Take the Tour. Forget the Demo!

With all sorts of SaaS businesses, the most critical phase of the sales process is the demo. The trouble with converting sales prospects into sales opportunities is low conversion rates. Here’s a Big Idea to increase your demos by 10 to 15 percent.

Time was, providing demonstrations to prospects was something few were offering and set those prospects at ease. “It’s not a sales meeting—it’s just a demo.” they would think. Today, everybody uses ‘the demo’ and the vast majority use it as an excuse for a sales meeting. Now, prospects are far more reluctant to accept (much less request) a demo for fear of a 20-minute hard-sell.

Big Idea :: Ditch the Demo!

While the everybody’s are pushing hard for the demo, offer a “Tour.” Instruct sales team members to leave the hard-sell at home, but other than that, it’s a demo by another name.

JDM has already experimented with re-positioning our clients’ product demos as “product tours” and found as much as a 10% or 15% increase in conversion rates—almost overnight.

Why?!

I’m sure you’re wondering why. Let’s play a quick mind experiment. Pretend you don’t know anything much about Quickbooks and read the following two sales pitches.

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• I’d like to invite you to take a Quickbooks Pro demo.
• Would you like a quick tour of Quickbooks Pro?

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Which of the above two sales pitches feels less like a sales pitch and more as a free learning opportunity with little or no obligation to buy? I would wager the second on–as our research suggests.

Which one did you pick?