Giving a sales demo is hard work. Giving a really good sales demo is even harder, especially if you don’t know what makes a demo good. A great way to learn how to give good sales demos is to experience some from the buyer’s perspective.

I just sat through a demo that was given to me by a  sales rep from another company. We are looking for some 3rd party solutions and I have been reviewing different options extensively.

At the beginning of the call, the rep told me that he wanted the demo to be as much of an interactive demo as possible. But saying that doesn’t make it so.

The demo was an hour long. And it felt long, because it was clear that the salesperson was reading a script. He was simply following through a tour of all of his product’s features. When I had a question, I had to interrupt him. He would then give a quick answer and launch back into his script. Many of the features he showed me were not even features that I was interested in, and he would have known that if he had taken the time to ask. After all, I was not looking for a description of what their product can do, I needed to know if their product could solve the problems I was trying to solve.

One hour later, I still didn’t know if their product could help me. The salesperson had wasted an hour of his and my time, and I knew little more than I already knew from reading their website. He was no further along in his selling process because he hadn’t helped me further my buying process.

So, if you want to give good sales demos, just ask the customer what they want to see. Know your product inside and out so that you can answer their questions, but don’t just give them a tour. Understand the problems they are trying to solve and then show them how your product can solve those problems.

In OPM, we call these the Probing and Proving phases of the sales cycle. In your early interactions with a customer, most of your efforts should be in Probing them to understand what they are trying to accomplish. Only then can you Prove that your products can solve their problems. You can’t write a script for a good sales demo, because a good sales demo is a conversation with a real person who has a unique set of goals.