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What is demo automation? [The Ultimate Guide]

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Demo automation streamlines sales, making it faster and more effective. It offers interactive product demos that enhance the buyer's experience, revolutionizing how you close deals, speeding up sales, and attracting more customers. The focus here is on Interactive Demo Automation, which provides customizable, on-demand demos for prospects, reducing wait times and delivering relevant information. Dive into the world of interactive demo automation and its role in business scaling in our blog post below.

What Is Demo Automation?

Demo Automation is a progressive technology to streamline and enhance the process of demonstrating a product to potential buyers. It involves automating the presentation of your product to prospects, typically through interactive and customizable demos. Overall it helps you,

  1. Speeds up sales: It allows sales teams to provide product demonstrations more efficiently, reducing the time it takes to showcase key features and benefits to potential customers.
  2. Enhances engagement: Interactive demos can engage prospects more effectively by allowing them to explore and interact with the product, making the presentation more captivating and memorable.
  3. Customize at scale: Demo Automation platforms often offer customizable demo templates, enabling sales teams to tailor the presentation to the specific needs and interests of each prospect.
  4. Provide on-demand access: Prospects can access these demos at their convenience, providing them with the relevant information they need when they need it.

Hyper-personalisation at Scale with Demo Automation

What are the key features of demo automation?

Demo automation software comes with a range of features designed to streamline the sales process and improve the effectiveness of product or service demonstrations. Here are some key features commonly found in demo automation software:

  1. Interactive product demos for hands-on engagement.
  2. Personalization at scale using predefined templates.
  3. Analytics and tracking for prospect behaviour insights
  4. Content libraries like demo gallery for organized storage and distribution
  5. Integration capabilities with other tools.
  6. Security and compliance for data protection.

Demo Automation: Uncovering Internal Stakeholders

Demo Automation vs. Regular Demo Process

Here's a table comparing the features of demo automation with those of regular demos:

Image to be added here

Why Is Automating Your Product Demos Important?

Automating your product demos is not an option anymore. It’s a must! 

Hubspot states that 50% of sales leaders believe that demos are one of the most important productivity metrics to track.

An effective sales demo can be the ultimate difference between success and failure in convincing customers just how beneficial your products are. Automated, interactive product demos allow buyers to get a head-start at being impressed before even talking to a rep! Let’s see how exactly automated interactive demos do that.

1. Create Personalized And Customized Experiences for the Buyers

It's true what they say, sometimes it's the small details that can make a big difference.” 

For sales teams looking to foster strong relationships with their buyers, personalized and customized experiences are key to success. Buyers want to be in control of when they get information, purchase products and talk to salespeople—and offering relevant information at their fingertips can help achieve this. Interactive demos allow creating hyper-personalized demos with a few clicks of a button. The company name & logo can be placed in the demo, the screens of the prospect’s website can be integrated into the following and last but not least, the salesperson might even decide to refer to the prospect by their name. 

2. Streamline The Demo Creation Process

If you've ever been on the sales team of a technology business, then you know how hard demo creation can be. But it doesn't have to be this way– streamlining the demo creation with Interactive Demo Automation can save your team loads of time and effort! Creating ready-to-use demo libraries, allow presales to save time on building repetitive demos from scratch every time. Above all, those demos can then be handled by the revenue teams- who use them as templates and customs within the allowed parameters. 

3. Increase Engagement With the Prospects And Boost Conversion Rates

Interactive demo automation helps businesses bridge the engagement gap with their prospects, giving them on-demand access to relevant product information. By providing multiple snack-bite-size demos accessible at different stages of the buying journey the vendor can build a rich story about the product they are selling. Attached video narrative can be very helpful to build rapport even before the buyer opts in to meet the sales team. 

Plus, commenting capabilities create a dialogue adding up to improved buyer experience and higher conversion rates. 

4. Seamless Way of Demonstrating Multi-platform Integrations

Interactive Demo Automation Platforms are the perfect way to show off how your product/service is and integrate with different platforms. The interactive demo allows capturing screens from your buyer’s digital ecosystem- all in one demo. Now, the buyer can easily visualize how your product will integrate with the platforms they are already using. See what we mean here

5. Get In-Depth Product Demo Analytics

With analytical data like:

  • average viewing time
  • demo completion rates
  • Step-by-step tracking and more

…product demos done with interactive demo automation offer an invaluable resource for sales teams who want to ensure their pitches are resonating with potential customers.

6. Save Time And Money

Think of sales demo automation as hitting two birds with one stone!

  • Firstly, you can automate the manual tasks at-a-go.
  • Secondly, create opportunities for increased customer engagement. 

No longer will you have to create each product demo from scratch- instead, sales demo automation allows you to create demo libraries and quickly and easily personalize them without compromising quality. Businesses can offer users an unforgettable experience with sales demo automation, proving the best for their bottom line. 

How To Use Demo Automation In The Sales Process?

Automated demos are the future of sales pitches. As described above, this type of demonstration provides a fast and efficient approach to detailing the benefits and value to your prospects. So when and where to use those automated demos in the sales process to get the most out of them?

1. Turning qualification into self-qualification 

Using automated demos, visitors can easily access the relevant information on demand.

With the most advanced interactive, automated demo, customers can: 

  • Choose their own journey and explore different aspects of the offering that are most relevant to their situation, allowing them to become more aware of what they are purchasing and its benefits. 
  • Additionally, incorporating those interactive surveys, helps boost engagement and encourage customers to take action. 
  • At the same time, this allows businesses to capture valuable data points that can be used to further optimize their sales funnels and improve visitor conversion rates. 

Overall, automating the demo process with engaging content helps give customers control of their buying experience, enabling them to self-qualify and help the vendor further provide information tailored to the buyer's specific needs. 

2. Discovery

Discovery is key to any sales process, however it is a difficult step to execute well. Traditionally it has been structured as ‘interview sessions’ where the vendors would ask a whole list of questions to the buyer. An experience that hasn't been very enjoyable neither to the  buyer nor the vendor. That’s where the concept of Disco Demos has come to being. Discovery demos can help sales make the discovery stage more engaging and get more information from the buyer. Sales reps can uncover the prospects’ needs by demonstrating benefits enjoyed by other clients. The key to successfully running a discovery demo starts with:

  • A well-crafted playlist page which includes several different benefits related to the product. For example, if dealing with demo automation, the menu could include increasing win rates, shortening the sales cycle, automating discovery and learning what works.

Why: Presenting potential buyers with this menu of benefits allows them to think about how these elements could help improve their specific business processes and offers improvement ideas that they maybe haven't thought of yet. 

  • After presenting this options menu, the sales rep can dive deeper into each topic by providing mini-case studies and asking questions based on those scenarios.

Why: This helps stimulate conversation between parties and clarifies their pain points so that solutions can be identified for the POC stage of the sales process.The meeting itself is actually enjoyable while delivering on the objectives. 

3. Reducing Mid-Funnel Custom Demos 

The middle of the sales funnel presents a prime opportunity for sales teams to use automated demos

  • Mid-sales funnel, around the 3rd-4th meeting is a stage where, frequently, custom demos are being shown. Oftentimes those demos address repetitive questions, however that far in the process ‘one has to show a custom demo’. Thanks to using interactive, automated demos, teams can quickly personalize ready to use persona- or use cases templates. It keeps the buyer happy while reducing the pressure on presales.  

Why: Mid-funnel demos are an important element to demonstrate the understanding of buyer’s problems. 

4. Champion Enablement

Champion enablement through automated demos can be a powerful tool for sales teams trying to close deals faster. With 83% of the buying cycle devoted to internal purchase consensus building, giving your champions the ability to feasibly demo products and services with minimal effort can speed up the process tremendously. 

  • For example, this could mean providing the champion with  case studies of how other companies’ success, so the champion can better emphasize value internally. Additionally, leveraging automated demos that are contextualized makes it easier for them to answer internal questions with data - as opposed to relying on assumptions. 

Why: This not only speeds up cycles but also gives added confidence to stakeholders about the purchase.

5. Closing 

  • Automated demos can help close a sale by using personalized arguments tailored to each customer's specific needs and interests. For example, a vendor might use automated demos to demonstrate the topline growth to the CEO, the bottom line improvement to the CEO and win rate increase to the VP of Sales.  With an automated demo, vendors can quickly and easily provide personalized arguments relevant to each stakeholder’s specific needs.

Check out here how to build an effective Interactive product demo with Demoboost.

How Demoboost can help you with seamless demo automation?

Demoboost is the perfect choice for automating your product demonstrations and streamlining the sales process. With its user-friendly interface, comprehensive analytics, and increase in efficiencies it offers a one-of-its-kind solution. But that's not all, here's how businesses can leverage the best of Demoboost in an instance. 

1. Demoboost is Not Only a Demo Automation Platform, it is Also a Methodology

Demoboost believes that demo distribution and delivery are at least equally important as demo creation. That is why, Demoboost assists you with a full methodology on how to use a demo throughout your sales process to get the best results. 

2. Unparalleled Buyer Engagement

Thanks to its very unique features Demoboost enjoys a median completion rate of their demos of 88 and avg. demo NPS of 89. It’s thanks to the inclusion of video narrative, the inclusion of comments and the ability to mix and match multimedia in the demo flow that buyers simply love to engage with those interactive demos. 

3. Advanced Live Demo Support 

Equipped with the speaker notes even the inexperienced AEs can nail every live demo, every time. The Sales Leaders receive Live Demo Sessions Analytics for 

  • better identification of winning flows
  • Scoping the  need for pitch changes based on live FAQs
  • Identification of team training needs U

4. Free & unlimited customer support

  • Creating a demo library, which is a prerequisite to reap the benefits of the demo automation platform can be a daunting task. Luckily, Demoboost doesn’t leave you alone with it. They help you at every step of the way. Learn more here
Curious about the efficiency of demo automation?
Unlock potential with our Demo Automation Calculator! Dive in for real-time benefits.

Winding Up!

Demo automation is now an integral part of the sales arsenal and has helped many businesses scale by converting more prospects into customers. Demo Automation with Demoboost can help you to save time & resources, build better relationships with clients, and help you perfect your demo efforts. 

If you want to make buyers love buying your software- look no further than Demo Boost! This state-of-the-art platform offers you the tool and methodology to close more deals faster. Schedule a Demo today!

Global Software Sales Process Survey 2024

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author
Anna Decroix
Co-founder and CMO at Demoboost

Anna serves as the passionate and curious Chief Demo Methodology Officer. As the driving force behind Demoboost's Presales Advisory Board, Anna actively engages with the presales community, accumulating invaluable insights and showcasing front-line expertise in demo thought leadership and practice.

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