How can you collaborate with sales and customer success teams to optimize your product demo?

A product demo is a powerful tool to showcase your product's value proposition, features, and benefits to potential and existing customers. But how can you make sure your product demo is effective, engaging, and tailored to your audience's needs and goals? One of the best ways to optimize your product demo is to collaborate with your sales and customer success teams, who have direct insights into your customers' pain points, expectations, and feedback. In this article, we'll share some tips on how to work with your sales and customer success teams to create and deliver a product demo that converts and delights.

1 Understand your audience

Before you start designing your product demo, you need to know who you're talking to, what they care about, and what they want to achieve. Your sales and customer success teams can help you with this, as they have regular interactions with your prospects and customers, and can provide you with valuable information about their profiles, challenges, motivations, and objections. You can use tools like buyer personas, customer journey maps, and CRM data to segment your audience and tailor your product demo to their specific needs and goals. You can also ask your sales and customer success teams to share the most common questions, concerns, and objections they hear from your audience, and prepare your answers and evidence accordingly.

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Charlie Gillette

Supporting our community and youth by volunteering with with great organizations.
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When you have a deep understanding of your target audience, you can tailor your demo and sales approach to their specific needs, preferences, and pain points. This is even more challenging in our virtual selling environment. The worst thing that happens is you jump on the virtual meeting to have a discussion and demonstration and there of ten folks in the virtual meeting and you don’t know who they are and what their roles are. The best way to avoid this? Ask your contact for a list of people who will be in a meeting and their roles. Complete a LinkedIn review of each of the participants so you and determine lefts, departments, and how long they have been with the company.

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2 Align on the value proposition

Your product demo should not only show how your product works, but also why it matters to your audience. Your value proposition is the core message that communicates how your product solves your audience's problems, meets their needs, and delivers benefits that are relevant and unique. To craft a compelling value proposition, you need to align with your sales and customer success teams on the main pain points, desired outcomes, and differentiators of your product for each audience segment. You can use frameworks like the value proposition canvas or the jobs-to-be-done theory to identify and articulate your value proposition clearly and concisely.

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Dario Dallefrate, MBA

Connecting Product, Sales, and Customers for Success | B2B Product Marketing | SaaS
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In this phase, it is essential to be specific. Before demoing your products, align with the specific account/prospect's needs and pain points, rather than the ones of the segment they belong to. You can get insights from the sales team's discovery calls or any other previous touchpoints between the account/prospect and your company.

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3 Choose the right features

Your product demo should not be a feature dump, but a feature showcase. You don't need to show every feature of your product, but only the ones that are most relevant, impactful, and appealing to your audience. Your sales and customer success teams can help you prioritize and select the features that matter most to your audience, based on their feedback, usage, and results. You can also use tools like feature scoring or feature prioritization matrices to rank and compare your features based on criteria like value, urgency, feasibility, and alignment. You should also focus on the benefits and outcomes of each feature, rather than the technical details and functionalities.

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4 Practice and get feedback

Your product demo should not be a one-time event, but a continuous improvement process. You need to practice and get feedback from your sales and customer success teams before, during, and after your product demo, to ensure that you deliver a smooth, engaging, and persuasive presentation. You can ask your sales and customer success teams to review your product demo script, slides, and visuals, and give you constructive suggestions on how to improve your content, structure, and delivery. You can also ask them to role-play as your audience and test your product demo in different scenarios, such as live, recorded, or web-based. You should also collect and analyze the data and feedback from your product demo sessions, such as attendance, engagement, questions, ratings, and conversions, and use them to optimize your product demo for future opportunities.

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5 Follow up and support

Your product demo should not be the end of the conversation, but the beginning of the relationship. You need to follow up and support your audience after your product demo, to reinforce your value proposition, address any questions or concerns, and move them along the sales funnel. Your sales and customer success teams can help you with this, as they have the skills and tools to nurture and retain your prospects and customers, and to upsell and cross-sell your product. You can work with your sales and customer success teams to create and execute a follow-up strategy, such as sending thank-you emails, sharing relevant resources, scheduling next steps, or offering free trials or discounts. You can also collaborate with your sales and customer success teams to provide ongoing support and education to your audience, such as answering queries, resolving issues, or offering training or webinars.

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6 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?

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How can you collaborate with sales and customer success teams to optimize your product demo?

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1 Understand your audience

2 Align on the value proposition

3 Choose the right features

4 Practice and get feedback

5 Follow up and support

6 Here’s what else to consider

Product Marketing

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How can you collaborate with sales and customer success teams to optimize your product demo?

1

2

3

4

5

6

1 Understand your audience

2 Align on the value proposition

3 Choose the right features

4 Practice and get feedback

5 Follow up and support

6 Here’s what else to consider

Product Marketing

Rate this article

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