you to think about how you might include a video, or even better, as Noam said, something more interactive that lets people feel for themselves how your product works, uh, before they click on that book a demo link. To put that into Noam's words, instead of booking a meeting to show them a demo, use a demo to book a meeting. I don't think I could say that any better myself. When you provide the right type of demonstration at the right place in the sales process, you'll give your customers what they want and close sales faster. That's all for today's episode. 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 brand succeed. See you next time.