Selling Software Products -- What Makes a Good Demo

Selling software has many unique challenges, especially as the Saas model becomes more prevalent. How do you let potential customers experience your product, without giving it away? Or if your product is complex, how do you explain it simply?

Often times, B2B and B2C software companies are willing to spend a lot of time and money on their Web site. They do a great job of laying out the business case for why their product is better than competitors.

However, some users, ONLY want to see a demo, and want to skip all the marketing speak and metaphors on the Web site. And expectations about what they can see and experience about the product is going up every day. Many of them want to learn about new products taking the Missouri approach – “Show Me.”

And this is where a lot of companies fall down on their online marketing experience. “I know, I’ll do a screen capture while I’m talking, click through the product screens for five to ten minutes, and all known questions will be answered!”

Unfortunately, this often leads to monotone, meandering demos, which never really get the point across. It’s like watching someone else’s YouTube capture of their Halo game – sure it was fun for them to play it, but what’s the point in me watching it?

The results are that great Web sites often have poor demos. A good product demo is like a five act play – an introduction, a challenge, a solution, resolution and final benefits summary. A good demo will:

1. Be three to five minutes max! If you’ve got more than that to say, cut it. If after cutting it, you still have more to say, cut it again. If after that, you still have more to say, then consider making two demos. Users just won’t sit through anything longer than five minutes. 
2. Tell a story. People love stories. Don’t just click through the left hand navigation to hit every feature. Tell a story about a real (or if that’s not possible, seemingly real) customer. What was their problem? How did they use the product to solve it? Show Me! 
3. Cut away. While most Saas products are extremely powerful, they are also often extremely complicated, and often not pretty to look at. Make your product seem more exciting – if it is an e-commerce back-end, show the box being shipped out of the warehouse. While we live in a virtual world, we still like to see real results. 
4. Personality – even software products are about serving real people. Showing live people in a demo either talking about a product or using a product in the demo has been proven to more strongly engage users and make them connect with the people on screen. People are less likely to click away from an on-screen personality looking them in the eye, compared to viewing an event from a removed third-party vantage point. Seriously! Why do you think Katie Couric makes the big bucks? We all want to learn about things from someone we trust. Not a disembodied off-screen voice.

These are just a couple of pointers about making a good product demo. For more, please send us an email or give us a call!