Eran Livneh of MarketCapture.com did a post on "The killer demo: why demos are killing your sales" which has some good takes on how even great demos can sometimes kill your sales chances if a few fundamental things are not done right. One of the four reasons he mentions why demos often fail to bag the sale is:
The people interested in the demo is usually not the people that can buy
While getting buy-in from the intended user is important, the key to making the sale is reaching the decision makers. Most decision makers are not interested in the details. They want to know how you’re going to solve their business problems, not how your screens look like. Many of them wouldn’t even know what to look for in the demo. If the person you are dealing with is asking to see a demo that’s a clear red flag.
He stresses that cleary identifying the right decision makers is as important as how effective your demo is if not more. We have seen several examples of great demos which were well executed but there was no follow through of momentum simply because the person who attended was very interested in the functionality of the product but not the final decision maker. Requests for demos are often made by an influencer or someone who is interested in the working of the product and this is usually the only contact information the sales team has to follow up after a demo. One way to avert this problem is by always locate the decision maker for the product or service and have their contact infirmation handy to follow up after the demo. Reaching out to the attendee may give you feedback on how they liked the product but if you want results after the demo, reach out to the decision maker. That's where the final nod will come from!
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