B2B sales cycles are typically known to be longer than what one sees in B2C. A common practice in B2B sales is using one stage of the cycle / prospect conversation to do an actual sales demo or product demo. During a sales demo, there are several tricks that can be used to get the prospect more interested in a product and get them to buy faster.
B2B sales demo processes can keep evolving to meet changing market trends and to find innovative ways to create faster impact. To enhance the output from your current B2B sales demo practices, it might help to first identify whether these five common problems are holding you back:
You don’t drive your next Sales conversation with sufficient Conversational Intelligence and Insights
Conversation AI can help sales teams and sales leaders know more about the core problems raised by prospects in their previous calls thereby allowing them to dovetail future conversations to address those very pain points.
This is where sales leaders can implement stronger initiatives through which prospect calls/conversations are carefully scrubbed for insights and intelligence that can help drive future conversations with deeper personalization and relevance. When sales leaders use Conversation Intelligence to listen to past meetings with prospects, they can understand how their sales member performed, what could the sales rep do better in the next round, what triggers will help drive further interest and a lot more.
Your supporting collateral/script isn’t personalized enough
Having consistent messaging is one key factor in driving conversations through B2B sales cycles. But personalized conversations that cater to a prospect’s current pain point and immediate goals are two crucial elements that are needed to drive sales conversations with the aim of driving quicker buying decisions.
Scripts/demos or even collaterals that are generalized do not allow the prospect to truly visualise how it would be for them to be using the product.
Personalizing demo scripts, including the prospect-brand logo in files you may need to run through via screen share on a call, ensuring industry/facts or other key numbers related to past ROI or case studies are relevant to the prospect’s current viewpoint or problem area are some of the things to keep in mind.
If your demo involves showing your product dashboard for instance, using screenshots that bear the prospect’s name and designation is a great way to initiate interest.
Lack of a pre-defined call agenda
There are standard B2B sales calls agendas that most teams can use as a typical framework. Often times, in that 30 or 15-minute slot that a sales rep gets on the prospect’s calendar, majority of the time may go in having a one sided conversation.
Booking demo slots that offer sufficient time for an interactive Q&A, adjusting demo times and agendas based on the stage the prospect is in, in the sales cycle, defining an agenda before each call/demo can help streamline the overall experience for both, the seller and the potential buyer.
An agenda that helps the B2B sales rep breakdown whether 10 minutes will be spent in doing a quick demo of the product followed by a 5 minute run through of latest client problems that the product solved or whether 10 minutes will be kept aside for a Q&A after the demo can help build better outcomes.
Not enough time spent summarising the last call
B2B sales cycles are known to be long. So if a sales rep has a second or third call with the same prospect, chances are that the prospect has anyway also been evaluating other competing platforms/products, a second or third call with a prospect does not necessarily mean that the sales rep is successfully being able to drive the conversation to a buying decision.
To create more impact within a shorter timeframe and optimize sales demos or the time spent on it, sales reps can use a couple of moments summarising the previous prospect conversation to get their prospect up to speed. A quick call out to key problem areas discussed in the last call (thanks to conversation intelligence: refer point 1 above) can be the starting point of the conversation before the sales rep dives into the actual demo that is catered to these pain points already (point 2 above).
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Not signing off with a value-add
Every successful sales leader will tell you that sales is all about building business relationships. How can a sales person sell or drive product interest without being too salesy? It’s important to know, when a prospect is already wanting to view a demo of your product/service: it usually means that they have done some fair bit of research about your product already.
Adjusting your demo, presentation, pitch, video to include a value-add and not just a call to action can be a good way to get the prospect to think about you again.
B2B sales reps can actually get creative here, by including prompts like ‘’Reach out to me to discuss changing industry trends,’’ or, ‘’Let’s do a quick product comparison together to see what can benefit you more’’ to end their sales demo calls.