How Can You Run Demos That Actually Convert? | Demo Best Practices

What is up everybody? Welcome to another episode of Payrollin'. In today's episode, I'm going to walk through some demo best practices. That's right, when you have to give a demo for whether it be your payroll, HR, timekeeping software, I'm going to give you some best practices for how to make the most out of your time and the prospect's time to set you both up for success and ideally, uh, for you to be selected as the right vendor to provide the solution to the client. So stay tuned, we're going to get rocking and rolling right after this. All right, so we're going to talk about demos today, and this is an important topic to me because the first thing we want to think about is whether or not we should even be demoing our systems at all. So we work in the small business space, so we don't always demo. We do more times than we don't, but not always. A lot of times folks are buying based on the value we're providing. The software can be a bit of an afterthought, but more often than not, you're going to need to demo. And here's the reality. Most people I have seen in my career can't demo for crap. And so, oh, sorry, excuse my language there, but no, this is for real. Most people take the prospect on a harbor cruise. It lasts forever. It touches on every single thing in the system. They click 4 million buttons in the process, and they really just lose the person. And I think the reality is, if you're a salesperson and you're listening to this, you maybe haven't sat on the other side and had a B2B demo done where you've had to sit through somebody clicking and firing through all these different components of the system. And that's a problem. So once you've been on the other side of the screen and you hear somebody just kind of show up and throw up, you're much more sensitive to it. And so hopefully we can give you some points of empathy, some best practices. I'm going to walk you through our process, how we approach a demo, and then just give you some tips and tricks along the way that will help to make your demos more effective. More efficient, and a better time for both you and the prospect. All right, so let's go ahead and dive right in. So first and foremost, if your organization has sales engineers or solutions consultants who do the demos for your salespeople, this would be a really good thing to share with them as well. One of my early recognition, or earlier things I realized in my career in this industry, was that if I want to be successful, I need to be able to demo my own solutions. Because when I was left to the solutions engineer, the sales engineer, whatever the heck their title was back in the day— I think we called them solutions consultant— I mean, really, it was— I was up to their mercy of the quality of the demo. And while they knew a lot more about the depth and breadth of the solutions than I did, more often than not, the prospect didn't want to see all the stuff they knew. So it was kind of a waste of time anyway. So they're showing them they're going a mile deep on every little feature and talking and clicking and going through all this stuff that the prospect didn't need to see. And ultimately they ended up losing me more deals than they won me because they, they didn't know when to stop. They took them on that proverbial harbor cruise. So if you have sales engineers, make sure that they're sitting through some form of training on how to be more succinct, how to make sure that they're tying it back to what the prospect actually wants and what it means to that prospect instead of trying to show off all the power of all the bells and whistles inside your system, because that's not what's going to win you deals. So, and then I want to visit that question of should you even be doing a demo? More often than not, like I said, we work with those small businesses and the owner could care less a lot of the time because they're either not going to be the one administering from the small business side or they're just not going to be interacting. They just want to know what we're going to do. They don't necessarily want to see how the sausage is made. So sometimes we can get away with just a proposal, a pitch meeting, but we make these one in the same. And if you take a step back and look at the sales process, everybody's sales process is going to be mapped somewhat similarly up and down the line. We're going to have, you know, some sort of gaining access process that initial first date or first meeting with a prospect. During that first date, you may continue to go further. You might take them on a— do some form of analysis discovery call during the first date. You may also do your demo and pitch during the first date. I don't typically suggest it because you're just not going to have the opportunity to really understand their needs and develop that relationship that it's going to take to win the business in the course of one meeting unless it's a warm, very warm referral that somebody has sent over to you. And I can tell you that your competitors are going to be taking them through a sales process where they're going to get in front of them multiple times. And if you try to condense everything down into one meeting for what you think is efficiency for the prospect and for you, ultimately it's going to cost you in the long run. And I say this from experience. When I was the only salesperson here, which I was for years, I oftentimes, for my own time's sake, wanted to try to condense everything into one meeting or as few meetings as possible. But the reality is you develop that relationship over the course of those meetings. The people that develop the relationships alongside the great solutions, the great tools, the great process are going to win the deal. So don't try to rush things just because you think you're doing a service for yourself or for the prospect, when in reality you may be doing both of you a disservice when you know that ADP rep's going to try to spend 8 hours with them over the course of the next 2 weeks and develop a tighter bond. And I literally just heard this this week from somebody, one of our prospects who's with ADP, said, why, why did you guys choose them? Well, the sales rep was super nice. She was over here all the time. She was, you know, we formed a great bond, a great relationship. I get it. I personally don't have time to spend that kind of time with, with prospects and clients, but you've got to figure out a way to reach that balance of being able to spend enough time with a prospect to develop the, the relationship and sell the value while also, um, you know, providing the best solution. And so I'm not saying you need to go around and do a bunch of glad-handing, all that stuff. Anyways, I'm getting sideways here. Let's talk about the demo and should you even be doing it. Let's talk about the workflow once you get into that demo process and how to flow through that, or how we flow through it, and just a few things that make sense that I think some people miss on. So first of all, you should have an agenda and be very well prepared going into any demo meeting. So we have a deck that we use along with it, a, um, a Google Slides deck where the first couple slides are very simple. We're setting the agenda, we're revisiting the pains that they shared with us in the first meeting. So ideally they've shared some pain with you. They're not talking to you just 'cause this is a nice to have. If they're completely happy with their current vendor and you're sitting there trying to pitch them and demo them and explain to them why they should change to you, you got some fake pipeline going here. They need to have some real pain. And we walk them through— we, we have what we call the 5 pains, the 5 most common pains that our prospects face when they come to us. And then we'll walk them through those 5 pains in the initial meeting and try to determine which of those most aligns with the pains that they're having right now. And usually it boils down to a couple of those, if not, you know, a little bit of all of them. And so we'll take notes and we'll use back some of those words when we get back into this demo meeting. We're warming up for the demo. We're saying, all right, in the first meeting you told us that you're tired of waiting on hold for 45 minutes every time you call in to get support. You told us that you're tired of using software that's inferior to what you know some of your peers in the market are using. You told us— so we're uncovering and rediscovering some of that pain. And also asking them to say it back to us, right? Is this, is this still true? Is this still a problem? Has anything changed since that last meeting? And really just making sure that we're on the same page as far as why we're there in the first place. And you cannot overstate the pain because the pain is what's going to— we're not selling vitamins here, right? Going back to the nice to have, and I think we talked about this on a recent episode, we're selling pain reliever. The moment you start selling vitamins, you're dead in the water because then there's no reason to switch. There's no reason why they should do business with you in the first place. All right, so set the agenda, revisit the pain that the prospect has, and then finally, I want to double-click on something I just mentioned a moment ago, and that's preparation for the meeting. So make sure if you're going to visit somebody in person you're getting there early, you know what room you're gonna be in, how you're gonna share the information. Do you need an HDMI cable? Are they gonna have, you know, make sure you understand the environment that you're going into. I know that in 2022, it's less, you know, less and less of in-person demos, more and more common to have them over Zoom nowadays. So you've got a lot more control of your environment. And quite frankly, that is awesome. But once again, if you have the opportunity to go see someone and you have the time and they will let you come see them, go see them. Relationships are built in person, not on Zoom. We can build a pretty nice relationship over Zoom, but I can tell you right now, your competitors, if they are in town, they are going to try to get down there and get in person. So if you can help it, go visit the prospect. All right, and so with that, not just having, you know, understanding the technological setup, but log into the system that you're going to demo Walk through the path that you're going to take them on. Make sure you don't hit any errors. Make sure you don't— oops, I forgot to click here and I should have clicked there. Oh, that report's not where I remember it. Even if you've done it 100 times, trying to just remember it on the spot when you're getting ready to demo is a recipe for failure. You know, we have this thing in our payroll system where it, you know, the demo account always changes, you know, keeps rolling forward as far as the actual dates. But the pay date might get behind and then you get this error when you get the wrong pay date. And so if you don't, if you don't just make that one teeny change before you go in and demo, then you've got to fix it in real time. It just looks pushy. It's just a couple more clicks. Every click matters in a demo. We want to have as few clicks as humanly possible. So, you know, and if you need to brand it, if you can brand it. So for ours, I'll always try to get a sample employee with a name that's related to what they do. I'll try to put their logo up in the corner. I want to make it look and feel as much like they're already in the driver's seat as humanly possible. And so I want to be fully prepared. I want to make sure I've got all my notes from the last meeting. I want to set this meeting up for success, make sure it's prepared to run smoothly, and that I can quickly and easily articulate the value in our systems so they can see that. So how do I do that? Well, I think about it in terms of 3 main pillars. So what are the 3 major features, functions that are going to press the biggest outcomes that are related to the pains that they've shared with me. So I want to think in terms of means, does, is. So what does this mean to the prospect? So if we're going to automate our onboarding, what does that actually mean to them? That means a ton of saved time because right now they're sending DocuSigns, they're downloading them, and then they're having to email them to somebody else, and then that person's then uploading them into a Dropbox, which which is the employee file, or even worse, they're printing them out. And then they're going to have to, you know, they've got a different piece of documentation that's in paper and they're, you know, uploading that and they're putting it into this system that's not made for it. So I want to think in terms of what is that, what does all that mean to them? Well, it's going to save them time. It's going to help them be more compliant and it's going to make for a better experience for the employee. So maybe those are my 3 bullets of what that means. So what does it do? So means, does, is. Well, it's paperless onboarding. They can complete their W-4, their I-9, any of your other agreements that you have. And then what is it? Well, it's just an online HR system. So we want, we want to work backwards there. And this is one of the biggest struggles I see in a demo is that people, they focus on the is, they focus on the does, and they don't focus on the means. So we want to come in prepared, understanding what will it mean to this company if we can implement the right solution for them. And that can mean a variety of different things based on what your company offers. All right. So next up, the biggest mistake, one of the bigger mistakes— I feel like I've said the biggest mistake a couple of times, but another huge mistake I see people make is not stopping and asking legitimate questions. I see people stop and ask all the time, Do you have any questions? Which is just going to get you questions only about the system, or no questions, because if you are taking too long and you're demoing and showing me a bunch of stuff that I don't want to see, I'm not going to ask any questions because I don't want you to drone on any further. I want you to shut up and move on so I can get this over with, and all I'm thinking about is the next meeting. So you need to stop and ask more powerful questions at each of these three pillars. What problem does this solve for you? Make them say that in their own words. What problem will this solve for you and your business? How do you see yourself using it? Can you see yourself using it? Start to get these objections teased out in the earliest phase possible. That's the other big component of the demo is I want to get your objections all of your concerns, all of your wants, all of your needs. I want everything on the table at this point because if I haven't already proposed my solution to you pricing-wise, I'm going to do it at the end of this demo, which that's a whole other story. They should know the pricing before you demo. The last thing you want to do is get all the way to the end of a demo, you've spent hours with this prospect and working on this, and then you, you give them sticker shock and they have no budget for it. Make sure you understand what their budget is. You know the old acronym BANT, B-A-N-T, Budget, authority, need, timing. I need to make sure that they've got the budget. I need to make sure I've got the right people on this demo that can actually make the decision. Not asking at the onset of this, hey, is there anybody else who's going to be involved in this decision-making process? They need to be at that meeting. The last thing you want to be doing is selling to somebody who's then got to go sell to somebody on your behalf. That does not work. And you'll get a lot of people try to push you down, particularly in the larger organizations you're gonna talk to, that they're gonna try to view the demo and then go and, you know, first thing that's gonna happen is their boss or the CEO or whoever's gonna look at the price and go, "Oh, that's too much. I can't, we can't afford this." And they're not gonna have the ability to state your case as well as you can as to what value you provide and why that cost is what it is. So you need to have those folks at the table and, you know, the simple way to say is, look, it's mandatory for us internally. It's one of our policies that we have to have everybody who's involved in making the decision on the demo meeting. Is it possible that we can reschedule this for a time when Mr. CEO will be available? Make sure they're there. All right, so questions, stop and ask the questions. What problem will this solve for you? How do you see yourself using it? Can you see yourself using it? What impact would this have on your business if you were to roll out a solution like this? And you don't need to ask each of these 3 questions about each of the 3 pillars that you're treeing up to, but it's important that you get these 3 questions out at least a couple times, at least once during this conversation, because they need to see themselves in the car, right? There's a reason why you test drive a car. There's a reason— you've heard the puppy dog close— you take the dog home and, you know, that you can return it if you want. Nobody ever returns a dog. They need to be able to actually see themselves in the system, in the solution. And so you've got a demo where you're sharing some visual assets. You've also got stories. So now I'm connecting, hey, you've got pain X and I've got solution Y, and my client Z had the same pain and now they're using this, and here's what it looks like on the other side. And so make sure you've got those questions in your back pocket as you're going through your demo. One of my favorite things that ever happened in a demo— so we go through and we demo and we pitch this deal, and it was back when I worked for a big national company, and I was just kind of riding shotgun with this guy. He was, he was a senior producer. He'd sell about $1 million a year. He's one of the top in the country. And he was awesome, just a no-nonsense guy. And so we're sitting around this conference table. It's one of these, um, it's called country clubs. It's country club. We're sitting in their conference room around a table. It's a big table. Building itself almost looked like an old schoolhouse in this section of it, but a little bit older, but in kind of a hallway outside with some chairs out there and some place to mill around outside the room. We get done with the demo and he starts asking us his questions to try to close, which you should be doing at the end. You should be refreshing them on their current situation, telling them what better looks like, you know, asking those questions that we talked about, starting to get a sense of their timeline. Is there anything we're missing? And they said, yeah, we're going to talk it over. And most people, when they say, you know, there was 6 of them, I believe, at the table, 5 or 6 What would 9 out of 10 of us do when we heard that? Say, okay, great. You know, we'd probably still try to probe, what are some of the objections that you might see when I leave the room? There's some things you might do. So they tell him, we're going to talk it over, and he says, great, I'll be out in the hallway. And so we go out and sit out in the hallway, and he literally just straight-faced— like, they started laughing, they thought he was kidding— and he's like, I mean, you know, we've got a few extra minutes right now still left. I'll be out in the hallway. You guys can talk it over and let me know what questions you have or what the path forward is from here. And so two things in that: A, be bold. Be like my man Doug. That was a bold move, one of the most bold ones I've seen out on a sales call. I loved it. He ended up winning the deal. It was a nice deal. They took their time in there. They talked through the issues. And, you know, they appreciated the fact that he was so direct and, and was really there to solve a problem for them. But B, make sure that you don't leave the room without the objections that you can overcome. It's kind of like that same situation we talked about earlier. If they're trying to sell for you to the CEO, that's not going to work. You want to be there when the objections are made. So now as we start to wrap the demo up and we think about some of those things that, that we want to uncover, make sure that you're in the room to handle the objections. So asking a lot of questions, hitting back through your discovery at the end, and making sure that you're not just talking at them throughout are so critical. Dig in, get all those objections out. And a couple of other things I want to touch base on just good visuals when you think about these demos is, you know, you think about, you've heard it called a cooking demo before. Why is it called a cooking demo? Well, when you watch a cooking show, what do they do? They, they show a big tray of stuff that's already pre-sliced. They slice up a couple of peppers, a couple of onions in front of you to make it look like they're doing a lot of the work live. They start throwing it into a pan, and the next thing you know, they walk over to the oven and they pull out a fully cooked version of the dish. They don't make you stand there and watch them get all the dishes out, put all the ingredients out on the cutting board, cut them up one at a time. I mean, think about how much prep time goes into cooking a good meal. It can take an hour of prep time before you actually cook, and then the cooking time on top of it. They don't have time for that in a 22-minute television program. And you don't— and your prospects don't have time for that during a demo either. Get that thing ready to pull it right out of the oven as soon as you get on the call with them. Don't make them watch you dice up the onions and, you know, get logged in and do all these things. Like, be ready to go and start. I always like to start— we talked about those 3 pillars— I always like to start at the one that's like the mic drop one right from the start. So if that paperless onboarding was the thing that's just, you know, they're hiring 10 people a month and it's just a huge pain and it's really creating a lot of compliance concerns and creating a ton of administrative work for somebody, I'm gonna hit that thing right out of the gate. I wanna come in hot and address a need and get them engaged right from the jump. Don't save, you know, for some big splash surprise ending. You don't bury the lead. Get 'em engaged from the start, get 'em on the edge of their seat so that they're ready as you continue to progress forward. And the rest is just gravy. All right, so we also wanna make sure, you know, we're not leaving anything on the table as far as our other solutions. It's a great time. People are going to have selected in their mind what are the solutions that we need. You can show them some upsell opportunities during a demo as well. Hey, if you wanted to go down X path, show them some of those things. This, this not only does a good job of teasing some other things that you could potentially sell either now or down the road, but it also affirms the fact that, hey, look, I'm not picking the most expensive thing right from the start. People don't wanna buy the most expensive package. They wanna buy something middle of the road. So you wanna show them that there's more above and beyond and create some anchoring towards your middle package, whatever that might be, whatever, which one they're looking at. You wanna give them some anchoring and know that there's another tier above this. And then finally, I cannot echo this enough. You cannot ask too many questions during a demo. I have sat on more demos as a business owner where somebody just shows up and spews at me for 25, 30 minutes and asks me, "You got any questions? You got any questions?" a couple of times throughout. They clearly didn't ask me any questions in the first meeting. Heck, half of these systems nowadays, you can just book a 30-minute demo from their site and they don't ask you any questions. You just show up for a demo from a Calendly link and they just start spewing at you. On why their system's so great, and they don't even know your use case. So make sure you fully understand the use case, make sure you get to know the company well, make sure you get to know that individual well, and you can't do that if you're talking the whole time. So asking good questions, and then that takes us back to the end of the meeting. We want to refresh that current situation, we want to refresh what their end goal is, and we want to refresh what their timeline is. Is. So if you follow these tips, I think you're going to see some much higher success rates with your demos. We want to make sure that people see as much as they need to see, but not too much and not too little. We want the Goldilocks demo when we get in here. And at the end, before you go, you want to make sure that you've validated that budget, authority, need, and timing— who, what, when, and why and book your next meeting from the meeting. So if you're not going to get that business today, or you're not going to get that confirmation, which you should have teed up in your first meeting and at the beginning of this meeting, when this is done, if it makes sense for us to do business together, I'm going to ask you for your business. Are you able to move forward with us if this makes business sense for your organization? Teeing up the close ahead of time makes it a lot softer when you're asking for the business. And don't be scared to ask for the business, y'all. People want you to close them. They want to know what the sales process is. They want to know when it ends. They want to know what the transition looks like. And so at this point, you should be setting up those next steps. This is a great time for the assumptive close. Hey, sounds like this meets all of your needs. It's, it's on budget. We've got all the decision makers at the table. Here's what it looks like from here. We're going to have a kickoff call. It will take 30 days from the time the kickoff call. We're going to have this number of calls inside the kickoff, or inside of that 30 days. We're going to start asking for this information next week. Go ahead and start moving forward if they're moving forward with you. So if you have some other great demo best practices you'd like to share, please drop them in the comments in the LinkedIn Payroll and Podcast page. Make sure you're following us there. If you have any questions, anything I can help you with, just ping me at matt@guru.co. And thank you so much for joining us today. I hope this helps you during your selling season in 2022. And here's to a rising tide lifting all boats. Thanks for joining.