How to Measure Sales Demo Performance and Best Practices to Optimize Your Demos

How is the performance of your sales demo? Before getting into that, how can you determine whether your sales demo performance is good enough?

Creating a killer sales demo may look like the final task, but it's just the tip of the iceberg. When you roll out your demo, you have to polish it often to find the right balance between showing your product’s capabilities and giving the audience what they need to know.

So, where do you start?

In this blog post, we've outlined some of the most important metrics you should be tracking when trying to optimize your sales process. 

Important Sales Demo KPIs and Metrics

Sales teams can increase their win rate by working on a demo, analyzing how prospects react to it, and making changes accordingly.

It's essential to measure how your sales demo performance is going. This will help you to know where you stand and what needs improvement.

To understand how your sales demos are performing, there are certain KPIs and sales demo metrics that you can use for measuring how well your sales demo is doing.

The following KPIs will help you to know the effectiveness of your sales demos:

1. Number of demos per converted account 

Closing a prospect may take sending multiple demos to them, as various decision-makers and decision-making processes are involved. The number of demos sent per converted account can indicate how many sales demos you need and how well you’re closing them off.

To improve efficiency, consider whether there is a way to streamline the sales process by minimizing the number of sales demos it takes to convert prospects into paying customers.

2. Percentage of demos to customers 

Sales demos should always be followed by the number of deals closed. If your demo is perfect and your prospect's expectations are met, the demo will bring them closer to converting.

However, if this ratio is low, there may be room for improvement in your sales process. Why aren’t customers signing deals? What about their experience with the product is preventing them from making an investment decision?

When you answer this question, it will help you learn what you need to improve in your sales demo.

3. Average deal value per demo 

The average deal value per demo is the total value of all deals (resulting from demos) divided by the number of demos. This metric will tell you how much your sales team sells on average.

As your sales demos are increasingly successful, you’ll close more deals and get higher average deal values.

4. Revenue generated per demo 

The revenue per demo metric tells you how much revenue your sales team generates from each demo.

This metric gives you a snapshot of the sales team's overall performance and how their demo is performing.

This is a great way to measure the success of your sales demos because it shows how much value it's adding to your business.

5. Time elapsed from demo to close 

A better demo experience can help reduce the length of your sales cycle. The reason is that a good presentation attracts more prospects, enables you to narrow down leads faster, and results in higher-quality interactions between reps and customers—all things that shorten the time to revenue!

This metric gives you an idea of how many days it takes for your sales team to close after a demo, and it can help you identify opportunities for improvement.

6. Average deal value per POC

If you use a POC (Proof of concept) after a demo, you can use this metric to see how much each POC is worth. To measure your performance, you can even use demos in conjunction  with POCs to get a better understanding of the value of each demo.

If your product is simple and doesn't require a proof of concept, you can simply build a demo environment to show prospects the results they will get. 

The benefit of doing this is you will get transparent metrics to optimize your process. It's important to note that you shouldn't ask for a deposit when you do a demo. It's also worth mentioning that if your product is complex and requires a POC, then it will take time for them to understand the value of your solution.

If you use demo environments to target prospects, tracking average deal value per proof of concept will help ensure your sales team is offering them only to sales-qualified leads.

7.  Closed business without POC 

If you don’t use POCs, this metric will show you how much revenue your sales team brings in without proof of concept. It can help you measure the effectiveness of a demo as opposed to a POC.

How to Improve Sales Demo Performance (Best Practices)

Once you have measured your sales demo performance with the important KPIs mentioned above, it's time to refine it to get the maximum out of your sales demo.

Here's how you can improve your sales demo performance:

1. Collect all the basic information about your prospects

This essential step helps you deliver the right message to the right person.

It's important to know who you are talking to get the right message across. You should have all the basic information about your prospects, such as;

• The prospect, their pain points, and basic details of the organization that is being discussed
• The role of the person in the organization
• Business goals, technical constraints, and obstacles
• What might happen if they don’t address these problems

This will help you to build a better connection with them during your sales demo call.

2. Customize your sales demo

Now you know what they need, and you have a good idea of what is important to them.

It’s time to customize your sales demo. This means that you should tailor your demo to suit their specific needs and requirements. For example, if they are a small business looking for an easy-to-use solution that will help them reduce costs, then focus on features such as; ease of use, cost savings, and scalability in your sales demo.

To make this process efficient, Storylane offers rich editing features and customization options that allow you to customize your demo in minutes.

You can change the colors, fonts, and text, add new pages and sections to your sales demo, or even add images and links. This way, you can create a custom demo that is tailored specifically for each prospect.

3. Personalize Your Demo

It’s hard to believe, but salespeople often forget that their customers are individuals. They approach each prospect with the same demo, regardless of their unique needs and requirements. This can result in a less-than-optimal response rate because prospects are not interested in viewing a generic demo but rather one that is customized for them.

In fact, in the 2022 State of Personalization Report, Twilio says that 62% of consumers will lose loyalty to brands who do not deliver an experience tailored to their needs—a nearly 20% increase from last year.

That's why you should personalize your sales demo. Personalizing your demo means creating one that is tailored specifically to the individual customer and their unique needs with their basic information.

Storylane helps you to auto-personalize your demo and deliver the best and most personalized demo to your prospects.

4. Make it interactive

A sales demo should be interactive. Your prospects want to see and experience the product in action, not just read about it. You need to provide a demo that is easy for them to understand and allows them to interact with the product so they can see how it works for themselves.

This will help you close more deals because your prospects will clearly understand what your product does and why they need it.

You can use tooltips and hotspots to provide a more interactive demo and make your prospects feel like they are using the product.

5. Keep it short and sweet.

People don’t have time to watch a long, boring sales demo. You need to keep your demo short and sweet by providing only the most essential information.

You should only show your prospects what they need to know about your product, not every feature.

6. Prove that your product can solve their problem

Demos are most effective when they show your prospects how you can help them. This means that in a demo, you should focus on how easy it is for people to learn about and use your product—and what kind of savings or other benefits they will get.

You can do this by creating a flow that educates your prospects on how it solves your prospect's problems and helps them achieve their goals. It won't be effective if you can’t prove this in your demo.

7. Analyze and move forward

It's important to know how your prospects are interacting with your demo. Once you know where they drop off the most, you can focus on improving that part of the demo.

By testing your demo and analyzing the results, you can improve it over time to make it more effective. You don’t want the same problem with every demo—you want each one to be better than the last!

Analyze, Optimize, and Acquire Deals

The primary reason behind sales demo optimization is to improve your sales demo performance efficiency. And it’s not possible without knowing how it’s performing. You must analyze your sales demo to understand where you are losing out on the deal and then optimize it.

This will help you to understand why some demos are more effective than others, which parts of your demo cause the most impact, and so on. And how do you know how your prospects are interacting with your demo and how will you track which part is underperforming?

This is where the role of sales demo software comes in. It’s a powerful tool that will help you track and analyze your sales demos to understand why some are more effective than others. This will allow you to optimize the parts of your demo that need improvement and fine-tune your demo.

One such platform is Storylane. It helps you analyze the performance of your demo with advanced analytics features that enable you to track how your prospects are interacting and where they are dropping or sticking. This helps you to understand what’s working and what needs improvement in your sales demo.

Storylane also provides rich editing features that will help you structure your demos effectively. It also allows you to create personalized demos based on the data collected from your CRM. 

Want to check how can you enhance your sales demo and boost your conversion with Storylane? Schedule a demo to experience our product firsthand. The best way to understand what we do is by seeing it in action!