The pandemic-driven shift to online purchases without direct instruction from a sales assistant or customer support agent is not limited to B2C sales, and B2B businesses need to keep up.
As consumers, people love to “do their own research,” and that doesn’t change when they step into B2B to buy shoes. Research from Gartner reveals that 80% of B2B sales interactions slated to take place across digital channels by 2025, reinforcing the buyer-centric, non-linear, digital purchasing model that has been around for some time.
B2B buyers sample your white paper, read your blog posts, and maybe sit in a webinar or two, all without ever picking up the phone or emailing you to make a connection live. But one element of the traditional sales journey isn’t dead yet, and that’s the sales demo.
In many ways, the freemium model for SaaS tools is a kind of open-ended demo for self-directed buyers. Potential customers can test drive your solution for as long as they want before deciding to go with the paid version.
The desire for a demo (or a free basic plan) never goes away. There will always be some aspect of your solution that cannot be fully explained in words; you need to only Potential customers indicate how easy it is to use that interface or how quickly they get responses to their queries. Potential customers need to be in the driver’s seat to really experience it.
As Kristen Baker, chief marketing officer at HubSpot, put it“With a sales demo, you are showing potential customers exactly how your product or service meets their specific needs and can minimize any pain points and problems they may have.” are encountered. This makes potential customers want to buy your product or service (or at least want to learn more about it so they can convert later). ”
But if sales demos are so important, then why do so many demo platforms fail? Here are three common problems with demo platforms – and tips on how you can avoid them with the right tool.
1. Not protected from connection problems
We’ve all been there: you’re in the process of demoing your product when suddenly, you fall victim to a frozen screen. While such problems are often beyond our control, potential customers expect them not to occur. “Don’t take more than five minutes of your prospect’s time to fix the problem” Advise Meg Prater, managing editor of the HubSpot blog.
If your demo could be affected by any possible backend issues, you run the risk of this happening to you. You’ll risk losing the deal or you’ll have to end the demo, reschedule it for another time, and hope for the best.
How can you avoid tripping over this obstacle? Use a cloud-based platform like Walnuts. Because it stores your demos in the cloud, there’s no downtime or loading issues, eliminating the stress this can happen to you at any time.
2. Demo templates are not customizable
It’s harsh, but it’s true. More B2B sales are lost not because salespeople make mistakes, but because potential customers don’t feel that your company cares about their needs. Research shows that 68% of B2B customers are lost because of indifference or perceived indifference, not because of a mistake.
This means you need to invest more time to explore, but it also places higher demands on your sales demo. Generic demos that showcase all the same features have had their day; Today’s potential customers want customized demos that are directly related to their interests. Otherwise, you run the risk of becoming lethargic and disinterested, and nothing drives customers away faster than that.
Walnut’s code-free platform allows you to quickly clone demos and then fine-tune them to each prospect’s specific business points, helping you quickly and easily create custom demos. tailor or have the brand speak directly to each potential customer.
3. You cannot access any analytics
Analytics is the backbone of today’s success, no matter what you’re doing, and sales demos are no exception. But with most sales demos, it is difficult to track the impact of your presentation and the reaction of your potential customers.
If you lose a lead after a demo, you want to be able to drill down into the demo experience, determine what happened, and make sure it doesn’t happen a second time.
You need automated data collection and analysis like the tools built into the Walnut platform, so you can access insights into your performance, improve weaknesses, and double down on what works. effective action.
Don’t let the sales demo solution let you down
With a customizable cloud-hosted sales demo solution, you won’t need to worry that all your hard work in lead nurturing could be revoked by a boring demo, unstable internet connection or lack of understanding of what happened last time. Sales demos aren’t going away, so getting it right is more important than ever.
