Successful product demos with webinars

A product demo is the ideal way to showcase your product to your existing audience or to new potential customers. By offering webinars, you can familiarize (potential) prospects with your product and take away any possible barriers at the same time!

In this article, we’ll discuss how you can ensure a successful product demo through the use of a webinar. Grab your notepad and a cup of coffee, because this is going to bear you some extra sales in the future.

• The sales pitch

• Webinars for sale

• More demo, less...

• Be interactive

• Check.. double check

• Expert talk

• The last questions… will be asked by you

The sales pitch

Sales pitches are everywhere these days. Whether you’re being stopped on the street for a newspaper subscription, or someone is calling you to register a new energy contract. Most people know the drill when it comes to sales pitches. It almost makes people immune to the standard sales techniques, but this is exactly where the challenge is. How can you make a product demonstration as interesting as humanly possible? Obviously, the answer is webinars!

Webinars for sale

What’s the most powerful sales strategy? Using a personal story in your pitch. Webinars naturally allow for this, it’s very similar to a direct 1-on-1 conversation. In a webinar, you can build up trust and credibility, because the viewer can directly look you in the eyes. There’s a certain magic about being far apart, but still having the capability to build trust with someone through a laptop and a simple webcam.

In the end, a webinar is a 1-on-1 conversation. - Gerard Nijboer AFAS Software

More demo, less...

Remember those days in high school where you had to attend endless PowerPoint presentations with insane amounts of information on each slide? Death by PowerPoint is a real thing. It’s both exhausting and inefficient in terms of soaking up the information. In any type of product demo, you want to avoid this problem. Instead, try using the power of the demonstration itself to keep participants excited. Don’t try to use static slides with keywords and a dozen bullet points.

At the start of a product demo, you can use one or two sides to introduce your product and the demonstration. But let’s not bore the audience for too long. Continue with the demo as fast as possible, don’t stall the presentation with boring slides and a long introductory story. The viewers are there to see and experience the product as soon as possible.

Be interactive

One of the major advantages of a webinar is the interactiveness of it all. The viewer can directly ask questions, which provides a unique insight into the mind of your target market. This allows you to give viewers a clear and complete insight about your product.

Here’s a bonus tip from me. Don’t let yourself get caught up in critical questions from the audience. Because you’re the expert, you have to be confident. But you do have to allow people to ask questions, always reserve a section of your webinar for Q&A.

Check.. double check

When you’re presenting from a long-distance location, it’s important to check regularly if people are still following along. Don't ask them "any more questions about this?"

Instead, actually try to convey that you care about the viewers and aren’t just there to sell something. You can do this quite easily by saying: "I want to take a break right now, so everyone has the opportunity to soak up all that information. What do you think about functionality X or how would functionality Y be an added value to you personally? This helps viewers trust you and it gives them the feeling you’re actually someone who cares about them. At the same time, it’s also a useful way to collect feedback to further improve the product.

Expert talk

You’re the expert! Don’t just be the expert, but also show some passion for your product. When the attendees is able to see you are passionate about what you’re selling, they will start to feel the excitement as well. Try to crawl into the skin of your attendees and give them information that’s relevant to their lives. Give information that will benefit them directly. You can easily do this in the following ways:

• By telling about the product and using a case-study as an example

• By ‘interviewing’ the user of the product or encouraging them to tell something about the product

This gives you the possibility to show the attendees will actually benefit from this product. The unique perspective that is used will serve as proof for this.

Tell more

An important rule you should always remember in presentations: people won’t exactly remember the things you said. But they will remember the feeling you gave them and how you made them feel. This can be done through storytelling. A story is key in constructing a killer product demonstration. Stories touch upon our emotions, functionalities and benefits don’t. Obviously, this doesn’t mean you shouldn’t tell anything at all about those functionalities and benefits. Just keep it short.

Instead, you should share some great customer experiences during your product demo.

The last questions… will be asked by you

Here’s another key takeaway for you. Don’t ever leave a product demo with ‘just’ a discount offer. As the person selling something, you want to know what the next step is for your audience. What kind of decisions will they make? You can do this by simply asking a direct question. For example, try asking the following questions:

• What’s our solution like compared to the competition?

• Did the webinar help you make a definitive decision?

• What does your decision making process look like after the demo?

• Where are you at in the process?

You’d be amazed how accurately people will answer questions like these. So go ahead, dare to ask them! It doesn’t really matter, as long as it’s related to the product or the sale. By asking attendees these questions, it becomes a process of collaboration instead of a salesperson vs. buyer situation.

Conclusion

Hopefully, the tips in this article helped you improve your product demo with WebinarGeek. We at WebinarGeek wish you best of luck in your first successful product demonstration!