The Essential Guide to Sales Demo Software
When someone says “sales demo”, a Zoom meeting is likely what comes to mind.
But in the product-led world we live in today, sales demos don’t always amount to a 30-minute screen share. In fact, they can take on multiple forms, depending on a company’s goals and their customers’ preferences.
This guide will explain what sales demo software is and break down the differences between discovery, demo environment, and live demo software.
What is Sales Demo Software?
Sales demo software is a suite of tools that helps teams deliver better software demos. Despite the name, it’s not just live demo software, but rather a suite of tools that encircles the entire process - from discovery, to the demo environment and the live demonstration.
Below, we’ll explore several types of sales demo software and provide examples you can integrate into your sales process.
Discovery Demo Software
If you’ve worked in any go-to-market team, you know that running effective discovery is critical to making a sale.
Discovery reveals what prospects are interested in, their pain points, and what they are looking for in a solution.
Proper discovery can serve as an outline for future demos, giving sellers a sense of what key points to bring up during the sales process and how to frame potential ROI.
As you might imagine, many tech companies have entered this market, making tools to assist sellers during and post-discovery.
Software Demo Discovery Tools
- Lucidchart - In enterprise sales, it can be helpful to have a champion walk through their “current state”. As they talk, sellers can note major gaps in the prospect’s process that your product can fill. Translating that to a diagram in Lucidchart can be a powerful way to help your prospects visualize cracks in their approach and see how using your product would enable a better future state.
- Visio - A Microsoft staple, Visio, is another powerful diagramming tool. Visio even has pre-built templates, meaning sellers can spend less time making visualizations and more time presenting them.
- Accord - There is so much to ask on discovery calls, but very little time, meaning sellers need to be strategic with their questions. Accord allows sellers to create repeatable discovery templates, helping the calls feel more like a conversation rather than a boring survey. What’s more, sellers can use meeting notes captured in Accord to define structured plans for the rest of a prospect’s journey.
- Gong - Reps can’t possibly remember everything they said in a call, let alone what prospects said. Recording and transcribing discovery demos using tools like Gong can help reps improve their discovery skills over time and uncover insights they didn’t catch during the call. Gong can also surface lines of questioning that resonate particularly well with buyers or discovery techniques that top performers use.
- Google Slides - As obvious as this sounds, Google slides or Microsoft PowerPoint can be simple ways to ensure discovery sessions stay on track. These slides can contain videos, or be more free-form, where sellers type into the slides live as stakeholders clarify and verify information.
One caveat to using slides or videos during discovery is that they aren’t the same as seeing products in action. Many prospects want a live demo一or even to get their hands on your product一so they visualize how it can fit into their workflow.
Demo Environment Software
Especially in a remote selling environment, there are many tools that can help you deliver a home-run demo. Let’s start with the demo data. Establishing the right data is essential to crafting a great demo. A data-rich, personalized environment is desireable yet often times this requires some setup from the team. Below are some ways tools can help with this:
Demo Environment Software Tools
- Mockaroo - Seamlessly generate data to populate your demo environment. It has a great UI and has the capacity to generate 1,000 rows at no cost.
- GenerateData - Another great data generation tool. Complete with a wide variety of export types (csv, json, excel, etc) and country-specific generation options.
- Navattic - Create interactive product demos of your software that prospects can walk through on their own time. Send a demo before the call to familiarize your prospect with key features or enable you champion with a custom demo they can share with other decision makers.
- Figma prototypes - Sometimes you may want to show a new product that’s not quite ready. In that case, you can have a “demo” environment spun up as a Figma prototype. Within a prototype, prospects can click through various screens to see how your product might look in real life.
- Powtoon - Another option if you don’t have a polished product to show is to use an animated video platform like Powtoon. Marketing and product teams can create pre-approved templates for sales teams to personalize with prospects’ logos and prospect-specific CTAs.
It’s important to note that demo environment software does have limitations.
For example, Figma prototypes aren’t interactive, meaning they aren’t a substitute for truly using your product, leaving prospects wondering how and if it actually works.
That said, interactive demos could be used in conjunction with Figma prototypes to make them look and feel more like a live product.
Live Demo Software
Since live demos still make up a significant portion of the sales cycle, they must be as effective as possible.
Showcasing your product remotely can be tricky, but thankfully software can draw attention to the features you think prospects will appreciate most and help you gauge their live reaction.
Live Demo Software Tools
- Limelite - Sometimes demos can be hard for prospects to follow. Limelite turns your cursor into an engaging spotlight with a hotkey.
- Mouseposé - Another way to call attention to what you’re showing in a live demo is to use mouseposé, which highlights your mouse pointer as it moves across the screen.
- DemoDesk - Instead of just talking at a prospect for an hour, try pulling them into the conversation. DemoDesk acts as a live meeting room where you and your prospect can engage collaboratively, turning a one-sided demo into an engaging conversation.
- Loom - Live demos can be a lot to take in, so consider sending a video recap rather than another email. Loom is a free online video platform sellers can install as a Chrome extension. With the click of a button, sellers can record themselves summarizing the main points of a demo, answer any outstanding questions, or even capture a quick screenshare to reinforce how part of the product works. When you’re done, copy the link, then paste it into an email, text, or LinkedIn message.
- Livestorm - Livestorm is a browser-based platform for live, pre-recorded, or on-demand online events. Livestorm is unique in that besides streaming a live demo, you can use it to send emails, chat with your audience, create registration pages, launch polls, answer questions, and even track and analyze engagement. Livestorm is easy to set up and can be accessed on a seller’s desktop or mobile phone.
With so many sales demo tools out there, deciding which ones to use can be overwhelming. So don’t be afraid to get creative with the tools you are already intimately familiar with.
For example, at the beginning of a live demo, ask your audience to use the raise hand feature on Zoom whenever they have a question. You could also try sending polls during the call to encourage participation.
Not only do these strategies save your sales engineer from awkward silences or loud, distracting interruptions, they also makes the call more interactive.
Sales demo software can greatly enhance a prospect’s overall experience with your sales team, catering to their needs and highlighting your product to push them towards each next step in the buying cycle.