Show, don’t tell.
It’s a rule of thumb in the sales world. When prospects understand vividly how a product or service can help them, they’re more likely to convert to customers. That’s why salespeople lean so heavily on product demos.
Yet despite their proliferation, sales demonstrations are notoriously challenging, even when they’re handled by top sellers. For one, most sales demos are operated with live products, such as in the case of software. Unfortunately, this opens the door for other factors to come into play that might cause hiccups.
A famous example is when Steve Jobs couldn’t connect his iPhone 4 to WiFi in the middle of a huge presentation. Though the faux pas didn’t tarnish Apple’s sheen, it illustrated how easily an outside influence like WiFi instability could wreck a demo.
Another problem with sales demonstrations is that most aren’t customized to the client. Instead, they’re constructed to appeal to a wide range of audiences. This makes them simpler for the salesperson, but not as powerful overall. An individualized demo offers a more effective way to put the prospective buyer into the picture. However, individualization of actual product demos can take time and involve other departments in the process.
A final downside to most demos is that they do their job and nothing else. In other words, they exist outside of software programs and data-collection tools. After a sales demo, a salesperson really doesn’t have much insight into how well the demo performed. Rather, the seller is forced to guesstimate the true effectiveness of one demo over another.
Does this mean that sales demos are destined to be clunky and unpredictable—if necessary— tools?
Not at all, especially with the emergence of a cloud-based demo platform from Walnut, a trendy new startup that’s making waves in the sales space. As a maker of versatile sales demo solutions, Walnut effectively overcomes obstacles to streamline successful sales demonstrations by offering a few key advantages over ordinary demo platforms.
- Sales teams can customize demos themselves
Walnut takes away the hassle of bringing other team members into the experience by creating a one-of-a-kind demo for each client. Without knowing a single line of code, sales employees can effectively build demos that speak to the heart of their prospects.
How does this work in a real-world situation?
A salesperson using Walnut would have the power to generate a compelling, original demo that included all the information the prospect needed to see—and nothing extraneous. Then, the cloud editor lets the team edit most of the visual elements of the dashboard, much like they would on a Wix editor.
- Sales professionals receive a wealth of analytics.
After each demo, the Walnut interface collects and analyzes numerous data points. The result? Sales teams have an opportunity to gauge which demos worked best, as well as see numerical evidence of a demo’s effectiveness.
Having this type of insightful knowledge can ramp up a sales team’s ability to iterate demos and figure out which ones work best. And everything will be backed by hard numbers.
- Sales employees don’t have to worry about glitches.
A Walnut-based sales demo isn’t like one in the “wild west” where anything can happen. Every demo is constructed in a closed environment, which takes away the chance that an unexpected influence could affect the demo performance.
Of course, the demo is still the basic product with all its features. That doesn’t change. It’s just self-contained to avoid embarrassing moments for salespeople.
- Sales staffers can automate demos.
After determining which customized Walnut sales demos are consistently performing at high levels, sales leaders can promote the sharing and automation of those demos. This type of team-based crowdsourced knowledge can help whole teams make quantum leaps upward in terms of improving sales numbers and maybe tightening sales cycles.
When these kinds of systems can be tweaked and automated, they give more power to sales teams eager to do well. Commissioned sales staff will especially appreciate having more tools to increase their paychecks.
Everyone who sells needs to consider new ways to break through objections and improve conversion rates. Walnut helps talented sales professionals increase their skills and impress prospective clients. It’s a bold step forward in the sales landscape, which has needed a differentiated demo disruptor for years.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=znxQOPFg2mo&authuser=1
(Syndicated press content is neither written, edited or endorsed by ED Times)
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