#004 Mastering The Demo: The Fastest Way to Win Deals

Read Time: 3.5 min

One of the most underrated parts of the sales process is the demo.

Throwing s**t against the wall and seeing what sticks, hoping one of your features will peak the prospect's interest, will not work.

This is why prospects ghost.

You’re not in the business of selling a product. You’re in the business of solving a problem. You solve problems by first identifying where the source of pain is coming from. This is the goal of the discovery (qualification) call.

If you want to close deals with more predictability, it’s imperative you master the psychology of the demo.

In this issue I’m going to discuss how to structure your demo, what slides to include and how to get them to the next step. 

A Highly Personalized Demo Will Get You a Lot Further Than Feature Dumping.

Let’s dive right in. Here is the cadence (flow) of what a deck should look like.

Slide 1: Your Logo + Their Logo

• Underneath your logo put your one sentence value prop.

Slide 2: Current Situation

• This slide is to itemize the challenges, pain points and use cases they are looking to solve for as conveyed on the discovery. It’s the current way they’re handling the situation now.

• I frequently see founders add their bios and talk about themselves here. Don’t do this. No one cares. Unless they ask you what your background is and why you started the company, feel free to share those details. If not, skip it. Prospects are interested in one thing - “How can you solve my problems, and how quickly.” That’s it.

Slide 3: Key Objectives

• You itemize what their ideal situation looks like when it comes to managing the workflow. What are their goals? Anything they’d like to improve would go on this slide.

Slide 4: Demo Layout

• Here you discuss how you’re going to walk them through the demo. It should be based on their highest priority to lowest priority needs. In other words, if you have 5 key features and only 3 are applicable, don’t discuss the other 2. Start with the 3 that are most important.

• When you begin presenting, preface all the features you're about to show them by pointing to the pain they mentioned on the discovery, and directing them to the solution. 

Here's an example.

Me: (Name), you mentioned on our previous call that one of your biggest bottlenecks is having the team manually doing this work, as it eats up a lot of time that can be utilized elsewhere, right? (Pointing to the pain)

Prospect: Yes, that's correct.

Me: Ok cool. What I'm about to show you is how (your product) will automate this entire workflow and eliminate all the manual work. (Directing to the solution)

Following slide 4 you are going to demo your software. This should not take more than 10 minutes. Once you are finished showcasing the product, you will land on slide 5: Onboarding, and proceed through the rest of the deck. 

Slide 5: Onboarding

• Discuss what onboarding looks like. For ex: If the customer was to move forward, what would you need from them and what would getting started look like on the their side.

Slide 6: Expected Results

• Add an itemized list of what the expected results would be when using your product. If possible use a mix of qualitative and quantitative results. See my example below for some ideas of what the slide should look like. 

Slide 7: Pricing

• Show the pricing tiers and make a recommendation on what tier would be the best fit based on the needs they conveyed on the discovery.

Slide 8: The offer

• The offer would go on this slide. Anyone who has just subscribed, you can find the issue where I discuss how to craft a killer offer here.

Slide 9: Next Steps

• Add what the next steps would be from this point forward. There’s typically 2 options. (1) They’d like to move forward to the scoping call, or (2) they need to circle up internally and discuss if they’re going to move forward. Regardless, make sure you book a follow up call with a day/time with a calendar invite.

Here Are Five Important Takeaways:

1. A demo call she never be over 45 minutes.

2. Do not add bio slides to the deck. No one cares.

3. On slides 2, 3, and 6 go through one bullet point per slide.

4. When you present, point to the pain and direct to the solution.

5. Less is more. I’ve seen clients close 6 figure deals with simple decks. 

That’s all for today.

See you all next week!

 Darren

 P.S. If interested in learning more about Rampd you can book a call here.