If time is money, then every second counts in the world of B2B sales. Whether you're a sales head, or a sales rep, your ability to improve the sales process can have a significant impact on your productivity and your company’s bottom line. So, if you're ready to save time, boost your sales, and increase productivity, then keep reading

According to Salesforce, sales reps spend about 72% of their time in activities that add little to elevate the bottom line. That’s right! A massive chunk of their time goes into non-revenue activities that ultimately lead to a longer sales cycle. 

There is no doubt that these tasks are critical for the sales to happen but they are manual, repetitive, and tedious. The traditional sales process can be slow and time-consuming, involving numerous manual tasks making it inefficient to connect with buyers faster.

Source: Salesforce

The challenge? Eliminating non-revenue tasks from reps so they can spend more time connecting with customers and closing deals. It means adopting digital tools and technologies such as demo automation and artificial intelligence to streamline the sales process and reduce the unnecessary time and effort required. 

As a vendor, you understand the importance of moving deals through the pipeline as quickly and efficiently as possible. In this blog, we will explore the benefits of demo automation and provide practical tips on how to implement it effectively in your sales process. With the right approach, you can accelerate your sales cycle, close more deals, and drive revenue growth. Let’s get started! 

Introducing Demo Automation

First things first, what do you mean by demo automation?

A process that enables organisations with the ability to create, share and execute the demos automatically without much time, effort, and involvement of sales reps or presales. 

Demo automation pretty much eliminates the unqualified calls with prospects that are just browsing. Using demo platforms, you can create and deliver personalised and relevant interactive product demos on demand, which gives your prospects enough information to decide whether they want to opt in or out from the sales process. 

This by no means means that live demos by sales reps are on the verge of extinction. In fact, demo automation emphasises the importance of a hybrid approach where you bring automation and personalization (human touch) together to scale growth. 

As a sales rep, you know that product demos are an essential part of the sales process. However, giving demos can be time-consuming and resource-intensive, especially if you have a high volume of leads to follow up with. 

That's where demo automation comes in. Delivering personalised demos on-demand to qualified prospects simply empowers the sales reps to spend time on deals that are high intent. Thus achieving a better close rate in less time.

Lastly, demo automation supports sales and presales teams by providing a comprehensive user experience that’s driven by users at their own pace. 

How demo automation will help you speed up the sales process?

Demo automation supports the sales teams in eliminating the repetitive tasks to focus more on selling and building relationships. This means sellers won’t be doing demos for every lead that comes in, and let automation ignite the intent of buyers and build trust. 

However, more than focus - implementing demo automation in your sales process provides multiple benefits. Now this cannot be for all as it depends on how organisations use it. 

Source: Salesman

1. Fosters Personalisation: While demo automation can save time, it also allows you to personalise demos to buyer’s needs and pain points. You can learn by analysing how a buyer interacts with your demo and find out where more trust-building or a sense of information is required. 

Usually, sales-led motions do not allow for the same level of interaction between the buyer and the product. This makes it more difficult for the salesperson to understand the buyer's preferences. Demo automation allows sellers to revise their approach to more accurate and effective sales interactions. Thus leading to a more enhanced and faster selling process. 

2. Offers scalability: Another benefit of automating demos is scalability, where most sales processes get stuck at. Using automation you can deliver demos to multiple prospects simultaneously, on demand, and without the need for a sales rep or solution consultant.

This means you get to automate self-qualification and users can engage with the demo right away. Automated demos save time for both sales reps and presales executives, allowing them to focus on high-intent buyers and demo customization tasks.

3. Provides consistency: Your sales reps are giving demos to multiple prospects every day and many of them are repetitive. Oftentimes in pursuit of high personalisation sales reps compromise the message consistency and sticking to the pitch. Another case is when your channel partners are giving demos but you got nothing to ensure consistency! Inconsistency in messaging can be confusing for your potential customers. With demo automation, You can ensure that each prospect receives the same message and experience, regardless of who delivers the demo (internal teams or channel partners). This can help build trust, and confidence and speed up your sales process.

4. Get better with data-driven insights: Demo automation platforms often come with built-in analytics that allow you to measure engagement, conversion rates, and other key metrics. You can also gain valuable insights into how prospects are engaging with the product. This data can be used to refine the demo, improve the sales process, and identify areas for improvement in the product itself.

5. Follow-ups are instant: Automated demos can provide you with a valuable advantage in the sales process by offering real-time notifications of user interactions. For example, you can see when a prospect re-watches a video from an email or engages with your demo after their initial contact. This information enables you to follow up with leads at the right moment, keeping them engaged and moving them along the sales journey more quickly.

6. Improves Productivity: Sales reps spend a lot of time on tasks that are non-revenue generating such as lead generation, nurturing/researching prospects, and delivering product demos. This often leads to a bottleneck in the sales process, causing deals to take longer to close. Demo automation can help enhance productivity by streamlining the demo delivery process. Sales reps can create standardised, high-quality demos that can be quickly and easily delivered to potential customers. Thus saving a lot of time and effort that can be used to focus on the right tasks and improve motivation.

Where does demo automation fit in your sales process?

In the past, sales reps played a more central role in the purchasing process, providing customers with information and education about products. However, the rise of the internet and the availability of information online have enabled buyers to self-research. B2B buyers today spend a relatively small portion of their purchase journey interacting with sales reps, with only 17% of their total time being spent in this way. 

Source: Demoboost

This is due to several factors, including the involvement of multiple suppliers in an average deal, which means that a sales rep typically only receives about 5% of a customer's total purchase time. Additionally, Gartner research indicates that a growing number of millennials, about 44% prefer not to interact with sales reps at all.

This shift in the B2B buying process highlights the importance of adopting new approaches to the sales process. However, here are the common stages where demo automation can be particularly effective in moving the sales process forward and accelerating revenue growth. 

• Lead generation: Demo automation can be used to create compelling and engaging product demos that attract potential buyers and encourage them to engage with the product. This can be achieved through various channels such as social media, email marketing, targeted ads, or landing pages. Here’s an example of how Octiv generates leads from on-demand product demos

• Lead Qualification: You can qualify leads faster and easier by tracking user engagement during demos or delivering demos on-demand using self-qualification. This information can help you better understand which leads are most interested in your offering and which may need more nurturing before they're ready to convert. Furthermore, with demo automation, you can scale reaching out to leads by automating demo delivery. Here’s an example of how Dooly does it,

• Discovery: During the discovery stage, automated demos can help streamline the process of showcasing your offering to potential customers. By using pre-recorded case study demos, you can propose a series of benefits your product offers and discuss them with the prospects rather than just asking questions. The sales team and presales teams can satisfy the prospect’s desire to see the product while also obtaining rich insights into their challenges and needs. Here’s how Mixpanel does it

• Buyer Enablement: Demo automation tools provide real-time notifications of user interactions especially their questions, allowing your sales reps to follow up with leads at the right moment. By leveraging these insights, you can keep the leads engaged and move them along the sales journey more quickly. Here’s how Demoboost platform enables you to analyse lead insights and guides your reach outs

• Closing: With a demo automation platform in your sales process you can deliver engaging and interactive product demos to each of the stakeholders in the purchase decision. By providing the right arguments to every stakeholder you maximise your influencing opportunities. 

Top strategies to speed up the sales process with demo automation

Here are some top strategies to consider when implementing demo automation in a sales process:

1. Choose the right demo automation tool:

It’s crucial to carefully select demo automation tools to optimise your sales process for long-term success. There is a plethora of product demo software available, but the key to true optimization is making strategic decisions that align with your business goals. 

It's also important to keep in mind that the best tools will have a user-friendly interface, easy-to-set-up and manage, allowing them to quickly create and customise demos as needed. Ultimately, the best tool will be the one that saves you time and resources, allowing you to speed up the sales process and focus on closing deals.

💡Pro tip: You + Demoboost = sales growth 🚀

Demoboost platform standardised the way your sales team creates, shares, measures, and executes demo automation while ensuring the privacy of your business. The platform enables you with, 

✅Enterprise-grade secured platform for storing your demos 

✅Create interactive demos and share them anywhere within minutes

✅Build demo libraries to help you with structure and ease of maintenance

✅Enables you to build a framework for creating, sharing, and maintaining content with the help of one platform. 

✅Provides unlimited customer support who work with you to help you strategize

2. Map out the key use cases: 

Start by identifying the key use cases for demo automation in your sales process. Understand your key personas per industry, their use cases and steps in the buying cycle. 

3. Build a demo library: 

Creating a resource centre for demos lets buyers explore and interact with demos without delays. This could include embedding demos based on industry, features, persona or even the lifecycle stage of the prospect. By providing self-service options, prospects can access demos on their own terms and at their own pace, which can help speed up the sales cycle.

4. Use data to drive demo optimization: 

Use data and analytics to optimise your demos over time. Track how prospects are engaging with your demo by learning through demo interactions and tailor your sales pitch to focus on those features. This can help to speed up the sales process by ensuring that you are focusing on the high-scale features that will generate more interest and revenue.

5. Personalise on-demand demos: 

Find out what content your target audience needs to make an informed decision. Personalise demos based on their pain points, industries, use cases, or even the features that are most relevant to them. Embed videos wherever needed and you can also deploy self-qualification to let buyers find what they want. Allowing automated deliveries of demos gives sales reps the much-needed time to focus on leads that are high quality while the new ones are getting warmed up. 

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Implementing hybrid approach: Leveraging technology and human touch to speed up the sales process. 

The sales process needs a hybrid approach that leverages technology and personal involvement as both elements are necessary to meet the needs of modern buyers.

Technology has transformed the way buyers research and purchase products. Modern buyers expect a seamless, digital experience that enables them to research and buy on their own terms. 

By leveraging technology such as demo automation, sales teams can provide buyers with self-service tools, on-demand interactive demos, and other digital touchpoints that enable self-pace engagement.

Technology also stimulates personalisation which remains a critical component of the sales process. To make informed decisions buyers expect tailored experiences that align with their unique needs and preferences. Personalization helps to build trust, establish a connection with the buyer, and ultimately drive more sales.

This approach that combines technology and sales personal involvement enables sales teams to provide buyers with the best of both worlds. By leveraging automation technologies, sales teams can automate routine tasks, provide buyers with self-service tools, and streamline the buying process. 

At the same time, sales teams can use data analytics to gain insights into buyer behavior and use this information to deliver personalised experiences that buyers will strongly relate to.

Taken together, demo automation in the sales process can be a crucial element to improve the overall lead velocity. At the core, it offers operational efficiency, improves accuracy, enables faster response times, ensures consistency, and enables scalability. By automating your demos, you can free up your sales team's time, improve the quality of their work, and ultimately drive more revenue for your business.

Want to speed up your sales process with demo automation? Connect with our experts now!