For the past four years, we’ve created a State of the Interactive Product Demo Report to see how marketers use interactive demos on their websites.

With a fast-growing number of sales and sales engineers adopting Navattic for demo automation, this year, we wanted to see how SEs demo in their day-to-day and how they are using automation at different points in the sales cycle.

Between 40k+ demos created on Navattic in 2025, buyer engagement data, and survey data from 70+ SEs conducted with the Presales Collective, this report looks at typical SE demo management and setup, best practices when using demo automation, and its impact on the sales cycle.

There’s a clear gap between the highest-impact work sales engineers are capable of - designing tailored, consultative demo experiences for high-value deals and strategic accounts - and how they actually spend their time day to day.

Instead of acting as strategic advisors focused on complex, high-value opportunities, many SEs are stuck delivering the same core demos repeatedly, leaving less time for the deals that matter most. According to our survey of 70+ sales engineers, they are spending significant time on repetitive demos.

94% conduct repetitive demos at least sometimes, while 34% report they are often conducting repetitive demos. Only 6% never conduct repetitive demos.

34% of respondents also said their standard demo has little to no customization.

SEs conduct an average of 7 demos per week. A standard demo (including prep) takes an average of 3.6 hours, which means an SE could be spending anywhere between 11 and 25 hours a week on prepping and running standard, repetitive demos. Instead of time spent where it matters most - tailored, proof of value demonstrations to close deals.

On the flip side, for SEs who are doing custom demos, they take twice as long as a standard demo and are reported as the most time-intensive task.

This also impacts the buyer experience - most often prospects need to wait for SE availability to see the product. Most often, it takes 2 calls before a prospect connects with an SE.

Below, we’ll dive further into those survey results and how demo automation can help free up SE time, so they can focus on more strategic, custom demos.

Survey Demographics: What Products and Industries Require SE Demos

This section draws on survey data from 70+ sales engineers and presales professionals, collected in December 2025 and January 2026 with the Presales Collective. Respondents represent a range of B2B SaaS companies across company sizes and industries.

This section looks at the demographics of those who completed our survey.

SE Team Setup

This section looks at the most common structure for an SE org and the demo activities they perform on a week-to-week basis.

Demo Impact on the Sales Cycle

This section looks at how demos impact the overall sales cycle and how many demo touchpoints are required to close a deal.

Demo Environment Maintenance

This section looks at how many SEs have a separate demo environment, the setup required, and dedicated resourcing.

This section draws from 40k+ demos created on Navattic in 2025 and corresponding CRM buyer engagement data to identify the best ways to reduce the need for repetitive demos and free up SE time for strategic engagements.

What is Demo Automation?

Here is an example of what an automated, interest-based demo looks like

Automated Demo Setup

This section looks at when you’re sharing an automated demo, what is the most common setup and structure for that demo.

Interests are a way to show different features, use cases, or product lines within one demo.

Demos can also be personalized by the prospect's name, company, or by actually no-code editing the data within the demo environment.

When sharing a demo, you can choose how the recipient is able to access the demo. The recipient can either:

1. Fill out their name or email
2. Self-register to automatically be entered into the demo, or request access

Demo Automation Sales Impact

This section pulls CRM opportunity data from customers using our demo automation solution, Launchpad, to see how automated demos shared during the sales cycle impact sales length and win rates.

This section recaps best practices for how to use demo automation in different parts of the sales cycle.

Pre-Call Discovery

Prospects typically connect with an SE after 2 calls. Automated demos can fill this gap by providing early product access and getting more discovery data from them, setting your team up for more success on that first SE-led call.

Benefits:

• Buyers self-qualify and arrive at SE calls with product knowledge
• SEs can skip generic overviews and start with deeper conversations
• Qualification improves as low-fit prospects self-select out earlier

Sales cycle impact: Demos that are sent within the first 14 days of creating a deal have a 72% win rate, compared to 59% for deals without demo touches.

Pre-call demo setup: If you are going to send a demo for pre-call discovery, we recommend an interest demo with 3-10 interest areas so prospects can choose what part of the product they want to explore.

Post-Call Enablement

With deals requiring 3 demos on average to close, automated demos serve as follow-up resources to help speed up the sales cycle after the initial SE led demo. They let buyers explore independently, share with stakeholders, and build internal consensus.

Benefits:

• Champions have custom and engaging leave-behind material
• Demo sharing uncovers additional stakeholders
• Technical evaluators have more self-service resources
• The buying committee has reference material they can return to

Sales cycle impact: The average sales cycle (according to survey respondents and our data) is around 5 to 6 months, while deals with demo touches have a sales cycle of around 4 months and close on average 19 days faster. The highest win rate for deals with demos (72%) also occurs when there are 2 to 3 demo touches within the deal.

Post-call demo setup: If you are going to invite multiple stakeholders, make it as frictionless as possible for them to view the demo by only asking for their name and letting them self-register. Also consider personalizing the demo data for that specific person or account.