Advice for sales demo?

by Nico Prananta

After releasing Coparrot yesterday, I had this idea to demo it to developers in some companies. I then contacted some friends and asked them if I could give them a short demo about it in their company. And one friend said their company is interested! We have set up time for next week.

It's gonna be my first time in my life to do a sales demo. Any advice? I don't really have problems presenting and pitching. But any suggestions on what I should do or even what not to do will be great! Or maybe anyone can share their experience.

My hope is of course to be able to get them to be my first paid customer. 🤞

posted to

on January 19, 2022

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Ok, so I do demos as an engineer in Sales for a day-job. Here's my list of tips, YMMV:
- Tell a story: don't just present the "facts and features" of your solution, tell them a story of how it will solve their problem
- Make it interactive and informal if possible, encourage them to interject questions in the middle if they have them. This usually spurns really good conversation and you get solid customer insight (maybe you find a new feature or improvement in the conversation)
- If you have some real-world use cases with metrics, drive home how useful your solution is with some facts and figures at the end of them demo. Think things like "Improved XYZ's API development time by 15%" and then probe to see what they could do with 15% savings on their dev team. This will interest the managers the most.
- Don't be afraid to say "I don't know." Hopefully, you will know the answers to any and all questions, but if you have to take a note and get back to them, do it. When you follow-up, it's a good time to probe again and keep the conversation going.
Good luck on your demo! I hope you knock it outta the park!
jcal93

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2 years ago
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  Awesome advice here.
  
  At my day job we had a presentation from someone who was responsible to coach tech startups into pitching and here is what I rememer from his training session (in no particular order, most important things in bold):
  
  Tell a story where your potential customer can relate
  
  Structure your pitch as:
  
  I'm going to tell you...
  
  Tell whatever you have to tell
  
  I told you...
  
  People resonate with statistics, numbers (esp. regarding the bottom line)
  
  Focus on the why you are doing what you are doing. Why does it matter? Why should they care.
  
  Practice, Practice, Practice. You can't ever practice a pitch too much.
  
  If you have slides to present, one idea per slide, really large font and don't read what's on the slides
  martdi
  
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  2 years ago
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    thanks!
    
    nicopr
    
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    2 years ago
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  ooo awesome! thanks a lot 👍
  
  nicopr
  
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  2 years ago
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Similar story as @jcal93, I'm a sales engineer and do demos daily!
1. Focus on the value behind every feature. Instead of saying we let you create API mocks, you can instead focus on how Coparrot lets teams save X% of their time (which translates to cost) during development because they don't need to spin up a back-end just to be able to test their front-end requests.
2. If possible and you know the pain, you can lead with a small story that tells them what problems companies go through, and how you've solved it for someone else.
3. Try to use the "Tell-Show-Tell" approach where you first tell them what you'll be showing them, then show them, and then tell them what you just showed and what it could mean for them. This way they're clear on what to expect and can easily follow you along!
4. You know your product best but they don't. Go through all the screens very slowly and explain what you're doing. Avoid doing something on your screen while they might be asking a question because it means you won't be paying attention to what they're saying in the moment!
5. Lastly, if they interrupt and ask to see a specific feature or section and you have it planned for later part of the demo, be firm and tell them "I'll be touching on that when I cover topic X" so you can maintain your flow. But judge accordingly. If its a really important thing, just show it instead of saving best of the last.
You got this!
oneisprime

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2 years ago
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  thank you so much! ❤️
  
  nicopr
  
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  2 years ago
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    Did you get a chance to apply the tips in this post for other demos?
    
    oneisprime
    
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    2 years ago
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      Yes! I presented the problems and pain points that led me to creating coparrot, did the tell-show-tell approach, and showed them what they can achieve using coparrot slowly.
      
      nicopr
      
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      2 years ago
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        Great, glad to see you're applying it! I noticed you said you were struggling with next steps after the demo.
        
        Are you asking them to sign up on the spot or do they have more questions? Usually, you can just say next steps can involve pilot or on boarding session to do a quick trial. You can even leave behind a video recording or interactive demo if you've created one so they remember you afterwards.
        
        oneisprime
        
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        2 years ago
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Hey Nico. I saw this post originally last week and was keen to see how the demo went?

I have worked in SAAS sales for the last 15 years and am now at Enterprise level.

Would be happy to help disect or anyone in the Indie community that ever needs advice on this sort of topic. Just to say Im not a consultant but someone who is genuinely thinking about setting up a sales community/course on this topic, designed for Indie Hackers especially.

Please feel free to get in touch.

jonoproctor

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2 years ago
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  Hi @jonoproctor, I just did it last Friday. It was ok, overall positive responses. But evaluating myself, I think I lacked a proper closing act, I'm not sure how to end the meeting or presentation that can make them to give me their credit cards and subscribe.
  
  nicopr
  
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  2 years ago
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