Demo movies are the way in which ahead for any Solutions Consultant or enterprise gross sales staff chief. Learn learn how to effectively use demo movies to speed up your technical gross sales cycle and shut extra offers.
I do know from expertise that scaling Solutions Consultants (SCs) and gross sales groups as a complete is usually a problem, as I’ve witnessed the way it can take as much as 24 months to completely mint a brand new Solutions Consultant. Demo movies are the answer for rising B2B software program firms when scaling their enterprise gross sales groups and, particularly, their technical gross sales groups.
Due to the various function, Solutions Consultants should be capable to stroll a prospect by way of a product demo, talk about in-depth challenges and scope options to these challenges. With such a protracted time-to-value, rising headcount isn’t the reply for high-growth firms with out using demo movies.
- Contents
- 1. Increasing Solutions Consultants’ Efficiency Through Demo Videos
- 2. Reducing the Number of ‘Wasted’ Demos with Demo Videos
- 3. Delivering More Client Value with Demo Videos
- 4. Demo Videos Provide More Time for Differentiation
- 5. Stakeholder Mapping Through Demo Video Analytics
- 6. Demo Videos Add Value
This is a problem I used to be lately dealing with in my very own group. We wanted to scale quick in addition to enhance our aggressive benefit and regain management of the gross sales cycle. It appeared like an unimaginable process, however I regarded in the direction of using demo movies within the gross sales cycle for the reply.
I, and plenty of others, consider this would be the way forward for B2B gross sales. In truth, according to Vidyard, using video for gross sales has exploded lately as almost 60% of groups are utilizing video of their buyer and gross sales conversations. Additionally, 51% of organizations are already utilizing product demo movies of their gross sales cadences.
In this text, I’ll take you thru my experiences in introducing demo videos to the technical sales cycle.
This episode of Sales Stuff Explained will present you learn how to put together for and execute the proper gross sales presentation and SaaS demo in simply 10 minutes.
Increasing Solutions Consultants’ Efficiency Through Demo Videos
In order to scale our firm quick, the primary level of focus was to extend the effectivity of our SCs. This would enable us to cowl extra alternatives available in the market with out rising headcount.
Many organizations will acknowledge this problem; you’ve got a short discovery (or wants evaluation) name with a prospect and this results in a reasonably customary demo video, displaying off all the perfect performance of your product. The demo goes effectively, however the alternative in the end goes chilly.
Perhaps the demo wasn’t correctly tailor-made to the prospect’s wants? Perhaps you solely had contact with a single stakeholder? Either means, the chance has exited the gross sales cycle and the hassle spent on the invention and demo has been wasted.
What proportion of demos are wasted like this? How many alternatives exit the gross sales cycle after the demo stage? 30%? 40%? More?
That was after I started exploring the introduction of video into the demo course of. I made a decision that we might ship out high-level demo movies of our product earlier than the dwell demonstration. Of course, these movies needed to be tailor-made based mostly on the discovery call, displaying the weather of the answer that can be most useful to the prospect.
Gathering analytics on who has watched the demo movies, can act as a secondary stage of qualification. If a prospect can’t spare the time to observe a 15-minute video, then perhaps it’s good to change your messaging, ache level angle or video length.
Reducing the Number of ‘Wasted’ Demos with Demo Videos
The influence of this for us was tangible and actual. As I’m certain is the case in lots of organizations, SCs are a finite useful resource. Account Executives are vying for the perfect assets they consider are required for his or her alternatives. This can usually pose a problem the place we wish to guarantee the proper assets are being assigned to the most important, most strategic offers.
By introducing demo movies into the enterprise gross sales cycle, we’re ready to make use of them as a brand new stage of qualification. We now solely enable SCs to carry out dwell demos after each a remote prospecting discovery name has taken place and all stakeholders have watched the 15-20-minute overview demo video of the answer.
By hunting down these non-opportunities, it permits SCs to take a extra precious function within the group. Rather than repeating overview demos for alternatives that might not be correctly certified, they will focus extra of their time on the bigger, or extra strategic offers.
The people at PostBeyond created an amazing 2-minute product demo video to offer their prospects some context earlier than a gathering.
Delivering More Client Value with Demo Videos
As effectively as hunting down the non-opportunities, we discovered that sending demo movies of the answer earlier than the dwell demo can lead to different advantages. Stakeholders come to the demo assembly with a base stage of training of what it’s your product does and the way it works. This means you may spend your precious face-time on a very powerful areas to your prospect fairly than giving a harbour tour of your resolution.
It hit dwelling for me what a game-changer using demo movies is within the following instance.
I had performed a discovery (wants evaluation) name with a prospect and had despatched them the related demo movies based mostly on their necessities. Before going into the dwell demo, each single stakeholder had watched that tailor-made video. When I started the demo, I requested in the event that they want to see the primary a part of the answer once more. They would have already seen this within the overview demo, however this was the bread and butter of the product which we might anticipate to cowl in nearly each demo.
Amazingly, they replied “No thanks”.
Instead, that they had an inventory of questions based mostly on the demo movies. I demoed solely the areas that had been most essential to them in a really agile atmosphere. Not solely did this end in a extremely tailor-made demo for the consumer, however it additionally created a much more conversational strategy, which ends up in constructing all-important rapport with stakeholders.
Matt Hall from Woodway UK made an unboxing demo video to point out prospects the place they’re going fallacious with packaging, and the way he can assist. To double down he additionally used the Vidyard bubble characteristic over high of his unboxing video in order that he might stroll the prospect by way of the pitch.
Demo Videos Provide More Time for Differentiation
Most importantly, as a result of SCs are not inclined to carry out ‘harbour tour’ or ‘art-of-the-possible’ demos, they’ve extra time to concentrate on the consumer’s particular wants in addition to on the areas of the product which is able to assist it stand out from the competitors.
Ultimately, with stakeholders attending demo conferences having a base stage of training of the answer, extra time will be spent on covering the prospect’s questions, particular necessities and aggressive differentiators.
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Over the years, I’ve witnessed first-hand the dangers of participating with a single stakeholder. There is a danger of the chance going chilly. They may cease replying to emails, they could change roles and even depart the group. If there isn’t a relationship with different stakeholders, this could jeopardize a possibility.
An enormous a part of the thought of introducing demo movies to the gross sales cycle was the flexibility to regain management of a gross sales cycle by monitoring who had watched every demo video and particularly who it had been forwarded to. The expectation was that we might be higher outfitted to map out stakeholders within the gross sales cycle and mitigate the danger of a dependency on a single particular person.
By gathering analytics on who has seen demo movies (and for the way lengthy), we are able to construct an image of how engaged every stakeholder is. If they don’t trouble to observe the demo video, maybe the chance isn’t as actual because it appears. The identical is true in the event that they merely skip by way of demo movies with out paying consideration. For this purpose, we now require all stakeholders to have watched an summary demo video earlier than assigning an SC to a possibility to cut back the variety of wasted demos.
RouteThis used video to showcase their app and gauge the curiosity stage of the particular person watching based mostly on their viewing habits.
Conversely, if we are able to see good engagement in demo videos, we all know the chance has legs. What’s extra, if the demo will get shared across the stakeholder’s friends there’s clearly engagement in that group within the gross sales course of. Account Executives can see who a demo video has been forwarded to which helps construct a stakeholder map of that chance. More usually than not, these are stakeholders who wouldn’t have been found by way of a gross sales cycle that didn’t make the most of video.
Although this was an anticipated final result of the challenge, what I didn’t anticipate was the size of this may influence the gross sales cycle. We have found (on common) greater than two new stakeholders on every alternative. That has taken an enormous quantity of danger out of the pipeline the place alternatives had been beforehand depending on a single stakeholder.
Demo Videos Add Value
By using video in the sales cycle, we now have elevated the effectivity of SCs by lowering the variety of ‘wasted’ demos. This means we’re in a position to cowl a better variety of alternatives with out rising headcount. We now have a much better understanding of the extent of engagement of alternatives as we are able to see who has watched every video. This feeds into our stakeholder map for every account and helps scale back the danger of alternatives with a single stakeholder.
But most significantly, we are able to now add extra worth to purchasers and prospects. SCs are typically extremely expert people who’ve an unlimited in-depth understanding of the challenges solved by software program. Instead of losing their time with ‘art-of-the-possible’ demos, they will have deeper discovery conversations and assist problem their prospects’ mind-set. This will certainly result in happier prospects in the long term.
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