Product demonstrations are a key part of the sales cycle. Once a lead has been identified and cultivated, one of the final steps in the sales process is demonstrating the product—showing the prospect what you’ve been talking so much about.
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Often, though, it isn’t the sales rep that is performing the demo, simply because they aren’t experts on the product. The experts are typically the people who designed, developed, and/or built the product.
Unfortunately, these individuals often focus too much on the bells and whistles that make the product work instead of focusing on the benefits of the products.
‘Features Tell, Benefits Sell’
Gregory Ciotti sums up the difference perfectly in the title of his article for HelpScout: “Features Tell, but Benefits Sell.” The point he makes is that nobody cares about how your product works—OK, there are probably some who care, but they are in the minority; they care about what it can do for them. What problem does it solve? What benefits does it offer? How does it make their lives better?
This can be a tough pill to swallow for many of the tech wizards tasked with demoing whiz-bang products, because it was their brilliant designing, coding, engineering, etc., that put all the whizbang into the product. They are rightfully proud of their work but can benefit from some basic sales coaching when conducting demonstrations for prospects and customers.
Coaching Product Demonstrators
The sales team, or demo team, can play an important role in coaching product demonstrators to focus on (and sell) the benefits, not the features, of their products. This doesn’t mean every benefit, and it certainly doesn’t mean every feature.
An article for First Round Review notes that “Good demos don’t have to be perfect for the product. They have to be perfect for the audience.” In other words, there shouldn’t really be a one-size-fits-all demo, unless you are solving an extremely simple and universal problem. Instead, your team needs to identify the key issue your prospect is trying to solve and craft the demo around how your product solves it.
Creating partnerships between your sales and product development teams can be a good way to ensure that product demonstrations are focused on benefits (for the audience) rather than features.