What tips do you have for creating effective sales demo scripts - ones that both convey the key info about your product while still being something sales will actually use?

Tie to your Pitch — ...so that your combined pitch and demo tells one cohesive story. Tell-show-tell. Tell = pitch where you describe the value of your solution. Show = demo where you demonstrate the capabilities that align to your value. Tell (again) = summarize and connect the value together between pitch and demo.  Use User Scenarios — Think of specific user scenarios that you can tell a story around. This makes it easier to follow and easier to remember. By using a set of core scenarios, you ...Read More

In my view, a demo should talk directly to the persona you are dealing with. This means you need to tailor the flow to address that persona’s key challenges, needs, and the situation they live in. I am not a big fan of super-scripted demos. Every salesperson or sales engineer will have their own way of presenting the story, so I like to focus more on the key value proposition I want to make sure it gets clearly articulated at different points. Some may see a product demo as the opportunity to te ...Read More

The best demo's i've seen in my experience we're not super scripted but rather were adapted to the buyer/prospects needs. In an ideal scenario the discover and first calls have helped set the stage well ahead of a rep jumping into a demo. This means a rep has the information required to start on the highest level overview of the product, and then digging into the parts of the product that will bring the most value to the buyer. Stay brief and highlevel and let the buyer guide on where they'd lik ...Read More

Demo scrips and pitch decks can be very difficult to land, especially if you're dealing with a generally successful sales org which may be less open to change. It's super important that you get alignment with Sales so they don't just look at your deliverables as just a "marketing" thing and ignore them. Some tips: Make sure you have alignment with Sales leadership on the need for a demo script and the overall positioning/messaging they want their reps using. The last thing you want is for them t ...Read More

This one ties back up to the question about good sales partnerships. :) I think the best way to create successful scripts is to do so in partnership with your pre-sales team. They have more knowledge of what is going on in a buyer’s head during each stage of your sales process. Hopefully, this means someone in sales engineering or solutions consulting that can partner up with you on any new demo or updates to existing demos. If that is not available to you, then go to your account executive BFF. ...Read More

Work closely with the highest performing sales reps to understand how they're pitching the product. They typically have "road tested" a bunch of different approaches and have figured out what works already. Take the best sound bytes and incorporate it into your script. The best part about this approach is you have instant buy in from the biggest influencers on the sales team. I've even had success in asking the successful sales reps to participate and even lead part of the script training...they ...Read More