What are SaaS demos? The complete guide to SaaS demos.

Software as a service (SaaS) delivery has become the core go-to-market strategy for many tech companies. Gartner projects that SaaS spending will grow 17.9% to total $197 billion in 2023. From streamlining operations to boosting productivity, there’s a SaaS solution for nearly every business need.

However, for potential customers to fully grasp the value of a SaaS product, they need more than just a brochure or a feature list. This is where SaaS demos come into play. In this comprehensive guide, we will explore what a SaaS demo is, the benefits it offers, best practices for conducting effective demos, and how Reprise can elevate your SaaS demo creation. We will also delve into common problems associated with SaaS demos and how to avoid them.

What is a SaaS Demo?

Before we dive into the intricacies of SaaS demos, let’s start with the basics. What exactly is a SaaS demo? Companies use SaaS demos to showcase their software products to potential customers. Demos go beyond static presentations, allowing users to experience the software in action. Think of it as a test drive for software.

A SaaS demo typically involves a demonstration of the software’s key features and functionality. It can be delivered through various mediums, including live sales presentations, or interactive demos embedded in a company’s website or marketing campaigns. The goal is to provide potential customers with a hands-on experience, enabling them to see how the software works and how it can address their specific needs — without committing to a SaaS free trial or freemium experience. Alternatively, a demo can help you get started faster and derive more value from a trial.

Benefits of Using a SaaS Sales Demo

Now that we understand what a SaaS demo is, let’s explore why it’s an essential tool for modern software businesses, accelerating the enterprise sales process.

1. Understanding the Product in Action

One of the primary benefits of a SaaS demo is that it allows potential customers to experience the product in action. While feature lists and written descriptions can provide valuable information, there’s no substitute for actually experiencing how the software works. A well-executed, successful demo can give users first-hand experience with the product’s features, as well as help users visualize how the product can solve their problems and meet their requirements.

2. Delivering Personalized and Interactive Demos

SaaS demos can be tailored to the specific needs and interests of each potential customer. Personalized demos add a human touch to the sales process, making customers feel valued and understood. Interactive demos, where users can independently engage with the software, can showcase product value immediately.

3. Establishing Social Proof through Customer Success Stories

A compelling SaaS demo can include real customer success stories and case studies. By showcasing how other businesses with comparable pain points have benefited from your product, you provide social proof of its effectiveness. This can build trust and confidence in your potential customers, making them more likely to convert.

4. Qualifying Prospects Sooner in the Sales Process

SaaS demos can streamline the enterprise sales process by qualifying prospects sooner. A demo creation platform can help your entire go-to-market (GTM) team quickly create both interactive demos and customized live demos without having to rely on extensive technical resources for each new prospect. In addition, interactive demos can be embedded on your website or within a marketing campaign to prequalify prospects, making the discovery process more productive for both the sales team and the prospect alike.

5. Shortening the Sales Cycle

When prospects have a clear understanding of your product’s value and functionality, the sales cycle is likely to be shorter. They are more likely to make a purchase decision sooner, reducing the time it takes to close deals. Leveraging interactive demos as leave-behinds can make committee decisions easier, equipping champions with a way to convince the team that your product can work within their environment.

6. Enhancing Prospect Engagement

Engagement is crucial in today’s competitive market. SaaS demos actively involve potential customers, encouraging them to ask questions and explore the product. This engagement fosters a sense of partnership and collaboration, increasing the likelihood of a successful conversion.

7. Empowering a Sales Rep Team

Customizable SaaS demo templates and demo libraries can serve as a powerful sales enablement tool for your team and even your channel partners. These demos can help reps prepare for live demos before the main event, and give them a basis from which to tailor the live demo experience for the prospective customer. In committee decision-making scenarios, interactive demos can be used as a leave-behind, empowering your champions to accurately convey your product’s value to the rest of their team.

Incorporating these benefits into your SaaS demo strategy can give your business a competitive edge in the market. But how can you ensure that your SaaS demos are effective and deliver these advantages consistently?

SaaS Demo Best Practices

To conduct effective SaaS demos, it’s important to take into account some of the latest interactive product demo trends. Buyers increasingly rely on demos to understand a product’s value before engaging with sales teams. In fact, Forrester research shows that 60% of buyers will go to a vendor’s website before accepting an online or in-person sales meeting. After they prequalify themselves, prospective buyers expect sales teams to help them visualize how a product might work to address their own pain points and technical requirements.

With that in mind, let’s explore some actionable tips to optimize your SaaS demos:

• Understand Your Audience:  Before conducting a SaaS demo, research your audience thoroughly. Understand their pain points, needs, and goals. Tailor your demo to address these specific concerns. If you are already using an interactive product demo on your website or in your marketing materials, demo analytics can help you understand which features or product attributes interest your prospect most, based on where they spent the most time. A one-size-fits-all approach rarely works for discerning buyers. Keeping this in mind, SaaS demos can become a powerful piece of your marketing strategy.
• Showcase Key Features: Focus on showcasing the features that are most relevant to the prospect’s use case or pain points, and demonstrate value quickly. Avoid overwhelming your audience with every feature, as this can lead to information overload. Highlight how these most relevant features can solve real problems for your potential customers.
• Tell a Compelling Story: Craft a narrative around your demo. Start with a problem that your audience can relate to, introduce your product as the solution, and demonstrate how it resolves the issue. Demos can be a great way to emphasize a human connection. Anchoring your story in how a real customer solved a similar problem can make the demo more credible and compelling.
• Use Your SE Resources Wisely: Solutions engineers and other presales team members are in short supply and high demand. The right demo creation platform can empower your sales AEs to develop their own demos independently, saving valuable SE resources for the technical close vs. reinventing the wheel for every live demo.
• Incorporate Interactive Demos: Incorporate interactive demos into your website or marketing materials whenever possible. Doing so eliminates the demo demand bottleneck. Consider offering interactive product experiences earlier in the sales cycle with a homepage CTA that directs visitors to an ungated interactive demo. More and more buyers are hesitant to register for a free trial or do the work of filling in blank product instances before they can discover product value first-hand. Instead, allow your audience to click, explore, and engage with the software.
• Address Questions Effectively: Encourage questions during the demo and be prepared to address them promptly. This shows that you value your audience’s input and are genuinely interested in helping them.
• Follow Up: After the demo, follow up with your prospects to answer any remaining questions and gauge their interest. A timely follow-up can make a significant difference in conversion rates, and leveraging an interactive demo as a leave-behind can ease more complex committee decisions.
• Analyze and Iterate: Analyze session data from your interactive demos to determine where to focus, and what to cut to make the most of the prospect’s valuable time. Don’t be afraid to ask for feedback during live demos, and use it to improve your presentation. Continuously iterate and refine your demo based on the insights gained from previous sessions.

These best practices can help you create compelling and effective presentations. However, to truly stand out in the competitive SaaS market, you need the right tools and solutions.

Discover How Reprise Can Elevate Your SaaS Demo Creation

Enter Reprise – the first interactive demo creation platform designed for the entire GTM demo lifecycle. Reprise empowers you to create engaging, personalized, and data-driven SaaS demos that look and feel like your actual product.

Among the tools available, Reprise stands out as the first fully integrated platform. Reprise is easy to use and extensible for all types of demo creators, from product marketers, to presales teams, to sales reps. Reprise enables anyone to build their own demos and illuminate key features at any stage in the sales process. In addition, using Reprise removes the security and failure risks that often come up when you use a homegrown demo sandbox environment.

Let’s explore some of those potential issues in more depth.

Avoid Common Problems with a SaaS Demo Environment

While SaaS demos offer immense potential, they also come with their fair share of challenges. To ensure that your demos are successful, it’s essential to be aware of common problems and how to avoid them.

As mentioned earlier, personalization is key to effective SaaS demos. One common mistake is delivering generic, one-size-fits-all demos. To avoid this pitfall, invest in tools like Reprise that enable you to create personalized demos tailored to each prospect’s needs — without reinventing the wheel for each new demo.

Few things can undermine the credibility of your SaaS demo as quickly as a product demo crash during a live presentation. To prevent this, it’s important to use a stable platform like Reprise that’s divorced from your product’s backend, so an unexpected product update or downtime won’t impact your live demo.

Finally, demo security is key. Accidentally exposing private customer data during a demo is all too common. Solutions like Reprise enable you to easily edit and anonymize demos on the fly. Choose a platform that prioritizes security with SOC-2 Type 2 compliance, and includes enterprise security features such as role-based access control (RBAC) to ensure that no unauthorized guests can access your demo environment.

Successful SaaS Demo Examples

Hundreds of customers have improved their enterprise sales efficiency with Reprise. For example, Hireology accelerated their sales cycles by 50%, using product tours built on Reprise to tell a consistent product story across the customer journey.

At the top of the funnel, Hireology uses the product tours on their website to engage prospects with self-service marketing content, allowing them to self-qualify in or out of a sales process early on – without consuming the sales team’s cycles.

Mid-funnel, in addition to presenting live demos, sales teams share guided product tours as leave-behinds to highlight specific features for different audiences and their unique needs. They extend Hireology’s reach to a broader circle outside of the core buying committee in order to create wider consensus without needing every stakeholder to participate in every live call or demo. Overall, across the funnel, every demo makes a bigger impact with consistent delivery and tight messaging.

Check out even more examples of successful customer demos in the Reprise demo library.

As you can see from the benefits and examples detailed above, SaaS demos are a vital tool to prove product value. From helping potential customers understand the product in action to streamlining the sales process and enhancing prospect engagement, demos can make a real difference for your bottom line. By following best practices and utilizing a demo creation platform like Reprise, you can create compelling and effective SaaS demos that set you apart from competitors. Additionally, by being aware of common problems and taking proactive steps to avoid them, you can ensure that your SaaS demos consistently deliver value and drive conversions. Embrace the power of SaaS demos, and watch your business thrive in 2023 and beyond.