How to Build a Demo Library to Supercharge Your Demo Program

Today, far too many presales teams are stuck in a reactive loop when they’re demoing to new prospects. According to a recent poll of the PreSales Collective community, 22% of teams build bespoke demos for each new prospect in their pipeline. And, 41% are not taking advantage of demo libraries, which could make demo building and sharing much more efficient and effective.

What is a demo library? It’s a foundational part of any demo program that aims to scale demo creation, personalization and demo access across the company. Depending on your company and how you use product demos today, your demo library may look different. But, one thing remains the same: A demo library is a central repository for all of your demos, which you can share with the most relevant stakeholders for further personalization and customization.

Let’s look at some best practices for building a demo library that will supercharge your demo program (and save your presales team valuable time in the process).

1. Capitalize on the demos you have today

If you’re a presales leader, you probably don’t want to add more work to your team’s plate. The good news is that any demo program can begin exactly where you are today. You probably have at least one (or a handful) of demos that you’ve used successfully with prospects in the past. These can be great foundations for building a demo library of assets that can be accessed, customized and shared on-demand by sales or marketing team members.

Databricks’ Demo Library is one example. Their complex product had historically leaned heavily on proofs-of-concept (POCs), which required a significant presales investment in terms of human capital and time for every sales opportunity. In an effort to scale, they’ve implemented a demo program where customers can engage with live demos, product tours, workshops, leave-behinds, and custom demo environments all as alternative options to the POC. This has led to greater alignment across the team and shorter sales cycles.

These types of efforts prove that demos you already have can become a foundation for a scalable demo program.

2. Create an organizational structure that’s intuitive for your team

Like any other content management or document storage structure, a demo library needs to make sense for its users. While presales will own the creation and the organization of these assets, the folder and file structure needs to be easily accessible by stakeholders such as sales, marketing, and others in the organization who need quick access to demos.

For example, you may choose to sort your demo library by use case, prospect pain point, persona, or industry vertical. Some teams may benefit from demos sorted by features or types of products. For others, sorting demos by sales plays may be most effective. Regardless of your organizational structure, the goal is for presales to democratize the use of demos, while still maintaining fine-grained control.

3. Control access for the right users at the right time

While a demo library democratizes demo assets, it can’t become a free-for-all with open access. The point of a demo library is to provide a central repository of trusted, proven demos that can be shared and customized as broader teams need them. Open access is risky, since anyone can edit any demos at any time. This can make it difficult for your presales team to maintain golden demos and demo templates that can be trusted enough to repurpose again and again.

Role-based access control (RBAC) helps presales maintain fine-grained control over individual demo assets or demo folders, while making broader access a reality. This ensures that access is only provided to the users that need it, at the time they need it most. Rather than being an unnecessary restriction, RBAC can help maintain continuity and consistency of messaging among demo templates (while ensuring that sensitive data isn’t accidentally revealed).

4. Measure the success of your demos (and continuously improve them)

In the PreSales Collective poll cited above, 53% of teams don’t measure success for their demos at all. Only 8% of companies measure the success of their demos with demo analytics, while 39% rely on anecdotal feedback from sales. This is a big missed opportunity for presales teams to directly connect their demo builds to sales outcomes.

Knowing which demo assets work best for certain prospects’ personas or pain points can help accelerate sales cycles and improve win rates. Using a blend of anecdotal feedback from sales and demo analytics available in a demo platform can remove the guesswork from demos, and help your presales team optimize demo assets based on deals that have closed in the past. The best thing about a demo library is that you can continuously improve upon your existing demo assets, introduce new ones to test and learn from, and phase out demo assets that aren’t working for you.

A demo library is the cornerstone of any effective demo program. While creating and organizing a demo library may require planning up-front, it will save your presales team valuable time that was once spent creating bespoke demo assets or cleaning and maintaining a demo environment. As a result, this team can focus on more technical validation and down-funnel work that is often very time consuming. With a demo library, stakeholders like sales and marketing are empowered to customize demos for each prospect, while presales teams maintain control over the templates and demos that resonate most with buyers. Following the simple steps detailed above, you can create a demo library from existing assets, and optimize them to drive winning sales outcomes.