How Should I Structure Sales Demos?

(I know that sales isn’t marketing, but I’ve included it in this section for those of you with high-touch funnels. If you have a low-touch funnel, you can skip this section and move on to the next chapter.)

I’m not a great salesperson. But even if you don’t think of yourself as a salesperson, every founder needs to be able to sell—whether you’re talking to potential customers, trying to raise investment, or even just “selling” the company’s vision to new hires.

Many founders I talk to shy away from sales because they have negative perceptions. They think of the high-pressure salesperson at the car lot or the bored upsell from the customer service rep at their internet provider.

With B2B SaaS, sales shouldn’t be sleazy. Instead, it should be an educational conversation.

My TinySeed cofounder Einar Vollset says, “When selling SaaS, think of yourself as an unpaid expert who’s helping the prospect solve their problem using software.”

You’re not trying to force a fit between your software and your prospect’s problem. You’re putting on your consultant hat to help your prospect define their problem and come up with a good solution.

Thinking of yourself as an expert problem solver first sets a good tone for sales demos. When I used to do sales demos, I would introduce myself as the founder and say, “I’m not trying to talk you into anything. I’d just love to show you our tool and get your feedback on how it might fit your needs.”

If your tool doesn’t fit their needs, it’s far better to let that prospect move on (maybe with a recommendation for a tool that’s a better fit) than to pressure them into signing up. Don’t waste time or money onboarding someone who’s just going to churn out after a month or two.

There are few things worse than showing up to a sales call to find out the person doesn’t have the budget or the need for your product. As someone with intimate knowledge of customers who buy your software, you should have a good idea of the common threads that link them.

Asking even a few questions about budget, timeline, and the problem they are trying to solve can be a window into whether it’s worth your time to jump on a demo.

Even though as the founder you can run a demo with your eyes closed, if you have a standard script, you are always ready to train someone new to take over sales.

If you know someone will not get value from your product or believe they will be a problem to support, do not be afraid to let them know you don’t think they are a fit and recommend competing tools. If you are qualifying people in advance of your demo, this shouldn’t be something you have to do often, but forcing a sale only to have a customer churn out a few months later will waste a lot of resources.

It’s amazing how many salespeople don’t bother following up. People are busy, and following up until someone tells you they are no longer interested is the process that good salespeople follow.

Giving a demo and hoping the person signs up through the website is not a great way to close a deal. Not every SaaS application is a one-call close, but if yours is, set up their account at the end of your call, including taking their payment info over the phone.

Here are good questions to ask during sales demos:

What Problem Are You Looking to Solve? Your demo is not a product tour; it’s proof you can solve their problem. Focus on the customer’s pain and how you can fix that.

When I was selling Drip and a prospect said, “I want to be able to email my website visitors, prospects, and customers different content,” it was an easy demo.

Sometimes your prospect may be unable to clearly articulate the problem they’re trying to solve. Or they may come in thinking they’re trying to solve one problem when they actually need help with something else. The more conversations you have with prospects, the better you’ll be at consulting with them.

How Are You Solving That Problem Today? Finding out what other tools and software they’re currently using to solve their problem helps you frame your solution relative to what they’re already familiar with.

For example, if they’re using Mailchimp, I could compare Drip’s features to what they already know. If they say Infusionsoft, I know they’re used to a more expensive and clunkier tool. If they say they have an Access database and they’re sending emails through a hacked-together system, then I could start by talking about the benefit of using an email service provider at all.

How Big Is Your Organization? Are they a solopreneur with 500 people on their email list? A company with a few dozen employees? A Fortune 1000 company with an intense enterprise sales process?

Knowing this can help you understand how valuable this sale is to your company and how much value you’ll be able to provide to them.

How Sophisticated Is Their Understanding of This Category? Try to ask tactfully how much expertise they have so you can speak to their level. Again, when you’re thinking like an expert problem solver, your goal will be to educate your prospect. They should walk out of the sales demo better able to do their job—regardless of whether your product was a good fit.

One way to ask about their expertise is by going deeper into how they’re using other tools. For example, if a prospect tells me they’re using Mailchimp, I could gauge their sophistication by asking if they’ve used any of the automation features.

What’s the Decision-Making Process? Toward the end of a sales demo, it’s good to get a sense of who else needs to weigh in on this decision. Are you talking to the decision maker? Does your prospect need to go back to a group? Is there any collateral you can provide, like a PDF or a guide, that will help them champion your product to their organization?

Talk through the timeline of when you can expect to hear from them, when you should follow up, etc. Then, when the demo’s over, make sure they’re in some type of CRM so that you follow up at the right time.

Thinking of yourself as a problem solver first helps solve another common issue I see with sales demos. Instead of giving prospects a painfully detailed explanation of every feature, only show them the relevant parts.

Software demos are not tours of your product. You don’t need to take a deep dive into all your settings and obscure integrations, no matter how proud you are of them. Instead, think of a sales demo less as a presentation and more as a conversation. You should be asking questions and listening more than talking.

For more on sales demos, I recommend the book Product Demos That Sell: How to Deliver Winning SaaS Demos by Steli Efti.

Sales demos are pretty high-touch, which means they should be reserved for customers who are going to pay you enough to be worth it.

You need a good process for qualifying prospects before they get to you so you’re not stuck doing demos with people who will pay you $30 a month or are the wrong fit for your product.

Dialing in your positioning, website, and marketing is one way to make sure you’re attracting the right prospects and weeding out those who aren’t a good match. Using a qualifying form to schedule a demo is also good. Have them put in the company’s name, the company’s size, their best work email, and other information you need to know.

Weeding through those prospects can be time-consuming—especially if you have a dual funnel with low-priced and enterprise-level tiers.

Here’s a hack: At Drip, anytime someone clicked “Book a Demo,” they got a pop-up that asked for their name and value metric (i.e., how many subscribers they had). If they put in a low number, they were redirected to a page with a video demo, a 10-minute screencast of me walking through the product. If they put in a high number, they were directed to our scheduling link to book a time for a more extensive conversation.

As Drip grew, the cutoff number for in-person demos grew, too. At first, we were doing demos for people in our lowest tiers because it was early and we wanted to learn about our market by talking to anyone we could. Bit by bit, we ratcheted up the number on the form based on how many salespeople had the bandwidth to run demos.

Hiring someone to help you with sales comes down to whether you’re good at it and whether you enjoy it. If you’re good at sales, it makes sense to keep doing it until sales conversations are encroaching on the rest of your founder responsibilities.

If you’re bootstrapping, you have to hustle in the early days until you have the money to hire someone. But by the time you have five or six employees, you probably should only be involved in large deals. Sales demos are usually easy to teach, and as a founder, your energy will be better spent elsewhere.

One thing to note is that if most of your leads are warm, inbound leads, you can actually combine the sales role with customer success.

This works best when your prospects already have some sense of your product and are just trying to understand whether or not it’s a good fit for them. Your customer success/salesperson will be there to show them around and answer questions rather than lead high-pressure sales calls. If it’s more cold/complex sales, you’ll want a salesperson incentivized by commission.