A Bad Demo Kills Deals

Showing Prospects Their Future, Not Your Roadmap

In the high-stakes world of B2B sales, the product demonstration stands as a critical moment of truth. Yet many companies continue to approach demos as feature showcases rather than vision-casting experiences.

This fundamental misalignment between what prospects need to see and what sales teams choose to show often leads to lost opportunities and stalled deals.

The most successful demos don't simply present a product's capabilities - they transport prospects into a future where their specific problems have been solved.

The Psychology Behind Effective Demonstrations

When prospects agree to a demonstration, they aren't primarily interested in understanding how your product works - they want to visualise how it will transform their business reality.

This distinction represents a significant psychological shift in how demonstrations should be conceptualised.

According to research published in the Journal of Consumer Psychology, purchase decisions are heavily influenced by a prospect's ability to mentally simulate the ownership experience.

Dr. Jennifer Escalas has termed this "narrative transportation," where customers who can vividly imagine themselves using a product are significantly more likely to purchase it.

The sales demonstration serves as the perfect vehicle for facilitating this mental simulation.

However, it fails when it becomes a technical walkthrough rather than an immersive story about the prospect's improved future.

Source : Barfbot, April 2024

The Common Demonstration Pitfall

The typical product demonstration follows a predictable pattern: a comprehensive tour of features, functions, and configurations presented in the logical order of the product's architecture.

The sales representative diligently shows every capability, explaining the underlying technology and occasionally hinting at future developments.

This approach, while thorough, misses the mark in a fundamental way.

As noted by Gartner's research on B2B buying decisions, prospects experience significant difficulty connecting generic product capabilities to their specific situations.

The cognitive burden of translating features into business value often proves too great, resulting in inaction.

Consider the case of enterprise software provider Workday.

In its early days, the company struggled with demonstrations that showcased their extensive HCM functionality.

Despite technical superiority, conversion rates remained disappointing.

Upon revamping their approach to focus demonstrations entirely on prospect-specific workflows and outcomes, they saw close rates increase by over 40% according to internal studies later shared at industry conferences.

Tailoring: The Art of Relevance

Successful demonstrations require meticulous customisation.

This goes beyond superficial personalisation like including the prospect's company name or logo.

True tailoring involves deep configuration of the demonstration environment to mirror the prospect's business reality.

Research from Corporate Executive Board (now Gartner) revealed that sales experiences that are tailored to the customer's specific needs have a 74% higher likelihood of closing.

Yet the same research showed that only 16% of sales presentations are sufficiently customised to the buyer's context.

DocuSign provides an instructive example.

Instead of generic e-signature demonstrations, their sales team reconstructs actual document workflows specific to each prospect's industry and process.

A financial services demonstration might show mortgage applications with relevant compliance checks, while a healthcare demonstration might focus on HIPAA-compliant patient onboarding.

This approach contributed to DocuSign's accelerated market penetration across diverse industries.

Showing the Future, Not the Roadmap

Perhaps the most detrimental demonstration mistake is emphasising the product's future development rather than the prospect's future success.

Sales teams, eager to address perceived product gaps, often fall into the trap of promising upcoming features rather than focusing on existing capabilities that solve the prospect's immediate problems.

This approach creates several problems:

• It implicitly acknowledges current product deficiencies

• It shifts focus from immediate solutions to future possibilities

• It introduces uncertainty into the decision-making process

• It often delays purchase decisions ("We'll wait until those features are available")

Salesforce's enterprise sales methodology provides a counterexample to this common mistake.

Their demonstration philosophy centres on what they call "business value demos," which focus exclusively on showing how the product, as it exists today, transforms specific business workflows that the prospect has identified as problematic.

Salesforce strictly prohibits its sales teams from discussing roadmap items during demonstrations unless specifically requested by the prospect.

The Neuroscience of Effective Demonstrations

Recent neuroscience research offers additional insight into why tailored, future-focused demonstrations outperform feature-centric approaches.

Functional MRI studies have shown that when individuals can personally relate to information, the medial prefrontal cortex - an area associated with self-reference and personal relevance - shows increased activation.

This neurological response creates stronger encoding of information and more positive emotional associations.

By contrast, technical information without personal relevance activates different brain regions associated with analytical processing but fails to engage emotional decision-making circuits.

This neuroscience perspective explains why demonstrations that place prospects in familiar scenarios create stronger engagement than abstract feature presentations.

The brain processes self-relevant information differently, creating stronger memory imprints and positive associations.

Practical Implementation: The Three Principles of Future-Focused Demonstrations

1. Start with the Prospect's Current Pain

Effective demonstrations begin by acknowledging the prospect's current reality - not the product's capabilities.

By explicitly naming the challenges the prospect faces, using their terminology and metrics, you create immediate relevance and demonstrate understanding.

Zoom exemplified this approach during their rapid growth phase.

Rather than beginning demonstrations with explanations of their video compression technology or server architecture, Zoom demonstrators would recreate specific communication scenarios the prospect had identified as problematic - showing the "before" state using competitor products the prospect was currently using, followed by the "after" state using Zoom.

2. Focus on Day One Value

While your product roadmap may contain exciting future developments, the demonstration should focus exclusively on what the prospect can achieve immediately upon implementation.

This creates urgency and tangible value perception.

Monday.com's demonstration approach illustrates this principle well.

Their demonstrations focus on showing prospects how quickly they can achieve their first workflow automation or visualisation - often within hours of implementation.

This "day one value" approach creates immediate gratification and reduces perceived implementation risk.

3. Eliminate the Translation Layer

The most effective demonstrations remove any need for the prospect to translate generic capabilities into their specific context.

This is achieved by using the prospect's actual data, terminology, and business scenarios whenever possible.

Tableau revolutionised data visualisation demonstrations by insisting on using the prospect's actual data in demonstrations whenever possible.

Rather than showing generic datasets, Tableau sales engineers would load the prospect's real data (often provided just days before the demonstration) to show exactly how their specific visualisation challenges would be solved.

The Competitive Advantage of Future-Focused Demonstrations

Companies that master the art of tailored, future-focused demonstrations gain significant competitive advantage.

Beyond higher close rates, they typically experience:

• Shorter sales cycles (prospects can more quickly evaluate fit)

• Higher initial deal values (broader implementation vision)

• Reduced price sensitivity (focus shifts from cost to value)

• Higher implementation success rates (aligned expectations)

Conclusion

The product demonstration represents a crucial moment in the B2B sales process - a window where prospects can glimpse their potential future with your solution.

When this opportunity is squandered on feature walkthroughs or roadmap discussions, critical momentum is lost.

By tailoring demonstrations to show prospects their improved future rather than your product's architecture or development plans, you create a compelling vision that drives decision-making.

The most effective demonstrations aren't about showcasing technology - they're about storytelling that places the prospect at the centre of a transformative journey.

The evidence from psychology, neuroscience, and sales performance data all points to the same conclusion: demonstrations that transport prospects into their improved future consistently outperform those focused on product features or future development.

When a prospect can see themselves succeeding with your solution, the sale is often already made.

Source : Brooks Conkle.

References

Escalas, J. E. (2007). "Self-Referencing and Persuasion: Narrative Transportation versus Analytical Elaboration." Journal of Consumer Research, 33(4), 421-429.

Gartner Research. (2019). "The New B2B Buying Journey and Its Implications for Sales." Gartner, Inc.

Corporate Executive Board. (2012). "The Challenger Sale: Taking Control of the Customer Conversation." Portfolio/Penguin.

Salesforce. (2018). "Enterprise Sales Methodology: Business Value Demonstrations." Internal sales training document, referenced in Harvard Business Review case study.

Schmidt, S. & Eisend, M. (2015). "Advertising Repetition: A Meta-Analysis on Effective Frequency in Advertising." Journal of Advertising, 44(4), 415-428.

Monday.com. (2020). "Product-Led Growth and the Role of Demonstrations in SaaS Adoption." SaaStr Annual Conference presentation.

Workday. (2017). "Reengineering the Enterprise Software Demonstration." Presentation at the Enterprise Software Summit, San Francisco.

DocuSign. (2019). "Industry-Specific Demonstration Strategies." Sales Enablement Best Practices Report.

Tableau/Salesforce. (2021). "Data-Driven Demonstrations: Using Customer Data to Drive Engagement." Sales Enablement Conference, Chicago.

Lee, N., & Chamberlain, L. (2018). "Neurological Mechanisms of Effective Sales Presentations." Journal of Neuroscience, Psychology, and Economics, 11(4), 189-211.

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Why did I write this post ? I am fascinated by startups and embrace the whole process that a founder embarks upon post their initial epiphany or eureka moment, i.e. idea 💡 when they discover a problem they feel obsessed to solve for the world. However, I personally have to confess, as a recovering Founder, Co-Founder and supporting multiple Founders, Co-Founders, Leadership teams of startups across the world 🌍 have noticed, depending on interestingly the individuals age or experience or both, an amazing variety of lens and perspectives on how best to address the item discussed above 👶. Every founder needs to embrace the points raised in this article as the demo is a key stage in the sales cycle, and every second or minute counts. More on my thoughts on how to do address this later.

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