How to Choose the Right KPIs for Sales Demos

You can’t manage what you don’t measure.

If you work in sales, there’s a good chance you’ve heard this phrase uttered once or twice. With the rise of CRMs and similar sales tools, the work of a seller became one of the most measurable positions in a business unit. Likewise, gaining visibility has helped sales managers set data-backed KPIs that every team member strives to reach. 

The truth is setting KPIs truly works. A Bridge group study shows that two-thirds of account executives and sellers are achieving their numbers and quotas.

The different KPIs are aligned to the sales cycle stages, from beginning stages of sales prospecting and initial reach-outs, through to the remote sales demo and proposal and all the way until the deal is closed. As for the KPIs themselves, there is a long list of indicators used by remote sales teams on a daily basis. Whether it is number of calls and emails per seller, monthly onboarding and demo calls booked, average conversion time, customer lifetime value and retention and churn rates….I can go on and on. 

The point is, with so many KPIs, are you sure you are not missing the most important ones? 

The Sales Manager Blind Spot

Good sales managers will take advantage of every piece of data they can get their hands on and will use it to determine their KPIs. But do they really have visibility to every stage of the sales cycle?

From prospecting to qualifying a lead, there’s a great amount of KPIs that rely on the number of activities and ratios. But currently there isn't much to rely on for such an important stage as a demo, in terms of visibility and data that can be gathered and acted upon. 

Without such insight, can a sales manager really understand how the demo was delivered? Can they correctly evaluate if the talking points that were practiced and sharpened over the years were presented in the correct manner? Can he or she know for certain how many product features were presented and if the sales playbook that was used was the correct one for the client persona?

A good sales manager will want immediate answers to these questions, without having to waste valuable time listening to a full call that could last longer than an hour.

With immediate insights into a demo, sales managers can now highlight data-backed elements of a remote demo and create new KPIs to correctly and easily score demos, improve delivery and quality and boost the closed deal ratio. Here are some elements that can be quantified and tracked:

Ensuring a high level of productivity 

How many demos did your team deliver as a whole over a certain period of time? How many did each sales rep deliver? Were they full demos? 

It is important to get a full picture of the number of demos that were presented to better understand the pace of the team and each seller, which can be used as an indicator of their professional delivery.

Highlighting the correct product features to hook clients

Are you aware of how many product features (scenes) were presented to the client during each demo and which? Setting KPIs based on features is incredibly relevant for multiple reasons. First, you’re promoting a new feature that the company wants to highlight. Secondly, it can be crucial for increasing conversion by identifying high impact features per segment or persona to use for future releases.

Optimising sales demos  

What was the client’s sentiment after the demo? Was the demo compelling or tedious? Setting a KPI that focuses on client perception is no easy task, but will definitely help sales managers optimise demos in a way that they will be more compelling and client-focused. 

Scoring demos for a better deal forecast 

Sales managers can create a scoring method based on previous deals and sentiment analysis. The more data the sales organisation will have from the later stages of the sales cycle, the better score analysis will be shown.

Determining ideal demo length to accelerate enablement 

Are you able to confidently say you know how much time should be dedicated to each demo? Does a longer demo mean a better closing ratio? 

Once you gather data regarding the duration of demos, it is easy to analyze the win ratio according to different client personas and demo durations. Sales managers may be surprised to learn that longer demos are not always the most effective ones.

Improving engagement and gathering information

Are you able to evaluate whether your sellers jotted down notes during their calls? Did they write follow up emails to clients? 

Getting a client to a demo is not an easy task, so if you’re already demoing your product, you should embrace the opportunity to improve customer engagement and gather valuable information about his or her real needs and perception of the product. Setting a goal of notes added and follow up emails sent will help ensure that your sellers are actively working to gather feedback they can learn from, which in turn will impact the product and sales approach. 

This is only the tip of the iceberg as to what KPIs sales managers can set for teams and individual sellers once they gain insight into and analysis of the demo process. 

Demoleap, an AI-based “co-pilot” offers real-time sales assistance for your sellers to present the best possible demo of your product anytime, anywhere. The technology’s impact is felt far beyond the demo itself, with a sales dashboard that helps teams and sales reps manage demos, reduce responsibilities with built-in tools and strive to improve with quantifiable analytics. Demoleap’s AI offers insights into value-based selling, alerting you to which demos were more successful so you can set more effective KPIs and continue to optimise your sales process and execution.  

Curious? Schedule your demo today. Looking forward to hearing from you.