How to Run a Sales Demo #177
For many founders, CEOs and directors, the demo feels like the make-or-break moment of the sale.
You've finally got an interested buyer in front of you. Now you can show them the product. Explain the features. Demonstrate what it can do.
And hopefully impress them enough to move forward.
I've seen this go wrong many times.
The demo looks good. The founder talks enthusiastically about the product. The buyer asks a few questions. Everyone says it was a great conversation.
Then nothing.
The buyer disappears.
The problem usually isn't the quality of the product.
It's the way the demo was conducted.
A great sales demo isn't a tour of your product or service.
It's an opportunity to show the buyer, very specifically, how what you do can solve the problems they've already told you matter.
That distinction changes everything.
There are four things I would focus on if you want to run a much more effective B2B sales demo.
1. Your Demo Starts With Discovery
A brilliant demo is largely determined before the demo even begins.
It starts with discovery.
And this is why I strongly recommend separating your discovery call from your demo.
Don't schedule a 60-minute meeting and spend the first 20 or 30 minutes asking a few discovery questions before immediately launching into the product.
The two conversations have different jobs.
Discovery is there to understand the buyer.
The demo is there to show how your solution fits what you've discovered.
You cannot properly do the second without doing the first.
During discovery, you should be trying to understand things such as:
Where is the buyer today?
Where do they want to get to?
What is stopping them?
What problems are they experiencing?
What is causing those problems?
What impact are those problems having on the business?
What is that impact costing them?
Why do they want to change?
Why does that change matter now?
What happens if nothing changes?
This is the heart of what I call Business Diagnosis.
You're not simply collecting enough information to qualify the buyer.
You're trying to understand their business well enough to determine four things:
Do they have a problem you can solve?
Do they agree that the problem exists?
Do they genuinely want to solve it?
And are they willing to go through the process required to solve it?
The quality of the questions you ask matters enormously here. I've written previously about [why asking better questions changes business conversations] How to Ask Questions — Business737 #143.
Once you've completed that diagnosis, you have something incredibly valuable.
A map for the demo.
Build the demo around the problems you've discovered.
Go through the problems you've identified and rank them according to the impact they're having on the buyer.
Greatest impact first.
Least important last.
Why?
Because big problems create big motivations to change.
Little problems create little motivation.
If an issue isn't important to the buyer, don't waste ten minutes of your demo talking about it simply because your product happens to solve it.
Your discovery findings become the framework.
If something isn't on that framework, ask yourself why you're showing it.
This is what transforms a generic demonstration into a highly relevant one.
The buyer should feel:
"This was built around us."
A good demo is almost like looking into a dressing-room mirror.
The buyer should be able to see what your solution looks like on them.
Not on another company.
Not in a generic use case.
On their business.
What If the Buyer Asks for a Demo First?
This happens all the time.
Someone gets in touch and says:
"Can you show me the product?"
Naturally, you're tempted to say yes.
They're interested. Why put another meeting in their way?
But there is a problem.
You don't know what to show them yet.
Without discovery, you're guessing.
A better approach is to explain that your proper demo process has two stages.
First, you spend time understanding their situation and what they're trying to achieve.
Then you use what you've learned to prepare a demo around the things that actually matter to them.
You can even position the discovery and demo as one process taking place across two sessions.
The important thing is to give yourself enough time between them to think.
Review your notes.
Understand the problems.
Look at the consequences.
Consider their desired outcomes.
Then decide precisely what you're going to show.
That preparation is part of the sale.
2. Remove the Word "If" From Your Demo
Here's a simple test for your next sales demo.
See whether you can get through the whole thing without repeatedly saying "if."
"If you're struggling with..."
"If this is a problem for you..."
"If your team needs..."
"If you wanted to improve..."
Why are you saying if?
You should already know.
If you've completed a proper discovery, you're not guessing which problems the buyer might have.
They've told you.
Instead of saying:
"If you're struggling to get accurate reporting across different locations..."
you should be able to say:
"You mentioned that consolidating reporting across your locations currently takes your team two days every month. This is where this part of the platform becomes relevant."
Completely different conversation.
One is a pitch.
The other shows that you listened.
I've seen founders lose buyers because they throw every possible problem, benefit and feature into the conversation hoping that something will land.
It usually has the opposite effect.
The conversation becomes unfocused.
The buyer gets overloaded.
And eventually they switch off.
This is also one of the wider problems I discussed in [Why 90% of Sales Calls Go Wrong] Why 90% of Sales Calls Go Wrong — Business737 #145: too many sales conversations become feature pitches rather than attempts to understand and solve the buyer's actual problem.
The demo isn't the place to discover whether something matters.
Discovery should have told you that.
3. Show Less — Make It Matter More
Think about your phone for a moment.
How many things can it do?
Take photographs.
Record video.
Translate languages.
Measure objects.
Navigate.
Manage banking.
Edit documents.
Join meetings.
And hundreds of other things most of us probably don't even know exist.
But you didn't buy your phone because someone demonstrated every function.
The same applies to your product or service.
Your buyer might have hundreds of wants.
Your product might have hundreds of features.
But there will normally only be a relatively small number of serious business problems driving the buying decision.
Those are what matter.
So resist the urge to show everything.
As a general rule, I'd rather see somebody demonstrate four to six highly relevant capabilities exceptionally well than race through twenty.
If you're trying to fit too much into a 45-60 minute demo, something has to give.
And usually it's the explanation of business value.
Instead of:
"Here's another feature. Here's another feature. And look what this does..."
slow down.
Connect the capability back to the problem.
Show why it matters.
Connect it to the impact you've already identified.
Then connect it to the outcome they want.
For example:
Problem: Their team spends 25 hours each month manually reconciling information.
Feature: Your platform automates that process.
But don't stop there.
The important part isn't the automation.
It's what the automation changes.
What happens to those 25 hours?
What does the team do instead?
What errors disappear?
What becomes faster?
What does management now know that they didn't know before?
What financial or operational effect does that create?
That's the demo.
People don't buy features.
They buy what those features enable them to do.
This also connects with a wider principle I've written about before: higher-value buyers tend to respond to important business problems rather than small conveniences. Get Higher Paying Buyers — Business737 #154
Keep the presentation focused.
Quality over quantity.
Clarity over complexity.
4. Make the Future State Tangible
There is another job your demo needs to perform.
It should help the buyer see their future.
Human beings naturally use existing reference points when making judgments. In behavioural psychology, one version of this is known as anchoring.
The first strong reference point can influence how later options are evaluated.
That matters during a B2B buying process.
If your demo clearly connects the buyer's problems to a compelling future state, your solution can become a reference point against which alternatives are considered.
But that doesn't happen simply because you've shown them something impressive.
You need to bring the buyer into the conversation.
After demonstrating something relevant, ask a simple validating question.
For example:
"Can you see how this would reduce the reporting problem you mentioned earlier?"
"Can you see how this would shorten the process you're currently taking three days to complete?"
"Would this give your team the visibility you said you're currently missing?"
"What effect would this have on the issue we discussed around X?"
Notice what you're doing.
You're connecting:
Problem → Solution → Future outcome
And you're asking the buyer to participate in that connection.
This serves two purposes.
First, it reinforces value.
The buyer isn't simply watching software move around a screen.
They're thinking about what it would change inside their business.
Second, it tells you whether you're actually hitting the mark.
And that is incredibly important.
What happens if they say no?
Good.
Now you know.
Sometimes our discovery wasn't as complete as we thought.
Sometimes the problem is more complicated.
Sometimes we've misunderstood something.
Sometimes what we thought mattered most doesn't.
That's business.
The mistake is continuing with another 30 minutes of demo while the buyer quietly disconnects from the conversation.
If you say:
"Can you see how this would solve the issue we discussed?"
and the answer is:
"Not really."
Stop.
Don't defend the product.
Don't immediately show another feature.
Get curious again.
"Okay. Tell me what's missing."
"Which part doesn't fit?"
"What would need to happen for this to solve the problem properly?"
Now you're diagnosing again.
And that's far better than walking away believing you gave a fantastic demo and spending the next three months wondering why nobody replies to your emails.
Your Demo Isn't About Your Product
This is the most important point.
The demo is not really about your business.
It's not about your software.
It's not about your methodology.
And it's certainly not about showing the buyer every clever thing you've built.
Your buyer doesn't care about any of those things in isolation.
They care about what those things mean for them.
They care about whether you understand their problem.
They care about whether you can solve it.
They care about whether solving it will get them closer to something they want.
And they care whether the value of doing that justifies the cost, effort and risk of changing.
This is why discovery and demo belong together — but should not be treated as the same conversation.
Discovery gives you the diagnosis.
The demo shows what the solution looks like.
Done properly, it should feel less like a presentation and more like the next logical stage of a conversation the buyer is already having with you.
You aren't introducing random possibilities.
You aren't guessing.
You aren't showing off.
You're simply taking the problems they told you matter and showing them what solving those problems could look like.
That's what makes a demo relevant.
That's what makes it valuable.
And that's what gives it a much greater chance of moving the deal forward.
Want to Improve Your Discovery and Demo Process?
If your demos are getting polite responses but not progressing into signed business, the problem may have started before the demo itself.
I work with B2B founders, CEOs and directors to improve the conversations that happen between initial interest and the buying decision — particularly discovery, business diagnosis and deal progression.
Book a Discovery Call and we'll look at where your current process is breaking down.
