88% of consumers confirmed that detailed product descriptions or interactive sales demos assist them in making better purchasing decisions. Also, products subject to free trial have a conversion rate twice the rate compared with others having none.
For long sales demos have existed to be an integral part of sales growth and pre-launch campaigns. In today’s experience-led world, their importance has amplified and is recognized as a potent tool for sales growth and enhanced customer retention rates.
What is a Sales Demo Environment?
A sales demo environment stands out as a carefully crafted virtual space within which sales representatives get to pitch a particular product to potential clients. This can be done over impactful and guided live demos-webinars or self-paced interactive, hands-on, ready-to-deploy labs offering a real-product like experience.
Also, a sales environment tends to be a controlled space with adequate tools available. Moreover, the fact that these environments are designed to mirror the actual product but operate separately from the live version, there is a complete guarantee that the demonstrations planned never interfere with real-world operations of the product but offer a practical experience of how it will perform for real.
What is the Purpose of a Sales Demo Environment?
The reason companies are inclined towards sales demos is to let customers get a first-hand feel of their solution before the latter finally makes a financial commitment. With a carefully crafted sales demo environment, it gets easy for the brand to elevate the demo experience to the next level – curating a real-life ecosystem for their customers. Also, here, one can tap into the real-life use cases of the solution – showcasing exactly what a user can accomplish with the product when used in a certain context. Moreover, a demo environment adds realistic challenges inspired by certain situations, helping customers gauge the best solution for different scenarios other than simply going through some statements that claim to be useful when put into action.
Key Elements of a Sales Demo?
Below, you will get a comprehensive list of the key elements required for an effective sales demo:
- Purpose and Objectives: It is essential to define the purpose of the demo and the objectives it aims to achieve.
- Target Audience: Understanding the target audience is significant for business. For a demo to be successful, it has to resonate with the pain points of the target audience, tapping into their needs and interests.
- Interactiveness: Encouraging more interaction and brainstorming on ways to get informational feedback from the target audience helps build engagement and generate interest in the product or service being demonstrated.
Important Steps to Follow While Planning an Interactive Sales Demo
There are a few things that one needs to keep in mind prior to developing an interactive product demo.
- Identify Customers
Know your customers before you plan a demo environment for them. It is essential to understand the target audience, their likes, and dislikes – including key favorites that will help you make a difference.
- Map Buyer’s Journey
Understand touchpoints and friction points along every stage of a customer’s journey. Through the process, make sure to map out the entire journey and also identify what each buyer wants to know at each stage of the same. This will help to not only deliver more effective messaging but also customize demos more effectively.
- Define Indicators
No two personalities are the same! Likewise, key stimulators keep on changing, according to buyer personas. Each individual will get attracted to a different feature of one single product – contributing towards the adoption of the same. While developing a product demo of your own, make sure to define the key indicators resonating with the buyer persona of the target audience.
- Select a Demo Style
There are different types of interactive sales demos. Some are best delivered as a guided walkthrough, while others are more effective when presented as an interactive video. For certain niches, custom sandboxes presented as virtual labs turn out to be the most organic demo interface – letting prospects explore your software on their own.
Plan Interactive Sales Demos with CloudLabs
Depending on the product type, end goals, and target audience, the type of demo varies. Here is a list of the different demo types that you can plan with CloudLabs:
- Host Live Demonstrations Over Virtual or In-Person Workshops: Connect with the CloudLabs team to host online or in-person workshops and webinars over fully guided labs. Share your own content or leverage our professional SMEs to develop impactful content for you. Get a presenter to show the product’s features and functionality to the audience.
- Conduct Online Self-Paced Demos: Sign up, state your requirements, and invite your customers to a self-service demo environment based on hands-on sandboxed labs. Let customers explore the product on their own, with expert guidance and support available as needed.
- Customer Training: Curate interactive customer training environments over pre-configured, ready-to-deploy labs. Our labs are time-bound backed by interactive cost optimization and resource management tools, ensuring the ultimate control.
- Proof-of-Concepts (POCs): Leverage hands-on lab environments to demonstrate pre-launched product concepts – focusing on how they can solve a specific business requirement or need.
Be in Control with CloudLabs
CloudLabs stands out as a leading platform helping ISVs prepare attractive sales demos over pre-configured, ready-to-use lab environments. Global ISVs trust us with interactive sales demos that they can share with potential clients, enabling the latter to experience the product similarly as it would perform in a practical, real-world scenario. While ensuring utmost flexibility, CloudLabs does offer complete. Below is a comprehensive list of all the tools that help ISVs deliver the best among the rest:
- Easy-to-Use Labs – Easy-to-use lab environments with a simple sign-up process come in handy for customers situated in different parts of the globe.
- Controlled Registrations – Let your customers register for hands-on demos over customized registration pages. Be in control with dedicated approve and deny buttons for individual users.
- Market your Brand – Deliver seamless product demos over customized lab environments, reflecting your brand name, product outlook and features approved.
- Track Usage – Drive more prospects and host effective trials with detailed consumption-based reports available. Get to track the number of attendees, monitor the total time spent by them, and feedback recorded with Power BI-backed reports available.
- Monitor Sessions – Admins can schedule lab usage hours, enable auto-deletion of labs post usage, schedule VM uptime, and allow access per lab for a specified duration, depending on different time zones and user availability.
- Avail Industry Leading Support – Trained professionals at CloudLabs offer dedicated technical support with lab-related specifics. Thus saving essential time for ISVs and helping them focus on other important agendas.
Final Words
Companies have reported a 20% growth in their sales numbers post implementing interactive demos in their buyer’s journey. The more customers are able to experiment with the product, integrating the same into their regular workflow and analyzing outputs, the more likely and quicker they are to commit. Tapping into the keynotes, CloudLabs makes things readily available. Also, there is room for further customizations available on request.
Are you planning an effective sales demo experience? Let’s connect!
