The Live Sales Demo Checklist Every Salesperson Needs

Your company worked hard to get you good leads, and you’ve done well to persuade your prospect to free up time in their busy schedule and listen to a product demo. Now, it’s all up to you to give a winning demo and close the deal. 

A winning sales demo is one that is constructed, prepared, and executed properly. But how do you get there?

Here’s a product demo checklist you can use when you prepare for your next live presentation.

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1. Know your product 

It sounds like we're stating the obvious. You'll be surprised how many sales reps wing it during demos without fully and deeply understand their product or service. 

Although demos are all about the potential buyer and not the product, your demo will not be successful if you don’t make sure you understand exactly what you’re selling.

In addition, no potential client will trust you enough to buy from you if you can’t answer questions about your product, or if your answers aren’t knowledgeable enough. We don’t mean you need to know every technical detail and aspect of the product, but you must be very familiar with what you’re selling. 

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2. Work with a script

While winging it is nice in concept, you really don’t want to be caught with your proverbial pants down during a live demo. 

To get it right, it’s best to work with a well-prepared script and stick to it. This will also give you a sense of confidence in your demo. 

It’s worth mentioning that one of the main issues with scripts is that in some companies, each sales rep works with their own script, which means that the product messages aren’t aligned and also that some scripts may not be as effective as others. 

The easiest solution is working with a sales enablement platform that allows sales teams to create scripts based on winning demos delivered by top sellers. We’ll get into more detail about this later. 

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3. Do your research

Think we’re stating the obvious again? This may surprise you, but only 46% of sales representatives report they have sufficient data insights about buyer intent.

On the flip side, according to Crunchbase top sellers spend an average of 6 hours every week researching their prospects. Use this to motivate you.

In addition, every potential buyer is unique, and every company has its own needs and challenges, so every demo should be adjusted to its specific audience. 

When you prepare for your demo, get to know your prospective client: read their website, social profiles, and posts carefully (mainly LinkedIn), use search engines to find more information about them, and learn everything you can about their product or service, company and sales size, number of employees and other relevant information. 

Once you’ve researched the company, get to know the specific person or group of people you will be presenting to. 

• Check out their LinkedIn account to get to know their expertise and position in the company, and read their posts to understand what interests them. You may be able to adjust your demo content accordingly and make it more personal to them. 
• Visit their Twitter account, and see what they tweeted recently and what or who they follow, even if it’s not connected to their professional life, because you may be able to mention it in the conversation during the demo call and build a relationship with them.
• Use search engines to find more information about them. You may find articles they’ve written, activities they're involved in, and so on.
• If your CRM is synced with your demo platform, check your CRM to see if someone from your company has already been in touch with your demo audience, what information they received, and what happened during the interaction. 
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4. Prepare your offer before you prepare your demo

Now that you know your product and audience well, you can tailor your demo. 

The best demos don’t simply focus on your product. Winning demos are all about the issues and problems of the prospect and explaining how your product or service is the ideal solution. 

Based on your research, work out which product features you should highlight and what’s the best way to present them. 

The following questions can help you with that:

• What are my prospect’s main pain points?
• What are the challenges companies in my prospect’s industry face?
• Which product features offer the highest value and can fulfill the prospect’s needs?
• Which product features have no value to my prospect and should be left out of the demo?
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5. Work with the right sales enablement tool

According to Forbes’ ‘The Power of Enablement: Bridging the Sales Productivity Gap’ report, 59% of companies that exceeded their revenue goals implemented sales enablement functions, and 55% of top-selling companies invested in sales enablement solutions to boost sales productivity. 

In other words: working with the right tech can be the difference between a winning and a losing demo. 

Here are some features you should look for in your sales enablement software:

• It should allow you to easily turn your most successful demo scripts into demo playbooks everyone on your sales team can access and replicate.
• Sellers should be able to take notes from discovery and demo calls and sync them right away with your CRM. This way, taking notes and viewing them when needed is easy and streamlined. 
• A good enablement tech assists in real time and acts as the sales enablement helper every seller can get during a live call. Eventually, this helps sellers hit their targets and sales effectiveness KPIs.
• Look for a tool that allows you to easily implement new messaging, to help sales teams to respond fast and in real-time to new playbooks.

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