Demo movies are the best way ahead for any Options Marketing consultant or enterprise gross sales staff chief. Discover ways to effectively use demo movies to speed up your technical gross sales cycle and shut extra offers.
I do know from expertise that scaling Options Consultants (SCs) and gross sales groups as a complete generally is a problem, as I’ve witnessed the way it can take as much as 24 months to totally mint a brand new Options Marketing consultant. Demo movies are the answer for rising B2B software program firms when scaling their enterprise gross sales groups and, specifically, their technical gross sales groups.
Because of the diverse function, Options Consultants should be capable of stroll a prospect by way of a product demo, talk about in-depth challenges and scope options to these challenges. With such an extended time-to-value, rising headcount is never the reply for high-growth firms with out the usage of demo movies.
- Contents
- 1. Rising Options Consultants’ Effectivity By way of Demo Movies
- 2. Lowering the Variety of ‘Wasted’ Demos with Demo Movies
- 3. Delivering Extra Consumer Worth with Demo Movies
- 4. Demo Movies Present Extra Time for Differentiation
- 5. Stakeholder Mapping By way of Demo Video Analytics
- 6. Demo Movies Add Worth
It is a problem I used to be lately dealing with in my very own group. We would have liked to scale quick in addition to improve our aggressive benefit and regain management of the gross sales cycle. It appeared like an unimaginable activity, however I appeared in direction of using demo movies within the gross sales cycle for the reply.
I, and lots of others, imagine this would be the way forward for B2B gross sales. In reality, in keeping with Vidyard, the usage of video for gross sales has exploded in recent times as almost 60% of groups are utilizing video of their buyer and gross sales conversations. Moreover, 51% of organizations are already utilizing product demo movies of their gross sales cadences.
On this article, I’ll take you thru my experiences in introducing demo movies to the technical gross sales cycle.
This episode of Gross sales Stuff Defined will present you learn how to put together for and execute the right gross sales presentation and SaaS demo in simply 10 minutes.
Rising Options Consultants’ Effectivity By way of Demo Movies
As a way to scale our firm quick, the primary level of focus was to extend the effectivity of our SCs. This may enable us to cowl extra alternatives available in the market with out rising headcount.
Many organizations will acknowledge this problem; you might have a quick discovery (or wants evaluation) name with a prospect and this results in a reasonably normal demo video, exhibiting off all the perfect performance of your product. The demo goes effectively, however the alternative finally goes chilly.
Maybe the demo wasn’t correctly tailor-made to the prospect’s wants? Maybe you solely had contact with a single stakeholder? Both approach, the chance has exited the gross sales cycle and the hassle spent on the invention and demo has been wasted.
What quantity of demos are wasted like this? What number of alternatives exit the gross sales cycle after the demo stage? 30%? 40%? Extra?
That was once I started exploring the introduction of video into the demo course of. I made a decision that we may ship out high-level demo movies of our product earlier than the stay demonstration. In fact, these movies needed to be tailor-made primarily based on the discovery name, exhibiting the weather of the answer that shall be most beneficial to the prospect.
Right here is an instance of a 3-minute demo video of the performance of stay streaming in Vidyard.
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 essential change your messaging, ache level angle or video size.
Lowering the Variety of ‘Wasted’ Demos with Demo Movies
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 sources they imagine are required for his or her alternatives. This may typically pose a problem the place we want to guarantee the suitable sources 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 stay demos after each a distant prospecting discovery name has taken place and all stakeholders have watched the 15-20-minute overview demo video of the answer.
By removing these non-opportunities, it permits SCs to take a extra beneficial function within the group. Moderately than repeating overview demos for alternatives that is probably not correctly certified, they will focus extra of their time on the bigger, or extra strategic offers.
The oldsters at PostBeyond created an incredible 2-minute product demo video to present their prospects some context earlier than a gathering.
Delivering Extra Consumer Worth with Demo Movies
In addition to removing the non-opportunities, we discovered that sending demo movies of the answer earlier than the stay demo can lead to different advantages. Stakeholders come to the demo assembly with a base degree of training of what it’s your product does and the way it works. This implies you’ll be able to spend your beneficial face-time on crucial areas to your prospect slightly than giving a harbour tour of your answer.
It hit dwelling for me what a game-changer the usage of demo movies is within the following instance.
I had carried out a discovery (wants evaluation) name with a prospect and had despatched them the related demo movies primarily based on their necessities. Earlier than going into the stay demo, each single stakeholder had watched that tailor-made video. After I started the demo, I requested in the event that they wish to see the principle a part of the answer once more. They’d have already seen this within the overview demo, however this was the bread and butter of the product which we might count on to cowl in virtually each demo.
Amazingly, they replied “No thanks”.
As an alternative, they’d an inventory of questions primarily based on the demo movies. I demoed solely the areas that had been most essential to them in a really agile setting. Not solely did this lead to a extremely tailor-made demo for the shopper, however it additionally created a much more conversational strategy, which leads to constructing all-important rapport with stakeholders.
Matt Corridor from Woodway UK made an unboxing demo video to indicate prospects the place they’re going mistaken with packaging, and the way he may help. To double down he additionally used the Vidyard bubble characteristic over prime of his unboxing video in order that he may stroll the prospect by way of the pitch.
Demo Movies Present Extra Time for Differentiation
Most significantly, as a result of SCs are now not inclined to carry out ‘harbour tour’ or ‘art-of-the-possible’ demos, they’ve extra time to give attention to the shopper’s particular wants in addition to on the areas of the product which is able to assist it stand out from the competitors.
Finally, with stakeholders attending demo conferences having a base degree of training of the answer, extra time might be spent on protecting the prospect’s questions, particular necessities and aggressive differentiators.
Stakeholder Mapping By way of Demo Video Analytics
Through the years, I’ve witnessed first-hand the dangers of partaking with a single stakeholder. There’s a threat 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 will jeopardize a possibility.
An enormous a part of the concept 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 considered demo movies (and for a way lengthy), we will construct an image of how engaged every stakeholder is. In the event that 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 that reason, 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 degree of the individual watching primarily based on their viewing conduct.
Conversely, if we will see good engagement in demo movies, we all know the chance has legs. What’s extra, if the demo will get shared across the stakeholder’s friends there may be 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. Most of the time, these are stakeholders who wouldn’t have been found by way of a gross sales cycle that didn’t make the most of video.
Though this was an anticipated consequence of the venture, what I didn’t anticipate was the dimensions of this may influence the gross sales cycle. We’ve found (on common) greater than two new stakeholders on every alternative. That has taken an enormous quantity of threat out of the pipeline the place alternatives had been beforehand depending on a single stakeholder.
Demo Movies Add Worth
By using video within the gross sales cycle, we’ve got elevated the effectivity of SCs by decreasing the variety of ‘wasted’ demos. This implies we’re capable of 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 will 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.
However most significantly, we will 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. As an alternative of losing their time with ‘art-of-the-possible’ demos, they will have deeper discovery conversations and assist problem their prospects’ mind-set. This can certainly result in happier prospects in the long term.
This put up was initially revealed on July 8, 2021. It was up to date on September 9, 2022.