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How To Prepare a Great Software Demo Presentation in 2024 [With Demo Scripts]

Last week we were at a friend's place for dinner when our friend's 10-year-old daughter appeared from the kitchen wearing her chef's hat and holding a pan with some delicious-looking pudding. She announced, "Look what I have whipped up for you all." And at once, we're all curious! 

Almost all of us asked in unison, "What is it?" She smiled and said, "Why don't you try it yourself?" We all took a spoon and tasted that yummy caramel pudding she had baked for us!

That's what a demo presenter is an expert in —-- to create a great demo experience for their potential client. 

In fact, the famous Pepsi Challenge campaign gained its popularity because the brand asked the same question to its audience. 

In the 1970s, Pepsi grew tired of being the second best to Coca Cola which dominated the soft drink industry at that time. To create a stir, Pepsi took to the shopping malls in America and asked the customers: Why don't you try it yourself? Shoppers were encouraged to taste both Colas, and Pepsi was preferred. The Pepsi Challenge became popular and has been in Pepsi's ongoing marketing campaign for years. 

Software companies can create a similar buzz with their product demos. This article will discuss the different aspects of a great software demo presentation. Plus, there are some free script templates for those who can hang around till the end. 😉 

What is a Software Demo Presentation?

A software demo or demonstration is a visual walkthrough of the software. Sales reps, solution engineers, and AEs heavily depend on product demos to show the product in action to their customers to engage, attract, and persuade them. A software product demonstration includes a complete rundown of its features, selling points, and how it solves the customers' pain points. 

The Anatomy of an Effective Software Demo Presentation

Now that we know what a software demo is, let’s understand the key ingredients of a software demo presentation. 

An Interesting Opening

Start your demo with something that sparks the viewer’s interest. It might be a fun welcome message, an interesting stat tying to their pain point, a success story of one of your customers with a similar problem, an image, or a video. 

Relevance to Audience and Their Problem

Before you start creating a software demo, understand the purpose of your demo. If the purpose of the demo is to solve a customer problem, understand the problem you're trying to solve. Once this is created, you can better focus on your demo. 

A Narrative that Ties Back to the Pain Point

Once you have gathered all the information, map the painpoints with your product features and how they ease your prospect’s painpoint. To maintain viewer engagement with your demo, don't just focus on guiding them through your product. Create a compelling narrative that ties back to the pain points. 

A Strong Demo Script

To build an effective software demo, you need a strong demo script where you can weave in a storyline that engages the customer. For example, a story that starts with a problem and then tells the solution and the product's benefits works best for a demo script.  

Product in Action

Of course, people want to see how your product works, but they also want to see and understand the step-by-step process of which button to click and how to make the most use of each feature button. So pay attention to breaking down the process in a small step-by-step guide. 

Engaging Visuals

Don't make your demo presentation too boring. Add visual elements like attractive title screens, icons, characters, and transitions to make the demo appealing. 

A Clear Call to Action

Your demo presentation should be tied back to the purpose of your demo creation through a strong call to action or CTA. For example, if your purpose is to drive more sign-ups for a free trial, your CTA should say, "Sign up and enjoy a free trial”!  

Track Engagement

Examine the analytics like when the demo was viewed, which screen had the longest and shortest view time, who all have viewed the demo, etc., so your sales team can follow up with the prospect. 

Secondary CTA

Some viewers might not reach the end of the demo. Encourage them to take action by placing a secondary CTA in the middle of the demo. 

What Not To Include in a Software Demo 

No matter how great your software is, if it's not presented well, it will fail to pique the interest of the decision-makers. In this section, you will learn where most sales reps go wrong so that you can learn from their mistakes.  

Curse of Knowledge - The Cognitive Bias

Most demo presenters don't visually emphasize the mouse pointer on the screen and help us see what they're doing on the screen. This happens from the curse of knowledge or cognitive bias that arises when you have used any tool for a considerable period. As a result, the sales rep assumes the software is easy for everyone unless someone points it out. 

How to solve it: Make sure to zoom in on where you're clicking so that everyone can see what you're doing. Highlight and mark important areas in the software so that everyone can see and understand easily. Zoomit.exe is a free tool that you can use for zooming and highlighting. 

Overloading with Features

Your prospective client doesn't want to listen to all the features of your product and how incredible they are. They are only interested in how those features can solve their problem.  

How to solve it: Highlight the features that will be useful for them. Remember to prioritize value over functionality. 

Sticking to the Script

It's always advisable to create a demo script and prepare and rehearse well before going for a demo presentation. But it may look awkward if the prospect asks you any question in between, but you draw a blank simply because it’s not in your script.

How to solve it: Learn to be flexible in using the script. For example, if the prospect is asking some questions, pause and take a moment to respond to the question. 

A Step-by-Step Guide to Creating a Software Demo Presentation

While you need to think and act quickly on the field while presenting a demo, it’s always helpful to think ahead and structure your demo to keep it under your control. It helps you stay prepared, feel confident, and have a structured flow to your demo presentation. 

Introduce Yourself

The main purpose of introducing yourself is to warm up with the prospect. Once you introduce yourself, give a brief context to your demo. Here’s an example as shared by  Alexander Mackinlay of Qobra: 

“I had planned 45 mins for our meeting today. Is that still okay for you? Do you have a hard stop afterward? What I had in mind for us today:

•  We'll start with a recap of what we discussed last time so that we can readjust if anything has changed.
•  Prospect X and Y *(who were not there at the first meeting)*, this recap will enable you to add your own points of view and to let me know what you are individually expecting from this meeting.
•  I have listed a number of questions I would like to ask you;
•  Then we can move on to the demo;
•  We'll need to keep 20 minutes at the end, where I'd like you to be in a position where 1) either you tell me that you want to move forward with us and we plan a potential next step, 2) you'd prefer that we stop our conversations there.

How does this agenda sound to you?”

Ending the introduction with a question always opens up room for initiating a conversation!

Tie Back the Product Features as the Solution to Their Problem

As we mentioned earlier, don’t stuff your demo with all the features and every little detail your tool has. Instead, focus on the prospect’s pain point and tie back the features as the solution to those pain points. Here’s an example as shared by Gong .  

You: As we discussed last week, it seems that (problem) is one of your major concerns at the moment. Is that right?

Prospect: Yes, that’s right.

You: Great, let’s dive in and allow me to show you how our product can solve your problem. 

Create a WOW Moment

Create a WOW moment that will compel the prospect to remember you and your product. It’s the time for the showmanship and you don't tell but show it to your prospect.

Using an interactive product demo is a great way to create this WOW moment sooner because it lets the prospect try out the tool themselves in a sandbox environment without the intervention of a salesperson.

Here's how Semrush uses Storylane's interactive product tours to showcase their platform👇

Also Read: How Horizon Education eliminated manual sandboxes for product trials with Storylane

Here’s a sample script:

‍ “Now let me show you how you can send emails to your entire email list by clicking this one button.”   

Encourage Them to Ask Questions

Prospects who’re more engaged are more likely to buy. Encourage them to ask questions to ensure they’re still engaged with your demo. Here’s how Gong suggests doing it.  

“I’ll pause here for you to ask questions, if any, before we move on to the next step. 

Is this something you’ll use for [the prospect’s problem]

How do you see you and your team using this tool?”

Next Step and Close

Reiterate the message at the end of the demo presentation and close it with a CTA or the next step. Do you want the prospect to sign up a form, schedule a follow-up meeting, or move into the final stage of signing the deal? Whatever may be your next step, add it to your demo script and communicate it clearly before ending the presentation. Here’s a sample:

"How does this compare to your current process?"

"You previously mentioned one of the things you are looking to solve is X. I just showed you how our platform solves that. On a scale of 1-10, how well do you feel we address your issue?"

Keep the question open-ended and be specific. That will encourage the prospect to speak. Avoid questions like “Do you have any questions?” which will mostly lead to a no, in most cases, especially if the prospect has already lost interest in the product. 

3 Software Demo Presentation Templates

 DEMO START

Recap customer's issues and ask to validate again. Then ask if things have changed or if we missed anything last time. Ask those who were not there prior to this meeting for their challenges and expectations for this meeting. Ask all questions you might need answers to before starting the demo.

DEMO SCRIPT

During the demo, ask validating questions after each feature presentation. 

For example, if the prospect says, “My current pain point is X,” your script should say, “Based on X pain that you mentioned, this is how the feature Y solves it.”

Here’s another example. 

If the customer says, “I’m concerned about data security,” your script should say, 

“Y is a SaaS Cloud-based platform with SOC2 certification. This means that your data is very secure.”

CLOSING THE DEMO

At the end of the demo, don't say, "Do you have any questions?" which will only lead to a "No, that's okay.” Prospects who lose interest during your demo won’t usually tell you what they think unless you ask them. Add a personal touch. You’d better say:

“What about this is most interesting to you?”

“How do you see this helping with [challenge or goal they shared during discovery?”

“Was there anything you were hoping to see on this call that you didn’t?”

“Was there anything you saw on this call that didn't meet your expectations?”

If everything goes as planned, these questions above should then naturally take your prospect to set up the next step around pricing and ROI with decision-makers.

- As shared by Alexander Mackinlay , Qobra

While scripting for a product demo, one of the most important things to highlight in the product demo is what is in store for the end user in the form of a value proposition. Missing the focus on the key benefits and only explaining the features is the biggest demo mistake one does in a product demo. 

The script should be organized in this sequence 

• Pain points your solution solve
• How that problem is solved
• What is the value added to the customer? 

Here’s a sample script template

‍ “In our last meeting, you mentioned how vendor management is one of your biggest concerns at the moment. Our product just solves that! We have built an integrated solution that [ tell how it solves the problem].

 One of our customers has been able to streamline their vendor management by [incorporate the result they have achieved here] and you can do the same”

- As shared by Disha Thakkar, PMM Expert

The first thing to understand is that a software demo is just an opportunity to understand prospects better and show how your software solves their challenges.

The actual software and its functionality - things everyone wants to show is irrelevant. No one can really follow someone quickly jumping from screen to screen demonstrating features (that can't sell) and any questions come only from some past experience with other software.

When you carry on a conversation based on features, it's hard to sell. So here is a sales-oriented software demo scenario below. 

💡Note: You have to insist on more decision makers to be present on the very first demo because usually different people in business have very different ideas about their needs and you can win by catering for different needs.

1/ Ask questions and be inquisitive to understand what is the problem they want to solve.

2/ Ask what they see as a perfect solution

3/ Ask what software they are using currently (used in the past) to achieve that

4/ Ask what is not working or is annoying (chances are that your software does it as well, but at least you know what the person dislikes before showing proudly what your solution can do - you can annoy them that way too)

5/ Only then jump into screen sharing and this is where you have to be innovative and do a demo from the perspective of a solution this person is seeking. It's important to understand that whatever is cool about your software is only interesting from the perspective of solving their challenge and nothing else. Therefore showing features that they don't ask for is nice ... but is not a reason why they will buy. Why? Because your wonderful features often sound as "too good to be true".

6/ You have to show enough that they "buy" the idea and express their feeling that that's what they need. Do not proceed to discuss the pricing until you reach this point in the conversation.

7/ When there are no more questions they have and you answered them all, I recommend asking “if it's OK to talk about money now.”

After a positive response provide a clear, easy-to-follow pricing structure and ask how they wish to proceed. 

If you did 1-6 right at this point any objections are about price and it's hard to object because they just stated they are happy and interested. Then there are special techniques to handle price objections.

- As shared by  Assia Salikhova , Managing Director, Smarketing Lab Limited, author of "7 Keys to Successful Cold Calling" course.

Top 5 Tips to Keep in Mind While Creating a Software Demo Presentation

1. know who you’re presenting to.

Are you presenting to an employee (who's perhaps going to use your tool) or a decision-maker in the company? 

Research and do your homework to learn as much as possible about the person. 

What are their pain points? 

What kind of solution they're looking for? 

Knowing the finer details can help you stay prepared for all meeting scenarios. 

For example, if the person is reserved, you need to prompt them with questions to initiate a conversation. If you get to know the person will ask many questions, come prepared with answers and customer stories to back them up. If the person is a multitasker and attending the demo while working on the phone or laptop, grab their attention by making a bold statement or humor that can grab their attention. 

2. Prepare a Script and Practice

Always prepare a demo script, especially how you will deliver the humor, punch lines, or Twittable sound bites ( a short sentence or phrase in audio or video format that can be Twitted to give an essence of your message) that can grab the audience's attention. 

Once your script is ready, practice and rehearse until you're comfortable delivering the demo. You can practice in front of a peer or a family member. Or, if no one is available, record your demo speech and review the flow by hearing the recording. While you don't need to memorize the whole script, you should know in detail each of the points and be able to speak in a conversational tone. 

3. Support Your Claims with Use Cases

If you have solved a similar problem in the past, begin your demo with the same problem and how your product overcame that problem. Emphasize how the prospect can too achieve a similar outcome. Supporting your claims with a use case makes a strong case for you, and the prospect can better relate to your product. 

4. Customize Your Demo

Not all audiences are the same, so you need to customize your demo accordingly. For example, if you demo a CEO, your demo should be customized with relatable use cases. Highlight the features that will be most relevant to the prospect. 

5. Follow Up

Don't assume they will remember everything once the demo is done. A good practice is to follow up with a thank you note. Share a link to the automated demo so they can see it again internally, share relevant documents and brochures, and give them an actionable next step. 

Elevating Your Software Demo Presentation with Storylane

Storylane is an interactive product demo software that lets you create effective demo presentations. The platform has some advanced features like analytics, personalization tokens, unlimited sharing, auto update of the demo when there is a new release, integration with CRM and Slack and many more. 

Do you know that G2 has recently recognized Storylane as the Demo Automation category leader? Book a demo today to empower your sales teams to perform better.

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"Previously, there was scope for error and we’ve gone from a process that could be time consuming and painful to a process that’s super quick."

—CHRIS LANCASTER, SUPPLY CHAIN PROJECT

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Demo Presentation Template

Captivate your audience by delivering a professional product demonstration. Show customers or investors how your product or service will benefit them.

Trusted by 65M+ users and leading companies

About the Demo Presentation Template  

This Demo Presentation Template helps you get your flow of ideas across easily and professionally. With this template, you can show potential and existing customers what your product or service can do.

When you have a visual presentation showing how your product works, customers can better understand how it solves their pain points. Use a demo presentation to enhance your sales presentation and stimulate interest in your product.

What’s a demo presentation?

A demo presentation is a meeting between your business and a client (or potential client) in which you showcase and present a product or service. It typically includes a full run-down of the product’s key selling points, uses, target audience , and other relevant features. 

The aim of a product demo is to demonstrate your product’s selling power and hopefully win over the client in question with a deal. It’s all about showing your product in the best possible light and answering any questions the client may have. 

An amazing demo presentation should inform, enlighten, and excite your client. 

While it’s important to be vocal about your product’s highlights and potential, a big part of any product demonstration should include a fair degree of listening. The essence of a demo presentation is to bring life to your business’ product or service and inspire clients to take action. 

What should a demo presentation include?

Miro is the perfect online presentation creator . When putting together a demo presentation, the following several boxes need to be ticked: 

Excellent product/services knowledge

If you don’t know your product inside and out, clients will be able to tell, and they’ll be put off as a result. Make sure to conduct a thorough analysis of your product well before the presentation starts. You need to be able to clearly communicate the product’s attributes and confidently answer any questions.

Real-life examples and scenarios

Clients will gain a much stronger impression of your product if they feel they can apply it to their own lives or businesses. Providing real-life examples of how they can benefit from your product is a crucial aspect of any demo or prototype presentation.

Effective visual aids

Make it even easier for clients to fall in love with your product by providing effective, well-designed visual aids. From infographics and images to demo videos, visual aids can make your presentation more impactful and increase the client’s likelihood of conversion. 

When to use a demo presentation

A demo presentation is helpful for connecting with clients. Just about every product and service can benefit from a strong presentation, such as: 

A sprint demo presentation. Within the Scrum framework , a demo presentation comes at the end of a sprint. Sprint demos are needed to showcase progress and project status to stakeholders who are invested in the outcome.

An app demo presentation. This type of presentation is especially useful if you’re trying to find investors for the development of an app. It sheds light on the potential app’s revenue and social impact.

A prototype presentation. A prototype presentation is also useful for gaining support from investors for a still-developing product. By presenting a prototype, you can summarize the problems your product is trying to solve and improve investors’ overall understanding of your product.

How to use the Demo Presentation Template  

If you’ve never created a demo presentation before, using a template can be tremendously helpful. Follow these simple instructions to make the most out of Miro’s Demo Presentation Template: 

Step 1: Fill in your template

You’ll need to fill in your template with information for each slide. You might include the following information in your slide deck:

the product’s identity

the target market

the revenue potential

key selling points 

potential risks along the way 

Step 2: Edit and customize 

Whether you’re creating an app demo or prototype presentation, this customizable template can suit your needs. Edit, refine, and polish the order, layout, visuals, and structure of your Demo Presentation Template to suit your business and what it offers. 

Step 3: Brainstorm ideas and collaborate

With Miro’s presentation mode , you can preview your entire presentation as a team. With an easy-to-navigate structure and flexible framework, your demo presentation plan can evolve and be improved with ease. When you’re ready for your final presentation, simply select this mode and use the forward and back arrows to move smoothly through your presentation.

Tips for a great demo presentation

Whether you’re delivering a sprint demo presentation, an app demo presentation, or a prototype presentation, here are a few helpful tips to bear in mind: 

Know your product well. Uncertainty and lack of knowledge aren’t going to win over clients. You want to demonstrate confidence, diligence, and professionalism. Make sure to do your research well and have answers prepped for questions you might be asked.

Have a clear intro, middle, and conclusion. Using a storyteller structure in your presentation can make it more digestible to clients. Use visuals and clear communication to break down your product’s features into distinctive, cohesive sections.

Listen well. Even though this presentation is about your product, it’s important to leave some room for others to speak. This will make the presentation more conversational and allow clients to flesh out your product from their perspectives.

Don’t be distracted. When delivering a professional demo presentation, you want to emulate reliability, uniformity, and expertise. Maintain strong eye contact and stay focused on the presentation’s goals. Make sure your connection is strong, especially if the presentation is virtual .

How do you start a demo presentation?

Your demo presentation should start with a brief description of its agenda. Then, dive into your intro, work your way into the main points, and end with a conclusion or call to action. An open Q&A session can be held at the end.

How do you prepare for a demo?

Prepare for your demo with lots of research on your product/service and the clients you will be presenting it to. The more you know about these things, the more influential your presentation will be.

What makes a good demo presentation?

An effective demo presentation should include relevant and accurate information about your product. The presenter should have great communication skills and use strong visual aids. Your demo presentation should have a clear structure and logical flow — which you can get using this Demo Presentation Template.

Get started with this template right now.

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Table of Contents

Software demo presentations - what exactly are they?

7 essential elements for a good software demo presentation, an opening to remember, personalized to the target audience and their problem, focus on the value that ties back to their pain point, a strong demo script with engaging content, an interactive product demo that wows the buyers, strong ctas that get them to take actions, clear metrics to measure engagement, common mistakes to avoid in a software demo presentation, feature dumping without regard to their pain point, making the conversation a one-way street, sticking to the script with no regard for the buyer's pov, a guide on how to create a software demo presentation, start with a warm introduction, highlight the product features that solve their problem, take them to the aha moment of the conversation, engage them in a question-and-answer segment, communicate the next steps clearly and close, create demo presentations that your prospects will love with fable.

Your prospects have expressed interest in your SaaS offering and are eager to learn more about it during the software demo. Now, all that remains is for you to deliver an effective demo presentation that is more captivating and engaging than the final minutes of a Super Bowl game with the scores all tied!

That's what a great demo presentation is supposed to achieve - to deliver a great demo experience that wow your prospects.

This article will provide an overview of the various elements involved in a great software demo presentation. So, let's get our demo thinking hats on and nail those demo presentations!

A live software demo is a tool that sales teams utilize to demonstrate a SaaS product to prospective buyers. It is a visual walkthrough of the software. Sales reps, solution engineers, and account executives rely heavily on visual demonstrations to showcase the product's functionality to buyers, and to engage, attract, and persuade them.

Software customers require a method to evaluate the product, comprehend its functionality, and assess its features and advantages prior to making a purchasing decision. The software sales demo provides an opportunity for the sales teams to allow buyers to experience your product. An interactive demo created with Fable can be used during the sales demo phase of the buyer journey, providing prospects with links that they can engage with on their own at any point during the sales experience.

Learning to create an interactive product demo can be straightforward, especially on a platform like Fable . Today, we will discuss how to make the demo presentation impressive and delve into the more challenging aspects.

Having learned about what a software demo is, it is important to explore the essential components of a great software demo presentation:

Begin your demo with something that captures the viewer's attention. Possible options for a welcome message include a variety of methods such as an interesting statistic that relates to their specific pain point, successful customer stories who faced a similar problem, an appealing image, or even a video.

Remember, first impressions make a huge difference!

Before you start creating a software demo, ask yourself this - what the buyer persona is, and what their problem is?

Highlight the potential benefits of your product to meet their requirements. Including personalized elements in the product demo, such as the prospect's name and company logo, can enhance their understanding that the demo was tailored specifically for them.

Once you have collected all the necessary information, analyze how your product features can address your prospect's biggest challenges. To maintain viewer engagement with your demo, it is important to not solely focus on guiding them through your product. Develop a compelling story that addresses the areas of concern.

Ensure the story of the demo revolves around what the buyer wants to know about your software.

To create a successful software demo, it is important to have a well-crafted demo script that incorporates a compelling storyline to capture the customer's interest. A demo script that starts with a problem, provides a solution, and highlights the benefits of the product is an effective approach. Include various engaging elements such as GIFs, humor, sales memes, rich text, movie references, sports references, or any other topic the prospect finds interesting to enhance this demo.

The gist of it all is - whatever you do, please don't be boring!

Of course, nobody just wants to hear how a product will solve their problem, but want to see how the product actually works. They want to learn how to navigate and utilize all the features effectively. It is important to carefully break down the process into small steps by following a step-by-step guide. Provide your audience with the link to their customized software demo and allow them to try it on their own.

Keep them engaged by having them click through the product so that they can see how it works and the value it can bring them.

The demo presentation should be aligned with the purpose of its creation by including a strong call to action. If your goal is to increase sign-ups for a free trial, your call to action could be "Sign up for a free trial."

Include clear calls to action (CTAs) throughout your software demo to guide your audience through the next steps of the process.

Analyze the analytics to assess factors such as the timing of demo views, duration of views on different screens, viewership demographics, etc. This will allow your sales team to effectively follow up with the prospect.

Use this information to fine-tune your future demos and make them failproof.

Regardless of how excellent your software may be, if it is not effectively presented, it will not capture and engage decision-makers interest. Below are some common mistakes seen in sales demos that sales representatives often make.

Your prospective client is not interested in hearing about the features of your product and how amazing they are. They are solely focused on how those features can address their issue. Emphasize on the product features that can benefit them, rather than simply discussing its capabilities. Focus on the value rather than the functionality.

Most demo presenters go on a monologue about your product while flipping through a slide deck. There is nothing worse for a potential client than having to stay awake through a conversation that has so little role for them.

Utilize interactive sales demos to effectively engage your audience. Address them by their name. During a Zoom demo, it's recommended to pause screen sharing for important moments so that your audience can see your face. Please ask any questions you may have in the chat to better understand their interest in specific features.

It is recommended to create a demo script, prepare, and practice before giving a demo presentation. However, it can be uncomfortable if the prospect asks a question that is not in your script and you are unable to answer.

One way to solve the problem is by becoming more adaptable in utilizing the script. If the prospect asks questions, it is important to take a moment to pause and respond to their inquiries.

When presenting a demo, it is beneficial to plan ahead and organize your presentation in order to maintain control and effectively respond to any unexpected situations on the field. It is beneficial to be prepared, confident, and have a structured flow during your demo presentation.

The main purpose of introducing yourself is to establish a connection with the prospect. After introducing yourself, provide a brief overview of your product demonstration and outline the agenda for the call. Ending the introduction with a question, such as "What are your thoughts on this agenda?" creates an opportunity for discussion.

As stated previously, it is recommended not to overload your demo with excessive features and unnecessary details of your tool. Instead, consider the potential customer's concerns and connect the features as a solution to those concerns. It is your responsibility to ensure that you explain to them how your product can offer value to them as a team and individually. To achieve this, it is necessary to have a strong grasp of their goals and objectives.

Find a way to create a memorable 'Aha!' moment for the prospect that will make them remember you and your product. This is the time to demonstrate your showmanship to your prospect, rather than simply talking about it. Using an interactive product demo can help create an 'Aha!' moment sooner by allowing the prospect to try out the tool on their own, in a sandbox environment, without the involvement of a salesperson.

Additionally, one can enhance their demo by preparing questions to ask their prospects. Beginning the demo with a conversation will ensure that the next chunk of time is not spent in a monologue.

A higher level of engagement leads to an increased likelihood of purchasing. Encourage them to ask questions to ensure ongoing engagement with the demo. It is recommended to establish a connection by being relatable and personable whenever feasible. Establishing genuine relationships can help ensure that your prospects remember and value your advice.

Please conclude the demo presentation by restating the message and providing a call to action or outlining the next step. Would you like the prospect to complete a form, arrange a follow-up online meeting, or proceed to the final stage of signing the deal? Include your next action in your demo script and ensure clear communication before concluding the presentation.

To maximize your chances of closing deals, it's important to present your software demos in the most effective manner possible.

Fable is a software that allows you to create interactive product demo presentations. The platform offers advanced features such as analytics, no code personalization, unlimited sharing, integration with CRM and Slack, and more.

So what are you waiting for? Book a free demo with us now and see for yourself how you can take your demo game a notch higher!

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What is ‘Presentation, Practice, Production’ (PPP)?

And how can i best use it in my classroom.

Presentation, practice, production (PPP) is a lesson structure, a way to order activities in your lessons.

Although quite old and heavily criticised over the years, PPP is probably the most commonly used lesson structure in teaching English to foreign learners today. It’s also still widely taught to new teachers and seen on initial teacher training courses like the CELTA and CertTESOL.

Most course books that you’re likely to use will structure their chapters in ways similar or the same as PPP, meaning that you’ll get a lot of exposure to this method.

As the name suggests, there are three stages to this lesson structure, which we’ll look at now.

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The ‘presentation’ stage

This is where the language is introduced, or ‘presented’ to the learners, usually by introducing a context or situation. For example, you could:

Tell or act out a short story or anecdote ( “I woke up this morning with a nasty cold… AHHH-CHOOO! I went to the doctor and…”)

Play a short audio clip

Show a clip from a movie or TV show.

Show objects you’ve brought in (e.g. newspaper cuttings, plane tickets, hobby materials)

The aim is to ensure students understand the context and get them thinking about it. You could elicit ideas or suggestions from students, get them to talk to each other about what they know or think about the situation, etc. This also helps them start to remember the language and vocabulary they already know about the topic (or ‘activate the schemata’, if you want the fancy term for it).

The ‘practice’ stage

The ‘practice’ stage is when students use the language in a controlled way. This stage is sometimes divided into two — a controlled practice and a freer practice. Again, among many things, you could get students to:

Drill sentences or sounds, chorally or individually.

Substitution drill in pairs

Sentence matching activities

Gap-fill exercises

Pair work asking and answering questions

The aim of this stage is accuracy . Error correction is important in this stage, so monitor the students closely and take time to correct errors immediately. A delayed error correction section after the activity would be useful for target language errors that seem to be common.

The ‘production’ stage

The ‘production’ stage is where the language is used more openly. Things like:

Communication tasks

Collaborative tasks

Discussion activities

The focus of this stage is using the language as fluently and naturally as possible , as students would do outside of the classroom.

Theory behind Presentation, Practice, Production

This is where PPP gets criticised. It started in the 1960s, and language learning theory has developed considerably since then. Academics who study second language acquisition get annoyed at how PPP doesn’t tick any of the boxes for how we’re supposed to learn a language and yet is still so widespread.

Some learning assumptions behind presentation, practice, production are:

Students should be told the grammar rules and then practice them (a deductive approach).

Language learning is a skill like any other and should be practised as such.

There should be a high level of teacher control, slowly handed over to learners as the lesson progresses.

Language is a series of items that can be learned in sequence.

The target language should be practised by removing unnecessary language to help focus.

All of these have been shown that this isn’t how we best learn languages (in fact, the opposite is largely true!).

However, it isn’t all bad. Here’s my opinion on the advantages and disadvantages of PPP:

It’s easy to learn for new teachers.

It’s very flexible.

It’s easy to plan for and has a logical progression.

It works for most types of classes, including larger classes.

Most course books use this or a similar method to structure their lessons and chapters.

Disadvantages

Research shows that it may not be the best way to teach/learn a language.

Weaker learners may overuse the target language from the practice session, so it sounds unnatural.

Learners may not know how to use the target language in different contexts.

It can be boring if used repeatedly for higher-level students.

Thoughts on Presentation, Practice, Production

Academics are often far removed from the classroom and the real world, studying the individual phenomenon in isolation.

I’ve often seen a light bulb moment for students whilst teaching PPP (although one could argue that it’s not strict PPP, and it’d be hard to isolate the teaching method from other variables). Teaching over a period of time with this method, you do see students improve. Consider also that it’s not done in isolation — you should be getting your learners to interact in English naturally and read extensively outside of class, for starters.

Presentation, practice, production works. Maybe not as well as something like task-based learning (TBL), but TBL takes longer to plan and implement, which becomes very difficult when your teaching hours are high.

Sure, so it might not be theoretically perfect, but it does work.

How to adapt the PPP method

Also, I believe it has evolved from the ‘traditional’ PPP approach described above. Here are some ways you can adapt the classic PPP structure:

Spend more time in the presentation stage eliciting.

Turn the deductive aspect of explicit grammar instruction into an inductive aspect (so learners have to figure out the patterns themselves).

Add collaborative tasks during the practice stage, which learners must use the target language to complete successfully.

Include meta-learning strategies so students can learn how to learn.

Include more incidental language throughout the class so learners hear language in a more natural context.

Change the final stage into a task, such as you’d find in task-based learning .

These changes turn PPP into something else, a blended approach that addresses many of the criticisms of PPP.

Other structures have sought to improve upon the model of PPP. Variants include ESA (engage, study, activate) and CAP (context, analysis, practice)

However, the simplicity of PPP and its notoriety have kept it the most widely used model. I doubt it’s going away any time soon.

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The Top 7 Tips for Pulling Off a Great Demo Presentation

Demo presentations are a powerful tool for running and growing your business. When done well, a demo presentation allows clients, investors or potential customers to see and feel how things will be better for them if they buy or invest in your company or product. Often generic demo presentations do just the opposite, leaving the meeting participants bored and disinterested. Here are seven tips to pull off a great demo presentation.

What is a demo presentation?

A demo presentation is a visual demonstration of a product or service for current or prospective clients. A great demo presentation will grab your audience’s attention right away by clearly communicating what they care about and by using reliable, high quality video presentation tools.

Step one: determine who you are presenting to 

In order to deliver an effective demo presentation, you must know your audience. Do your homework and find out all you can about your prospects so you can tailor your presentation to them and be prepared for different meeting scenarios. This is vital in deciding how you’re going to best convey everything you need to get across in your presentation and what use cases you will share that directly relates to them. Here are four common types of meeting participants and how best to deal with them. 

The Wallflower

Do you know the person you’re presenting to is reserved? The wallflower may need you to prompt them with questions or ask them for their input to really spark a conversation. Having an open dialog with meeting participants will help you connect with them and personalize the presentation. As you continue your software demo, refer back to the participants’ contributions to continue to make them feel included in the presentation.

The Questioner

If you anticipate your audience asking a lot of questions, come ready with answers and customer examples to help back you up. If the questions are not adding value to the demo presentation or become too disruptive, politely ask the audience to hold questions until the end of the presentation.

The Combative

Going in knowing it’s going to be a tough sell? Do all your research beforehand and anticipate what their push back might be. No matter what, don’t get flustered during your demo presentation. When the audience senses your frustration, it’s likely to be a distraction, and it will not result in a positive outcome. Always remain professional throughout your presentation no matter how your audience behaves. If necessary, ask the audience members to hold questions and comments until the end of the meeting. 

The Multitasker 

Presenting to people who are using their phone or laptop during your demo? In order to grab their attention, start your presentation with a bold statement, humor or question. Continue to engage your audience by making your presentation interactive and relatable to pull them away from their devices. 

Three types of product demos

Pitching in your office.

This is the ideal place to host your presentation because you have home-court advantage. The Florida State football team won 37 games in a row at home for a reason: it’s an advantage. When presenting in your own office you get to use presentation tools that you’re comfortable with, limit distractions, control the environment and set the tone for the presentation. 

Pitching in their office

When you are presenting in an unfamiliar environment, it’s important to know which presentation tools are available so you can prepare in advance. Arrive early to the meeting to get set up, familiarize yourself with their presentation tools and practice a run-through of your demo to make sure everything runs smoothly. Also, arriving early gives you the opportunity to meet and connect with some of the people in the audience to help tailor your demo and customer stories to their experiences. 

Pitching remote

In order to save time and travel cost, doing a demo presentation over a video conference call is a great option. Make sure you use a high-quality, easy-to-use video conferencing solution. Don’t give off the wrong first impression by having a poor connection or pixelated video. Lifesize’s video conferencing technology will help you put your best foot forward to really wow clients with stunning 4K video quality and full motion 4K presentation sharing. 

Three ways sales demos can go seriously wrong

Confidential messages get shared on screen.

We’ve all been in meetings where the presenter’s private work and personal messages start popping up on screen and disrupting the meeting. To save yourself embarrassment and major distractions during your presentation, make sure you only share what is relevant to your demo.  Silence all notifications on your laptop and other smart devices before the start of your presentation.

Your video software flakes out

Technical snafus in the middle of a presentation is one of the most common ways demos go wrong. This not only looks bad for you and your company, but it has the potential to completely derail the entire presentation. Make sure you use a reliable video conferencing solution and test it out before the start of the presentation. Sometimes issues are outside your control, like a bad internet connection, so have a backup plan for your demo presentation.

Directly reading your notes or slides

Nothing is less engaging than a presenter directly reading from their notes or slides during a demo. Bring notes just in case you need to refer to them, but don’t directly read your notes or slides during your presentation. Your slides should contain just a few words or short sentences to set the tone of the topic you’re discussing but ovoid cluttering your slides with wordy paragraphs.  Practice your pitch until you can consistently and comfortably talk about your new product without reading from your slides or notes.

Seven tips for a winning demo presentation 

1. prepare a script.

Start off by preparing a presentation outline or script that follows a logical flow. Keep each section short, precise and easy to understand. If possible, try to work in bold statements, humor or simple tweet-able soundbites to really capture the audience’s attention. 

2. Practice and rehearse

Since you will not be directly reading your script during your presentation, practice memorizing and saying your script until you’re comfortable with it. You do not have to memorize your script verbatim, but you will need to be familiar enough with it that you can speak about each point in a conversational tone. Presenting to coworkers or family members is a great way to practice your demo and you can also record your demo presentation  to review the content and get comfortable with the flow.  

3. Anticipate questions

Each audience member will come to your presentation with different experiences and backgrounds so be prepared for a variety of questions. Try to anticipate possible questions and how you will respond to each one. When practicing your demo for coworkers or family members, ask them to help you come up with an exhaustive list of all the different questions that may be asked during your presentation.  

4. Tailor for specific audiences

Every audience is different, and your demo presentation should be too. The presentation should be built specifically for the prospect to reflect their unique business processes and include data that directly relates to their company. In addition, you should tailor how you conduct your presentation for each audience as well. An effective demo presentation for an HR manager may not go over as well for a CEO. Some prospects may be more interested in the details and appreciate graphs and diagrams while others may get more out of watching a video or live demonstration. Research the company and decision makers you are presenting to and find ways to make your demo engaging for them.

5. Provide use cases

One of the best ways to make your demo presentation relatable to your audience is to find examples of customers similar to them that have successfully used your product or service. Start with the pain points your customer was facing and give specific details of how your product or service solved those issues. Demonstrate how your audience can have the same positive outcome as the customers in your use cases. 

6. Have reliable video conferencing

Even if most of your audience is in the same room as you, video conferencing enables remote participants to get access to critical nonverbal communication elements. For virtual attendees, the quality of your video service will set the tone for your presentation. Partner with a solution that makes it easy for remote participants to join the demo presentation without having to download an app or install software.

7. Share slides & follow up

After you’ve completed the demo keep the conversation going by sharing your slide deck and following up with your audience. Don’t make the mistake of thinking that, if they heard a pitch once, they understand it. Chances are they didn’t get it all the first time so you must tell them again. In your follow up message, thank the audience for their time, reinforce the value your product or service can provide them and give them an actionable next step.

“Presentation time with potential clients is a precious and limited commodity so it’s important to make the most of it.  The more details you know about your prospects before the meeting, the better you can tailor your sales demo to speak to them as individuals. A generic presentation won’t stir up an emotional response.”

— Jeremy Wycherly, Senior Director, Inside Sales at Lifesize

How Lifesize demos products

Face to face.

To save time and travel costs, a face-to-face video conference call is a great option for demo presentations. The human element of face-to-face communication provides a more natural experience and helps you connect with the audience. Lifesize video and audio clarity makes you feel like you are in the same room as your audience and lets you present your business in the best light and make an unrivaled first impression.

Wireless screen sharing

From sharing your laptop screen to playing full-motion videos, Lifesize Share™  makes it remarkably easy to wirelessly present in the meeting room. You don’t have to waste time trying to find and pass along the right dongle or cord. Share your screen in real-time, play a video and control your presentation right from your mobile device or laptop with Lifesize Share.  

Full motion content sharing

No one enjoys sitting through a presentation with pixelated and poor-quality video. Lifesize’s 4K full-motion content sharing ensures that the quality and fine details of the product or service you’re demoing are maintained during your presentation. Prospects feel more confident purchasing a product or service when the presentation visuals are crisp, clear and realistic. The unmatched Lifesize full-motion 4K content sharing and stunning 4K video quality brings your demos to life.

You can have a great product or service but if your demo is not winning your audience’s attention, then you’ve wasted their time and yours. As you gain experience and become more confident doing demo presentations, you will soon approach them as an exciting opportunity to win new business rather than a daunting challenge. Communicating clearly, focusing on the things your audience cares about and using reliable, high quality video presentation tools will greatly improve your chances of closing the deal. Don’t give off the wrong first impression by having a poor connection or pixelated video. Lifesize video conferencing technology helps you put your best foot forward to really wow potential clients with stunning 4K video quality and ultra-high definition full motion content sharing.

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Improving the Video Conferencing Experience in the Era of Remote Work

In case you’ve been living under a rock for the past six months, it’s clear that remote work and distributed teams are here to stay, even after the pandemic recedes. While some workers will gradually find their way back to in-person (office or otherwise) workplace settings, this is just the on-ramp to the highway of working from anywhere for many others.

What is a Startup Demo Day? Template and Example

Demo days are often times the first chance a startup gets at getting in front of investors. For most startup accelerators, this is your graduation event and a lot of work goes into preparing your slides and pitches.

We're going to dig into what investors are looking for, how to stand out from the crowd, and lessons learned when preparing a demo day pitch deck.

Demo Day pitch deck is not too different from... let's call it a regular pitch deck. It's a 10 or 15 slide introduction to your company, that should paint a good picture of what you do and why you are going to get rich doing it.

The core difference is regular pitch decks get sent over email. This time you are pitching on stage, and it's your responsibility to carry the audience through the deck, to sell your company vision.

This is, in order, the slides a pitch deck should have:

• Product Demo
• Market Size
• Business Model
• Competition
• Underlying Magic
• Go to Market
• Traction/Milestones
• Fundraising Information

And this is how you could re-arrange them for demo day:

Both of these templates are available on Slidebean, so feel free to download them on the links below.

Pitch Deck Template | Demo Day Template

Check out our article how to create a pitch deck for investors if you are looking for guidance on your design. Remember, the pitch deck is the very first impression at investor might get at your business, and it should look stellar.

Demo day presentation sections

The opener section.

Demo Days are long events. After the fifth pitch, anyone will get bored and start blurring the memories between one company and the other. Also, investors are busy people; they can easily divert to their laptops or Twitter if they aren't interested in what they're seeing.

When you get on stage, you have 5 seconds to catch an investor's attention. If you succeed, you've earned an extra 30 seconds of their attention span and finally, if you nail those 30 seconds, chances are they'll pay attention through the end of your presentation. Using your first 5 seconds to say- 'Good Morning, my name is what, I'm the CEO of what’ is a terrible waste of that time.  They aren't remembering your name, or your company name, and it's quite obvious you are one of the co-founders.

Use these 5 seconds to catch their attention in some other way.  My favorite approach is staring with a question, a question that speaks about your problem statement.

Reference: Slidebean Pitch at DreamIt Ventures Demo Day

When we pitched in 500 Startups, I started with 'How much time do you waste creating slide presentations?'. We crafted this question after weeks of trial and error, but it meets the requirements,

• When you get asked a question, you inevitably answer it in your head.
• We are talking about a struggle that we know for a fact every one of them has.
• It hints about our product, the problem we are trying to solve and the dimension of the problem.
• It creates empathy. It relates them to the problem.

Again, my name is on the slide. The company name and logo is on the slide, so the point here is, let's get right to business. Chances are by the end of the event they'll remember 'the presentation company,' not Caya from Slidebean; and that's fine, they now know what you do.

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The traction slide, notice how it's been moved to second..

If you've nailed your opener you've now earned an extra 30 seconds. The absolute best way to stand out is bragging about what you've accomplished.

A lot of accelerators focus too much on the pitch itself- when your focus at all times should be growth. Use this opportunity to show a hockey stick chart of your revenue. If you have it, then this is the killer slide right here. Investors in the Bay Area want to see 30% MoM growth for seed stage companies. 20% should still be rather good.

If you are below this, then your sole focus should be getting to 30%, not watching me talk about Demo Day.

Still, if you must pitch and you don't have revenue, then brag about your user growth, which should also have a hockey stick chart.

The point here is, this will give you CREDIBILITY. The reaction you need here is curiosity about what the hell your company is doing to be growing so fast. This is the kind of thing that grabs someone's attention for the 3 minutes you have left.

Speaking of CREDIBILITY, we've recently launched a free platform called FounderHub . It's a resource that helps founders solve all the non-sexy startup tasks (such as incorporating, human resources, etc) in one easy to manage interface, built out with  recommendations of all the services that successful startups need to have to scale quickly.

Now your pitch deck turns into a more traditional deck. We have a full video explaining how to solve each one of these slides.

The difference here is you'll want to keep this short- because you need to deliver it in 3 minutes.

SOME BASIC TIPS FOR THE SLIDES

• The slides are a guide for you to keep the story straight, there's no need to transcribe what you are going to say. You could very well do with an image and a large number rather than a whole paragraph.
• Remember, people can either read or listen, they can rarely do both. Whatever you write on the slide, it pulls attention away from what you are saying.
• Big, bold fonts and bold colors. Your branding should be visible on every single slide: people are quite good at remembering color palettes.
• Practice a lot! Practice with a chronometer and make sure you nail your time limit on every attempt.
• Don't memorize. I've seen people write a script and spit it out on stage; trust me, people can tell. If you are the CEO, you need to be able to deliver this stuff effortlessly, or at least pretend like it's effortless.

Also, if you practice long enough, you'll eventually memorize the story anyway.

Now, there's another reality we must discuss on demo days, and that's the fact that no company gets funded on Demo Day.  Let me say that again; COMPANIES DON'T GET CHECKS ON DEMO DAYS.

I interviewed Andrew Ackerman a few months ago- he's the managing partner at the DreamIt accelerator. Watch the full video here .

So are demo days useless?

My answer here is, they are less useful than what you'd expect. With all the hype and the prep, you'd expect to get a lot more out of it, but by 2019 Demo Days have become more of a press stunt and a graduation/deadline sort of event for accelerators, rather than a place to get funding.

First, you can bet anything that a high-end VC will not be sitting in the audience. They'll send their interns to collect notes and business cards and brief them on the exciting companies.

Second, many companies come into Demo Day with some progress on their investor relationships. If a company is truly ready to raise funding, it has probably been getting intros and doing meetings for weeks or months leading up to demo day. Demo Day could be useful to meet a couple more investors or to close the last few thousand dollars of an already-committed round.

Startup press is often present on Demo Days- so this is an excellent opportunity to shine to them, meet some reporters and get some exposure.

And finally, the Demo Day is just the first of many, many steps in the fundraising process. If you do get interested investors coming to your booth or asking for your business card, by all means, take those meetings, but know beforehand that they will be the first of many, and that you will need to reach to a lot more investors if you want to close that round.

Demo Day Template

This Demo Day Template is a must-have tool if you want to shine on Demo Day and leave a lasting impression on potential investors. This template streamlines the process of creating a compelling pitch that conveys the essence and promise of your startup. It's like having a seasoned pitch expert by your side, providing you with a structured, visually appealing format that ensures your message is clear and impactful. With this template, you'll confidently present your startup's journey, achievements, and future prospects, increasing your chances of attracting the support and funding your business deserves.

We have another video on the reality of startup fundraising , so go and check that out.

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A pitch deck is the standard document used by startups to present their case to investors; it’s a brief deck of about 10 to 20 slides. See examples here.

Learn how to create a compelling slide deck for your startup. Explore how to use slide decks as aids for your presentation, and the most common uses for them.

This is a functional model you can use to create your own formulas and project your potential business growth. Instructions on how to use it are on the front page.

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Your Guide to Preparing a Great Software Demo Presentation

Table of Contents

What is a software demo?

5 key elements every good software demo presentation must include, things to do when preparing for a software demo, 3 common ways software demos can go wrong, create software demos your prospects will absolutely love.

We believe congratulations are in order!

If the rumors are to be believed, word on the street is that you’ve successfully scheduled the demo . 

Your prospects have shown great interest in your SaaS offering and are looking forward with excitement to getting to know it better during the software demo . 

All that’s left for you to do is blow them away with a demo presentation that’s more riveting and engaging than a Martin Scorcese film.

Goodfellas ? Pfft. If you thought that was good it’s because you haven’t yet seen this demo.

A live software demo is a tool that sales teams use to showcase a SaaS product to their buyers. 

Let’s say you walked into a store to buy a pair of pants. Would you let the salesperson describe the pants to you and then buy them without seeing them? We didn’t think so.

So software customers also need a way to see the product, understand how it works, and check out its features and benefits before they decide to buy it. That’s where the software demo comes in.

The software sales demo acts as a way for the marketing and sales teams to give your buyers a chance to experience your product. While it is most commonly used during the sales demo phase of the buyer journey, an interactive software demo created with a tool like Walnut allows you to send prospects links for them to engage with on their own at any point throughout the sales experience.

Learning to create an interactive product demo is the easy part, especially on a platform like Walnut. The harder part is making the demo amazing.

Do you want to create a software demo that will leave your customers bored and confused?

The best way to create a boring software demo presentation is by using a slide deck or a video. You should also be as generic as possible and spend your time focusing on how cool your product’s features are. This is bound to leave your prospects with a bad taste in their mouth and inexplicably sleepy.

But if you want to knock the socks right off of your prospects, we recommend making sure your demo includes the following 5 elements:

1. Personalization

The first thing you should ask yourself when creating your software demo presentation is:

Who is the prospect and what do they need?  

Focus on the solutions your product can provide to match their specific needs. Adding small personal touches to the product demo , like the prospect’s name and company logo, can also let them understand that this demo was made with them in mind. 

When you create your demo presentation for your prospect, you need to make sure it tells a story. Ask yourself:

Why is the prospect coming to this software demo?

Create an interactive sales experience that will leave the prospects feeling like they understand your product flow, the value it brings, and how it can easily integrate with their current workflow. They aren’t there to be blown away by the functionality of your product. They are there because they want to solve a pain.

3. Interactivity

Your prospects don’t want a show. Ask yourself:

Would you buy anything without trying it out yourself first?

Give your audience the link to their personalized software demo and let them try it by themselves. Keep them engaged by having them click through the product so that they can see how it works and the value it can bring them.

4. Engaging content

Don’t be boring. That’s it. That’s the post.

Ok, that’s not the whole post. When creating content for your demo and working on your demo script , ask yourself:

How can I keep the prospect engaged?

Use GIFs, humor, sales memes , rich text, movie references, sports references, or whatever the prospect is interested in to spice up this demo. Be professional but also be yourself and build a genuine connection with your audience.

5. Strong CTAs

The goal of a good software demo is a closed deal. So ask yourself:

What’s the next step that you’d like the prospect to make?

Include clear CTAs throughout your software demo so your audience knows what’s the next step in the process.

When you’re getting ready for your demo, there are two things you should make sure to do.

1. Get to know your audience

The first thing you need to make sure you have down when preparing for your software demo is understanding who you will be speaking to.

Learn their names.

Don’t underestimate how effective it is to engage your audience by calling them by their first names. 

Before you get on that call, make sure you know who you’ll be speaking to. Ask your champion exactly who will be attending the meeting so that you can know in advance and prepare.

Write down each of their names and have it by you when the presentation starts if that’ll help or take a few minutes to read their resume on LinkedIn before the meeting. This way, you can speak more directly to each member of your audience.

Learn their roles.

Next, learn the positions they hold within their company. 

If a feature you are showcasing is relevant to a specific role, you’ll be able to say, “Hey Salvador. You may be interested in this. By clicking here you can solve all of your problems so that you can finally curb that horrible drinking habit.” 

…or something like that.

Learn their needs.

Each team member has specific pains that they want to resolve. Sometimes they may not know that there could be a better way.

It’s your job to make sure that you explain to them how your product can provide value to them as a team and to each of them individually. You can only do this by having an extremely firm understanding of their aims and objectives.

2. Create a memorable experience

Make sure the demo experience is not boring. 

Remember, we are competing with Martin Scorcese over here. 

Create an interactive product demo that prospects can click through on their own or show teammates after the call. 

But you can also make your demo engaging by preparing questions to ask your prospects. Take the beginning of the demo to create a conversation to make sure you don’t spend the next chunk of time in a monologue. After all, nobody wants to be spoken at. 

As much as possible, try to create a human and personal connection. By creating real relationships you’ll make sure your prospects remember you and respect your advice.

And, whatever you do, don’t be boring!

When you’re this close to closing a deal, every interaction is crucial. So when it comes to the software demo, you need to make sure you’re not making any of the classic errors.

Here are a few of the sales demo mistakes that many sales reps find themselves making.

1. Feature dumping

A friendly reminder that PROSPECTS DON’T WANT TO HEAR ABOUT ALL YOUR PRODUCT’S FEATURES.

Sorry for yelling. But we feel passionate about this. 

Stop telling them about what the feature can do and start telling them how that feature can help them. 

Talk about value, not about functionality.

2. Talking at people, not to them

You want to make sure your prospects are engaged. Do you know how to make sure they are bored out of their minds? Go on a monologue about your product while flipping through slides. If they stay awake during the whole call it’ll be a miracle.

Instead, use interactive sales demos and engage your audience. Speak to them by name. If you’re demoing over Zoom, stop sharing your screen for key moments so that they can see your face in big. Put questions in the chat so you can gauge their interest in specific features.

3. Sticking to the script

Have you ever seen the Saturday Night Live bit of Jacob, the bar mitzvah boy? The gist of the gag is that Seth Myers asks him questions but all he does is continue with his prepared speech.

Here’s a clip:

We know that you created a demo agenda and a demo script and want to stick to it. But you also need to respond to the questions and concerns that are being asked presently. 

If you want to take your software demo presentations up a notch and win more deals, you need to make sure you are showcasing your product in the best way possible.

Start creating interactive demos that prospects can engage with themselves and give them the chance to understand your product thoroughly. Better demos will lead to more engagement, which in turn will lead to more sales.

So what are you waiting for? Book a meeting with us now by clicking that “Get Started” button on the top of the screen.

You may also like...

Product Tours and Walkthroughs – The Complete Guide

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How to Structure your Presentation, with Examples

August 3, 2018 - Dom Barnard

For many people the thought of delivering a presentation is a daunting task and brings about a  great deal of nerves . However, if you take some time to understand how effective presentations are structured and then apply this structure to your own presentation, you’ll appear much more confident and relaxed.

Here is our complete guide for structuring your presentation, with examples at the end of the article to demonstrate these points.

Why is structuring a presentation so important?

If you’ve ever sat through a great presentation, you’ll have left feeling either inspired or informed on a given topic. This isn’t because the speaker was the most knowledgeable or motivating person in the world. Instead, it’s because they know how to structure presentations – they have crafted their message in a logical and simple way that has allowed the audience can keep up with them and take away key messages.

Research has supported this, with studies showing that audiences retain structured information  40% more accurately  than unstructured information.

In fact, not only is structuring a presentation important for the benefit of the audience’s understanding, it’s also important for you as the speaker. A good structure helps you remain calm, stay on topic, and avoid any awkward silences.

What will affect your presentation structure?

Generally speaking, there is a natural flow that any decent presentation will follow which we will go into shortly. However, you should be aware that all presentation structures will be different in their own unique way and this will be due to a number of factors, including:

• Whether you need to deliver any demonstrations
• How  knowledgeable the audience  already is on the given subject
• How much interaction you want from the audience
• Any time constraints there are for your talk
• What setting you are in
• Your ability to use any kinds of visual assistance

Before choosing the presentation’s structure answer these questions first:

• What is your presentation’s aim?
• Who are the audience?
• What are the main points your audience should remember afterwards?

When reading the points below, think critically about what things may cause your presentation structure to be slightly different. You can add in certain elements and add more focus to certain moments if that works better for your speech.

What is the typical presentation structure?

This is the usual flow of a presentation, which covers all the vital sections and is a good starting point for yours. It allows your audience to easily follow along and sets out a solid structure you can add your content to.

1. Greet the audience and introduce yourself

Before you start delivering your talk, introduce yourself to the audience and clarify who you are and your relevant expertise. This does not need to be long or incredibly detailed, but will help build an immediate relationship between you and the audience. It gives you the chance to briefly clarify your expertise and why you are worth listening to. This will help establish your ethos so the audience will trust you more and think you’re credible.

Read our tips on  How to Start a Presentation Effectively

2. Introduction

In the introduction you need to explain the subject and purpose of your presentation whilst gaining the audience’s interest and confidence. It’s sometimes helpful to think of your introduction as funnel-shaped to help filter down your topic:

• Introduce your general topic
• Explain your topic area
• State the issues/challenges in this area you will be exploring
• State your presentation’s purpose – this is the basis of your presentation so ensure that you provide a statement explaining how the topic will be treated, for example, “I will argue that…” or maybe you will “compare”, “analyse”, “evaluate”, “describe” etc.
• Provide a statement of what you’re hoping the outcome of the presentation will be, for example, “I’m hoping this will be provide you with…”
• Show a preview of the organisation of your presentation

In this section also explain:

• The length of the talk.
• Signal whether you want audience interaction – some presenters prefer the audience to ask questions throughout whereas others allocate a specific section for this.
• If it applies, inform the audience whether to take notes or whether you will be providing handouts.

The way you structure your introduction can depend on the amount of time you have been given to present: a  sales pitch  may consist of a quick presentation so you may begin with your conclusion and then provide the evidence. Conversely, a speaker presenting their idea for change in the world would be better suited to start with the evidence and then conclude what this means for the audience.

Keep in mind that the main aim of the introduction is to grab the audience’s attention and connect with them.

3. The main body of your talk

The main body of your talk needs to meet the promises you made in the introduction. Depending on the nature of your presentation, clearly segment the different topics you will be discussing, and then work your way through them one at a time – it’s important for everything to be organised logically for the audience to fully understand. There are many different ways to organise your main points, such as, by priority, theme, chronologically etc.

• Main points should be addressed one by one with supporting evidence and examples.
• Before moving on to the next point you should provide a mini-summary.
• Links should be clearly stated between ideas and you must make it clear when you’re moving onto the next point.
• Allow time for people to take relevant notes and stick to the topics you have prepared beforehand rather than straying too far off topic.

When planning your presentation write a list of main points you want to make and ask yourself “What I am telling the audience? What should they understand from this?” refining your answers this way will help you produce clear messages.

4. Conclusion

In presentations the conclusion is frequently underdeveloped and lacks purpose which is a shame as it’s the best place to reinforce your messages. Typically, your presentation has a specific goal – that could be to convert a number of the audience members into customers, lead to a certain number of enquiries to make people knowledgeable on specific key points, or to motivate them towards a shared goal.

Regardless of what that goal is, be sure to summarise your main points and their implications. This clarifies the overall purpose of your talk and reinforces your reason for being there.

Follow these steps:

• Signal that it’s nearly the end of your presentation, for example, “As we wrap up/as we wind down the talk…”
• Restate the topic and purpose of your presentation – “In this speech I wanted to compare…”
• Summarise the main points, including their implications and conclusions
• Indicate what is next/a call to action/a thought-provoking takeaway
• Move on to the last section

5. Thank the audience and invite questions

Conclude your talk by thanking the audience for their time and invite them to  ask any questions  they may have. As mentioned earlier, personal circumstances will affect the structure of your presentation.

Many presenters prefer to make the Q&A session the key part of their talk and try to speed through the main body of the presentation. This is totally fine, but it is still best to focus on delivering some sort of initial presentation to set the tone and topics for discussion in the Q&A.

Other common presentation structures

The above was a description of a basic presentation, here are some more specific presentation layouts:

Demonstration

Use the demonstration structure when you have something useful to show. This is usually used when you want to show how a product works. Steve Jobs frequently used this technique in his presentations.

• Explain why the product is valuable.
• Describe why the product is necessary.
• Explain what problems it can solve for the audience.
• Demonstrate the product  to support what you’ve been saying.
• Make suggestions of other things it can do to make the audience curious.

Problem-solution

This structure is particularly useful in persuading the audience.

• Briefly frame the issue.
• Go into the issue in detail showing why it ‘s such a problem. Use logos and pathos for this – the logical and emotional appeals.
• Provide the solution and explain why this would also help the audience.
• Call to action – something you want the audience to do which is straightforward and pertinent to the solution.

Storytelling

As well as incorporating  stories in your presentation , you can organise your whole presentation as a story. There are lots of different type of story structures you can use – a popular choice is the monomyth – the hero’s journey. In a monomyth, a hero goes on a difficult journey or takes on a challenge – they move from the familiar into the unknown. After facing obstacles and ultimately succeeding the hero returns home, transformed and with newfound wisdom.

Storytelling for Business Success  webinar , where well-know storyteller Javier Bernad shares strategies for crafting compelling narratives.

Another popular choice for using a story to structure your presentation is in media ras (in the middle of thing). In this type of story you launch right into the action by providing a snippet/teaser of what’s happening and then you start explaining the events that led to that event. This is engaging because you’re starting your story at the most exciting part which will make the audience curious – they’ll want to know how you got there.

• Great storytelling: Examples from Alibaba Founder, Jack Ma

Remaining method

The remaining method structure is good for situations where you’re presenting your perspective on a controversial topic which has split people’s opinions.

• Go into the issue in detail showing why it’s such a problem – use logos and pathos.
• Rebut your opponents’ solutions  – explain why their solutions could be useful because the audience will see this as fair and will therefore think you’re trustworthy, and then explain why you think these solutions are not valid.
• After you’ve presented all the alternatives provide your solution, the remaining solution. This is very persuasive because it looks like the winning idea, especially with the audience believing that you’re fair and trustworthy.

Transitions

When delivering presentations it’s important for your words and ideas to flow so your audience can understand how everything links together and why it’s all relevant. This can be done  using speech transitions  which are words and phrases that allow you to smoothly move from one point to another so that your speech flows and your presentation is unified.

Transitions can be one word, a phrase or a full sentence – there are many different forms, here are some examples:

Moving from the introduction to the first point

Signify to the audience that you will now begin discussing the first main point:

• Now that you’re aware of the overview, let’s begin with…
• First, let’s begin with…
• I will first cover…
• My first point covers…
• To get started, let’s look at…

Shifting between similar points

Move from one point to a similar one:

• In the same way…
• Likewise…
• Equally…
• This is similar to…
• Similarly…

Internal summaries

Internal summarising consists of summarising before moving on to the next point. You must inform the audience:

• What part of the presentation you covered – “In the first part of this speech we’ve covered…”
• What the key points were – “Precisely how…”
• How this links in with the overall presentation – “So that’s the context…”
• What you’re moving on to – “Now I’d like to move on to the second part of presentation which looks at…”

Physical movement

You can move your body and your standing location when you transition to another point. The audience find it easier to follow your presentation and movement will increase their interest.

A common technique for incorporating movement into your presentation is to:

• Start your introduction by standing in the centre of the stage.
• For your first point you stand on the left side of the stage.
• You discuss your second point from the centre again.
• You stand on the right side of the stage for your third point.
• The conclusion occurs in the centre.

Key slides for your presentation

Slides are a useful tool for most presentations: they can greatly assist in the delivery of your message and help the audience follow along with what you are saying. Key slides include:

• An intro slide outlining your ideas
• A  summary slide  with core points to remember
• High quality image slides to supplement what you are saying

There are some presenters who choose not to use slides at all, though this is more of a rarity. Slides can be a powerful tool if used properly, but the problem is that many fail to do just that. Here are some golden rules to follow when using slides in a presentation:

• Don’t over fill them  – your slides are there to assist your speech, rather than be the focal point. They should have as little information as possible, to avoid distracting people from your talk.
• A picture says a thousand words  – instead of filling a slide with text, instead, focus on one or two images or diagrams to help support and explain the point you are discussing at that time.
• Make them readable  – depending on the size of your audience, some may not be able to see small text or images, so make everything large enough to fill the space.
• Don’t rush through slides  – give the audience enough time to digest each slide.

Guy Kawasaki, an entrepreneur and author, suggests that slideshows should follow a  10-20-30 rule :

• There should be a maximum of 10 slides – people rarely remember more than one concept afterwards so there’s no point overwhelming them with unnecessary information.
• The presentation should last no longer than 20 minutes as this will leave time for questions and discussion.
• The font size should be a minimum of 30pt because the audience reads faster than you talk so less information on the slides means that there is less chance of the audience being distracted.

Here are some additional resources for slide design:

• 7 design tips for effective, beautiful PowerPoint presentations
• 11 design tips for beautiful presentations
• 10 tips on how to make slides that communicate your idea

Group Presentations

Group presentations are structured in the same way as presentations with one speaker but usually require more rehearsal and practices.  Clean transitioning between speakers  is very important in producing a presentation that flows well. One way of doing this consists of:

• Briefly recap on what you covered in your section: “So that was a brief introduction on what health anxiety is and how it can affect somebody”
• Introduce the next speaker in the team and explain what they will discuss: “Now Elnaz will talk about the prevalence of health anxiety.”
• Then end by looking at the next speaker, gesturing towards them and saying their name: “Elnaz”.
• The next speaker should acknowledge this with a quick: “Thank you Joe.”

From this example you can see how the different sections of the presentations link which makes it easier for the audience to follow and remain engaged.

Example of great presentation structure and delivery

Having examples of great presentations will help inspire your own structures, here are a few such examples, each unique and inspiring in their own way.

How Google Works – by Eric Schmidt

This presentation by ex-Google CEO  Eric Schmidt  demonstrates some of the most important lessons he and his team have learnt with regards to working with some of the most talented individuals they hired. The simplistic yet cohesive style of all of the slides is something to be appreciated. They are relatively straightforward, yet add power and clarity to the narrative of the presentation.

Start with why – by Simon Sinek

Since being released in 2009, this presentation has been viewed almost four million times all around the world. The message itself is very powerful, however, it’s not an idea that hasn’t been heard before. What makes this presentation so powerful is the simple message he is getting across, and the straightforward and understandable manner in which he delivers it. Also note that he doesn’t use any slides, just a whiteboard where he creates a simple diagram of his opinion.

The Wisdom of a Third Grade Dropout – by Rick Rigsby

Here’s an example of a presentation given by a relatively unknown individual looking to inspire the next generation of graduates. Rick’s presentation is unique in many ways compared to the two above. Notably, he uses no visual prompts and includes a great deal of humour.

However, what is similar is the structure he uses. He first introduces his message that the wisest man he knew was a third-grade dropout. He then proceeds to deliver his main body of argument, and in the end, concludes with his message. This powerful speech keeps the viewer engaged throughout, through a mixture of heart-warming sentiment, powerful life advice and engaging humour.

As you can see from the examples above, and as it has been expressed throughout, a great presentation structure means analysing the core message of your presentation. Decide on a key message you want to impart the audience with, and then craft an engaging way of delivering it.

By preparing a solid structure, and  practising your talk  beforehand, you can walk into the presentation with confidence and deliver a meaningful message to an interested audience.

It’s important for a presentation to be well-structured so it can have the most impact on your audience. An unstructured presentation can be difficult to follow and even frustrating to listen to. The heart of your speech are your main points supported by evidence and your transitions should assist the movement between points and clarify how everything is linked.

Research suggests that the audience remember the first and last things you say so your introduction and conclusion are vital for reinforcing your points. Essentially, ensure you spend the time structuring your presentation and addressing all of the sections.

What are Product Demos and How to Use Them Effectively: 6 Examples

10 min read

Product demos are a crucial part of the sales process. This is true whether you’re adopting a sales-led or product-led growth approach.

They allow businesses to showcase their products and demonstrate how the product can solve a prospective customer’s problems.

An effective demo can, thus, help you generate leads and close deals.

In this article, we discuss what a product demo is, why they’re important, and how you can create them. We also highlight 6 examples of successful SaaS demos.

• A product demo is a video or interactive presentation that demonstrates a product’s features and benefits.
• There are many different types of product demos in SaaS, but the most common ones are product demo videos, live product demos from a sales team, product tours, interactive demos, and pre-sign-up product demos.
• When creating product demos, it is important to keep them interactive and tailored to the needs of the audience, demonstrate the product’s benefits , and end with a clear call to action.
• To determine the type of product demo you need, you must consider your approach to growth marketing ( sales-led vs. product-led) , the complexity of your product, and your onboarding method (high or low touch).
• An effective product demo can be the difference between a high-performing and a low-performing sales team. It increases your conversion rate which, in turn, boosts your revenue.
• To create a product demo, you’ll first need to decide on the type of demo suitable for that step of the buyer’s journey .
• Next, you’ll need to select a tool for creating the video, plan out your video script, and record.
• You can find good examples of SaaS product demos in Grammarly’s dummy content editor, Airtable’s captivating 2-minute sales video, SurveyMonkey’s template library, and more.
• To learn how Userpilot can help you deliver your product demonstration to the right audience at the right time, book a Userpilot demo today.

What is a product demo?

A product demo or product demonstration is a presentation that demonstrates the value, benefits, and uses of your product or software. Its main objective is to showcase your product’s features and capabilities and position it as an effective solution for your prospective customer.

Types of product demos in SaaS

The primary purpose of a product demonstration is to show value and educate users.

However, there are different product demo types in SaaS, each with its unique purpose. Some of the most common types include:

Product demo videos

A product demo video is a video that demonstrates how a product works and highlights its key features. It is used in the acquisition stage to help businesses educate potential customers about their products and close deals.

These video demonstrations often sit on websites and landing pages or are used in ads to showcase the product, capturing the potential customer’s attention and encouraging them to learn more about the product.

Good demo videos are engaging and easy to understand. They should also contain a clear call to action, such as signing up for a free trial or contacting you for more information.

Live product demos from a sales team

Unlike demo videos, live demonstrations from one of your sales reps are a lot more personal. They are a powerful way to engage a potential customer and show them how your product can solve their problems.

Live demos can be delivered in person, making it particularly useful for complex products. But they can also be delivered one-on-one via video conferencing or to multiple potential customers via webinars.

When properly executed, a live demo can be a great tool for generating leads.

They’re also powerful tools for showcasing how your product meets the customer’s needs and can help you close deals.

Product tours

A product tour is a pre-recorded demo video used to onboard new users. It is typically presented immediately after a user signs up to introduce them to the product’s key features and help them get started with it.

A wonderful addition to an onboarding toolkit, product tours help new users reach activation before they lose interest. They ensure that these new sign-ups know exactly how to extract value from your product.

These tours can be delivered in-app within the product or as a video tour. While in-app tours are more popular, video tours can be very helpful for more complex products with a lot of features.

Good product tours are concise, engaging, and specific to the target audience. When done correctly, they increase user engagement, eliminate friction in product and feature adoption, and reduce customer support costs.

Interactive demos

Interactive demos are a type of product demo that enables users to engage (interact) with the product while learning about it.

They are called “interactive” because customers experience the product’s value in real time as they click through the prompts. As a result, they are more engaging and immersive than your typical product demonstration.

An interactive demo, for example, may give you access to a demo account of the product with some dummy data. Using this demo data, users will experience firsthand how the product’s key functionalities work.

Note, though, that these are different from interactive product tours. Unlike product tours , which are designed for new users, interactive demos are sales and marketing materials used to show prospects the product’s potential.

Pre-sign-up product demonstration

A pre-sign-up product demo is a sales demo that’s presented to potential customers before they sign up for a free trial or purchase a product.

These are increasingly used in SaaS in place of product demo videos to generate leads and interest in a product. Much like a demo video, it can also be used to educate potential customers about a product’s features and benefits.

Pre-sign-up demos are often delivered as interactive, self-guided demos that allow prospective customers to explore the product independently.

Regardless of your chosen product demo type, ensure you keep it interactive and tailored to the needs of the audience. A good demo must also demonstrate your product’s benefits and end with a clear call to action.

Which type of product demo should you use?

Ultimately, your choice of a product demonstration type will depend on your type of SaaS business and your product. Let’s consider how some of these factors may affect your choice.

Sales-led vs. product-led growth

If you’ve taken a product-led approach to growth marketing, you already know that your product is your biggest marketing tool. As a result, product-led SaaS businesses are more likely to use interactive in-app product demos.

This is a no-brainer as interactive demos demonstrate the value of your product by getting the user to engage with it.

If, however, you’ve chosen the sales-led approach to growth marketing, you need a demo video that optimizes your sales process. This makes sales demo videos an ideal option as they make your marketing content more engaging.

High touch vs. low touch onboarding

The low-touch engagement model relies heavily on self-service content and knowledge base resources to help users navigate their customer journey.

For this model, you would need automated video demonstrations to enable customers to onboard themselves and solve their issues.

This is very different from the high-touch onboarding model, which relies on one-on-one assistance with actual humans. This model requires your sales team to personally engage prospective customers and guide them to success .

As a result, high-touch onboarding favors live video demos by a sales rep to ensure your high-ticket clients are well taken care of.

The complexity of your product

A final consideration before selecting a type of demo will be just how complex your product is. Complex products have a longer learning curve and require more thorough guidance to succeed.

Although a live demo might sound appealing here, as it allows you to handle each client personally and answer their questions, it isn’t. The complexity of the product can make this endeavor time-consuming. It may also be difficult for the client to remember everything you discuss.

On the other hand, you can record several product demo videos and add them to your resource center. This resource center will serve as an online learning platform for your users.

Users will, thus, be able to locate any video they need (when they need it) and revisit them as many times as they have to.

The impact of product demos on conversion rates

A great demo is a huge difference-maker when it comes to the success of your SaaS business.

As part of your sales process, a carefully crafted and well-executed demo can be the difference between a high-performing sales team and an underperforming one.

Think of it this way…

According to this extensive survey by David Skok and KBCM Technologies, the average SaaS company has an annual contract value (ACV) of approximately $21,000 and performs between 4 and 11 demos each week.

For most B2B companies, the demo close rate is somewhere between 20% and 50%.

Assuming you conduct 8 demos a week with a conversion rate of 20%, this will amount to ~$1.75 million in sales per year. At a 50% close rate, however, your total sales generated will amount to ~$4.37 million per year.

This is a potential loss of ~$2.62 million in sales due to an underperforming sales process. Thus, by simply using the right demo in your sales pitch, you can significantly shore up your close rate and boost your revenue.

How to create a product demo

Clearly, creating an effective product demo is no easy task. The process for creating a successful demo video that addresses users’ pain points can be divided into two main steps:

Decide which type to use at each step across the buyer’s journey

As earlier noted, there are certain factors you must consider before deciding on the best type of product demonstration for you. Similarly, you’ll need different demo types at different stages of the buyer’s journey.

At the awareness stage, the buyer is still in the discovery process. Here, you can use a short demo video to quickly introduce the potential customer to your product and its benefits in an engaging manner.

At the consideration stage, the buyer is beginning to compare products, so you need to show more depth. Webinars and live demos can help you show potential customers how your product can solve their specific problems.

Finally, at the decision stage, potential customers need a personalized demo that demonstrates exactly how your product can help them achieve their goals. This can be a live demo, a case study, or a targeted recorded demo.

Put simply, the buyer’s journey and your position in the sales cycle determine the ideal demo to move the prospective customer along the funnel.

Use a tool to create your own demo video

Next, it’s time to create your own video. Before you begin, though, you’ll need to decide on the best tool for your chosen demo format.

For example, if you want to pre-record a demo video and share it with prospective customers, you’ll need tools like Loom, Screencastify, or Camtasia to record your screen and edit your videos.

If, however, you’ve opted for a live demo instead, you’ll have to decide between tools like Zoom, Google Meet, Vimeo, and other live-streaming platforms.

Once you settle on a product demo tool ,take the time to plan out what you want to say. Keep in mind that a good product demo video should be short and to the point. It should also show (not tell) viewers how your product benefits them.

Most importantly, it should be engaging, with quality visuals and a good story. Go over your story a few times before you start recording, and make sure to edit for errors.

SaaS interactive demo examples

Let’s now consider some examples of SaaS companies that have incorporated interactive demos into their sales funnel.

Example 1: Loom

Loom abandoned the use of many sales reps in favor of the low-touch onboarding model. For this, Loom uses multiple in-app video demos to show new sign-ups how to complete different tasks.

The videos are bundled together in a resource library that appears immediately after sign-up. They address different use cases of the software and demonstrate how users can use them to address their pain points.

Example 2: Airtable

Airtable’s product demonstration video is a classic in the SaaS space. In this brief 2-minute video, Airtable demonstrates several use cases, taking a broad approach that shows users how they benefit from the product.

To keep viewers engaged as the video progresses, the information Airtable shares becomes even more specific.

Airtable realizes that anyone who views the video for longer than a minute is most likely a qualified lead who wants to learn more. They treat them as such by sharing more specific tactics and features.

Example 3: Zendesk

Zendesk sets you up for success from the moment you view their landing page. One of two primary CTAs invites you to view a demo of the product, even before you sign up.

Once you accept the invite to view a demo, you’re taken through a minor onboarding survey to determine your use case for Zendesk. Then, you’re presented with an interactive tour environment with dummy data.

Depending on your profile and use case, you’ll find varying numbers of product tours, each addressing a unique feature of the Zendesk software.

Example 4: Salesforce

Salesforce designed an entire demo center full of product demo videos to help prospects understand what CRM is and how each of their products works.

The demo center uses a playlist of videos to demonstrate how Salesforce can help a sales team resolve some of their pain points.

Example 5: SurveyMonkey

SurveyMonkey demos their product by showcasing survey templates across different categories on their website. You can explore each template by clicking on it to see what the survey experience will be like for users.

They also provide a screen selector area so you can view the survey on a PC, tablet, or mobile screen.

Example 6: Grammarly

Immediately after signing up for Grammarly, you’re transported to a demo content editor. The demo editor contains content riddled with errors, with Grammarly immediately highlighting the errors and offering corrections.

Not only does this demonstrate Grammarly’s uses, but it also shows the new user how to get the best out of it.

Product demo videos may require a bit of work and careful planning to create. Once they’re live, though, they’re an effective marketing tool that can supercharge your sales pitch.

Once you’ve prepared your product demo, Userpilot helps you deliver it in-app at the time and place of your choosing. Book a Userpilot demo to learn more.

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Top 7 Software Demo Presentation Templates with Samples and Examples

Prerna Leekha

Have you ever thought about what would happen without software demo presentations? Due to limited understanding and lack of engagement, there will be no effective decision-making about software. This is when software demo presentation templates come into play. 

Software demonstration presentation is vital to check whether the software suits an organization. These demonstrations must evaluate software suitability, understand user needs. Software features and benefits must also be outsourced. Hence, creating a captivating software demo presentation requires thoughtful templates that align with the features and benefits of the software. These software demo presentations are essential to understand user needs and evaluate what updates are required in the software. The software demonstration is essential to check whether it suits your company or examine its functioning and other aspects. 

Read our blog Top 10 Software Design Proposal Templates with Examples and Samples.

SlideTeam presents top 7 software demo templates with samples and examples. You can invite your audience to explore the software's potential through these creative slides. These 100% editable and customizable slides will help you establish the purpose of your presentation. You can also highlight the software's unique selling points according to customer’s needs.   

Browse to understand how brands communicate their ideas.

Let’s know about the top software demo presentations!!

Template 1: Software demo evaluation form with requirements

A comprehensive approach outlined for software demo evaluation in our ready-to-use PowerPoint Templates will make the examination process efficient. Evaluate your software product by ticking off touch points like functions, activities, and general requirements, and also state the levels to meet company requirements. Software product evaluation for a company is necessary as it helps in analyzing if the software is a proper fit and meets the requirements of the organization. Through the help of the additional section, you can easily add comments for the required improvements to upgrade it. Download these templates to ensure the software demo evaluation process is more effective. 

Download it now

Template 2: Checklist for Enterprise Software Demo

Through our enterprise software demo PPT templates, you can demonstrate the software's key features related to the enterprise's operations. With this template, you can make a checklist stating the functionalities of the software. You can highlight advantages and the risks involved in the software selection. Highlight components like business opportunities, USP of the software suite, risks involved, data security check, data mitigation, training requirement, scalability and flexibility of software, and more. As these are customizable slides, you can add whatever content you need.

Template 3: Key Essentials for Enterprise Software Demo

To select software for the company, one must ensure that it meets the requirements of the business. Some significant components decide whether the software is suitable for a company or not. Through SlideTeam’s editable slides, you can bring attention to fundamental features like scalability, flexibility, data security and integrity, risks associated with ERP implementation, and the USP of the software suite. Download the PPT slides to gather the essentials for the enterprise software demo. 

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Template 4: Checklist for Comparison of Accounting Software

To examine accounting software, there are components whose information is necessary for an organization. Our accounting software demo PowerPoint Slide lets you easily demonstrate the accounting software's features. Use our PowerPoint Templates to reflect on features like on-site customer support, payment handling, and tracking expenses. Through the comprehensive checklist, you can quickly examine the accounting software. 

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Template 5: Building System Software Demo Agenda with Multiple Phases

To uncover the challenges and restate the objects for a successful software demo, you can download our PowerPoint Slides. You can highlight the agenda of the software demo in three phases. These three phases cater to objectives. You can outline the demo process into segments. For instance, in Phase 1, you can mention the current state of the software demo; in Phase 2, you can state the challenges faced by the software; and in the final phase 3, you can mention the end state, potential cost reductions, and overall investment returns. Download SlideTeam’s PPT Templates now to build a software demo agenda. 

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Template 6: Developers Working on Software Demo for Client

As a software developer, if you pitch a demo for the client, you must showcase some significant things while presenting. We have designed a PowerPoint Template for developers who are working on a software demo. You can edit the slides and include significant information you want to highlight, while presenting your ideas to clients. For example, you can mention key features and functionalities to streamline the product demo process. Save your time by downloading these PPT Templates for a successful pitch to your clients. 

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Template 7: Consultant giving Software Demo Presentation to Technical Head

A software demo presentation must be precise and communicate well. While preparing a software demo presentation, consultants must provide significant information. Through our illustrative template, you can add information and communicate your software demonstration presentation well. You can add the strong aspects of your software to provide an understanding.  As SlideTeam has these PPT Templates, you can include the desired information in an attractive way. 

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ACE THE SOFTWARE DEMONSTRATION

In conclusion, software demonstration presentation templates will help you outline your software features. The PPT slides help form a clear understanding and showcase the software's essential features, functions, and benefits to the clients. With these ready-to-use templates, presenters can save time and effort in creating impactful presentations that resonate with their audience; whether showcasing the software's functionality or outlining a roadmap for future developments, a creative and informational template can make all the difference in a successful software demonstration. 

P.S . Embark on the software journey and read SlideTeam’s blog on top 10 software requirements templates with examples and samples for a clear understanding. 

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Ace Your Demo Call: 8 Tips for Effective Preparation

A demo presentation lays the groundwork for acquiring a new customer. You have their undivided attention, so make sure you're giving them the best possible experience.

What is a Demo Presentation? 

A demo presentation is a powerful tool that visually showcases your product or service to potential customers. It plays a crucial role in the early stages of the sales process, offering the opportunity to inform and persuade effectively.

Why is the demo presentation so vital in the initial sales process?

It marks one of the first personal interactions with your potential customers. Through this presentation, you can pique their interest and establish a personal rapport. By attentively listening to their needs and addressing their questions, you can lay the foundation for a successful relationship.

To help you create an impactful demo presentation and enhance your chances of winning the sale, here are 8 essential steps to follow.

• Become Familiar with Your Product
• Research Your Lead
• Produce Your Offer
• Plan Your Demo
• Take Your Presentation for a Test Drive
• Avoid No-Shows
• Prepare Your Setup
• Have a Back-Up Plan

#1 Become Familiar with Your Product

Before making any sales pitch, it's essential to have a thorough understanding of your product or service. This fundamental step is crucial as you cannot effectively sell something you're not well-informed about. As a professional salesperson, your ability to respond to potential buyers' questions is what will captivate and retain their attention.

Stay updated on all product developments, and if you ever have doubts or queries, don't hesitate to seek assistance from your colleagues or the relevant experts.

Embrace the notion of asking questions; it's better to clarify uncertainties than be caught off-guard and risk hindering the lead's journey toward becoming a valued customer.

#2 - Research Your Lead

Before delivering your demo presentation, invest time in thorough research about the individual and the company you'll be presenting to. This helps you tailor your presentation to their specific needs, making the entire experience more engaging for the potential customer.

Utilize their website to understand their core activities and explore their social media presence, reading articles and reports to gain valuable insights.

By immersing yourself in their world, you can gather relevant information to integrate into your presentation. This personalized approach creates a strong foundation for a positive relationship with the lead, increasing the likelihood of a successful outcome.

#3 - Produce Your Offer

Building on your extensive research, create an ideal and tailored offer that aligns perfectly with your potential customer's needs. Present this offer prior to the demo presentation, ensuring you provide them with something tangible to connect with.

Timing is key when presenting your offer during the demo call. Avoid presenting it immediately after your initial greeting; instead, wait until you have captured their full attention and effectively highlighted your selling points.

By waiting until the right moment, usually after you've made your presentation and addressed all their questions, you increase the chances of receiving a positive response. So, hold onto your offer for optimal timing and maximize your chances of a favorable outcome.

Also, keep your demo call short, concrete, and relevant for the lead. No one wants to waste time on something irrelevant to them.

#4 - Plan Your Demo

Ensure you have a well-defined plan outlining the key steps for your demo presentation. Prioritize and create bullet points with the important topics you want to cover, giving yourself a clear and organized overview.

While the plan serves as a guideline, be prepared for unexpected turns in the conversation. You never know what questions the lead may ask, which can influence the direction of the demo call. Stay flexible and open to new ideas as the meeting progresses. Consider the plan more like a checklist of essential points you wish to cover rather than a rigid script.

#5 - Take Your Presentation for a Test Drive

While giving the lead space for questions is important, they also expect you to take the lead and steer the meeting. To achieve this, it's beneficial to conduct a rough run-through to get yourself in the right mindset.

Rehearse your demo presentation in advance, but avoid memorizing every word.

Instead, aim to be well-prepared and comfortable with each topic you plan to cover. Focus on transitioning smoothly from one point to the next to ensure a fluent and engaging presentation, while still allowing for flexibility to address the lead's inquiries effectively.

#6 - Avoid No-Shows

Before the scheduled demo call, I recommend sending your prospect a reminder via e-mail or text - or both. 

To ensure a smooth and successful meeting, include all necessary instructions for attending the meeting in the reminder. This will prevent any confusion or practical questions that may arise. Missing out on an opportunity due to lead confusion would be unfortunate.

If suitable, consider calling the lead one day before the meeting to confirm their attendance and provide a brief overview of the scheduled topic. Mention that you'll send a reminder 30 minutes before the meeting with a link and practical information.

Taking these steps will help you avoid wasting time waiting for a prospect who may not intend to attend, ensuring efficient use of everyone's time.

#7 - Prepare Your Setup

Check up on everything before you start the meeting. Make a list of everything that should be a-okay to host the meeting. This could be: 

• Internet connection
• Screen sharing (if needed)
• A quiet room/place with no disturbances
• Your final notes

A quick tip: If you are planning to share your screen, then keep it clean. Don't have anything open that would take focus away from your presentation; for both you and the lead's sake. They should focus on what you're saying and the product only.

#8 - Have a Back-Up Plan

Having a plan B ready can save the day in case something unexpected occurs (fingers crossed it won't). This plan B should cover contingencies for technical difficulties or addressing questions you may not have immediate answers to.

By being well-prepared, you can ensure a smooth and positive experience for the prospect, regardless of any unforeseen challenges.

Example of a Plan B: In case of technical difficulties during the online demo, always have a backup platform or alternative communication method ready. If the video conferencing software encounters issues, you can switch to a different platform or quickly set up a conference call to continue the presentation smoothly.

Additionally, if you come across a question that you don't know the answer to, assure the prospect that you'll follow up with a detailed response after the meeting. This demonstrates your commitment to providing accurate information, and maintains a positive impression even in challenging situations.

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Sales | How To

How to Give Product Demos That Sell + Script Examples

Published April 20, 2023

Published Apr 20, 2023

REVIEWED BY: Jess Pingrey

WRITTEN BY: Bianca Caballero

This article is part of a larger series on Sales Management .

• 1 Qualify the Lead
• 2 Send Detailed Demo Meeting Invitations
• 3 Start with Expectations and an Agenda
• 4 Build Your Company’s Credibility
• 5 Explain Your Product’s Value
• 6 Provide Use-case Scenarios
• 7 Discuss Product Implementation
• 8 Answer Questions
• 9 Establish a Post-meeting Plan
• 10 Best Practices for a Successful Product Demo
• 11 Product Demo Statistics

Product demonstrations (demos) are a key component in the sales process that let leads see your product in action. They require lead qualification, formal invites, an organized agenda, and a focus on your product’s value and uses to be effective. By doing so, demos build trust in your brand and your business’ expertise. In this article, we show you how to give a product demo (with example scripts) and suggest tools to help you get the most value out of your demos.

What is a product demo and why does it matter?

A product demo is a presentation of a tangible product or software application and is typically presented live, either in-person or via video conferencing, or through a prerecorded video. For businesses like software as a service (SaaS) companies and office equipment retailers, product demos are a crucial stage in their sales pipeline . Demos could make the difference between winning and losing a deal, so there should be extensive sales training for reps in this area.

Now that you know the definition and importance of a product demo, you can begin filling your pipeline with leads and guiding them toward this stage. Follow these nine steps on how to give product demos that sell.

1. Qualify the Lead

Before inviting a lead to a product demo, make sure this potential customer is a good fit for what you’re selling. As part of the lead qualification process, ask extensive questions during your introduction calls or through email exchanges to understand their situation and purchase timing. This helps ensure you aren’t wasting time presenting demonstrations to buyers who don’t have a need (or budget) for your products.

Pre-demo questions also help you gear your demonstration to things that matter to your leads. To best understand their needs and priorities, you can refer to these example questions below as a guide to uncover important information before a product demo:

Qualification Questions

• What is your budget for this type of solution?
• Are you the primary decision-maker for this solution, or should other people be involved in the buying process?
• What specific problems are you looking to solve?
• Are there specific features or product attributes you want to get out of this solution?
• When would you like to implement this solution?

If any answers to these questions don’t fit your pricing, product or brand attributes, or ideal timeline, consider not moving forward with the demo.

Product Demo-related Questions

• What current product or provider are you using (if any)?
• Is there anything in particular that you like about this product or provider?
• Is there anything you’d like to see improved about this product or provider?
• Do you have any concerns about making this type of change?

Focus your demonstration on addressing the answers to these questions. This will be most applicable later during the product demo, specifically in step six, when we explore use-case scenarios.

2. Send Detailed Demo Meeting Invitations

Once the lead has agreed to allow you to present your product and you’re confident they are a solid fit, the second step in learning how to do a demo is to send out the invitations. It’s essential to have anyone involved in the buying decision present at the meeting. You should have found this information when asking about “other decision-makers” or “other people involved” during step one.

In addition to the actual invite (that’s likely a Zoom or other video conferencing call), you should include an email message acknowledging your appreciation for them taking the time and showing interest in a demo. Additionally, include directions required to get on the call and a brief description of what will take place.

Below is an example template to construct this email:

Email Template

Subject: Our Demo Call Next Thursday

Hi [lead name],

Thank you for agreeing to a product demonstration. While you may or may not be the sole decision-maker for a purchasing decision, please feel free to invite any other members of your business to the presentation.

Below are the instructions for logging into the meeting:

[Include meeting instructions, links, and any other relevant details.]

Per the information you’ve provided, the product demonstration will focus on [aspects of the product you want to show and addresses the lead’s pain points]. Please let me know if you have any questions prior to our meeting.

I look forward to speaking with you soon!

[ Email signature ]

If you are meeting with them in person at their office, rather than include instructions to your meeting, ask if there’s any information they need to know about parking, entering, security, and so on. If you are hosting the in-person meeting, your instructions should include basic directions to your office building and additional details they will need to know once they arrived.

Pro tip: Scheduling a product demo can be a breeze using scheduling automation tools like Calendly. This software lets you configure a system based on your needs and around your schedule. Users can also send a link to their leads in an email or using an online button, taking them to a scheduling portal to find a time that works for everyone. Upon creating a meeting, the attendees’ calendars are automatically synced with the Calendly event.

Team scheduling portal (Source: Calendly )

Visit Calendly

3. Start With Expectations & an Agenda

The next step in exploring how to make a demo presentation is to give brief introductions once all attendees have arrived. Some teams like to bring in a product or software expert from the organization to help explain some technical aspects—the sales rep should introduce that person. This is also when you’ll review the agenda and assure everyone you will stick to the allocated time established before the meeting.

Pro tip: Some video conferencing software like Zoom has a whiteboard or note-taking feature you can use to show your agenda before starting the meeting. You can even take notes throughout the meeting to send to the attendees upon completion.

Whiteboard feature for collaboration (Source: Zoom )

4. Build Your Company’s Credibility

The first section of your product demo presentation should be an overview of your business to build brand credibility. Quickly review your founding story, the products and services you provide, and the types of customers and clients you work with. This is also an excellent time to discuss any awards and accreditations your company, product, or key personnel (such as your CEO) have received.

You can also use testimonials or customer success stories. These help expand your credibility and trust by letting your customers and the value they’ve obtained speak for you instead of you building your brand without evidence or context.

Below is a demo script template you can use:

Script Template

In line with the agenda, I’ll briefly go over a little bit about our company. We were founded in [date founded] for the purpose of [mission or other purpose statements]. In addition to [product you’re doing a demo for], we also assist with [other products or services you offer].

Over the course of [years active] years, we’ve helped a multitude of [clients or customers], including [list clientele]. Our high-quality work has [won us {awards}, helped our company grow, and kept our customers happy].

Enough about us—let’s get into why you are here today.

It’s important to keep this section brief so you can focus on the product and customer needs of your attendees. Ultimately, the presentation isn’t for you to brag about past achievements, but to show how your product can help customers achieve their goals.

Pro tip: For product demonstrations, you may need copywriting, graphic design, or video production services. Fiverr is a cost-effective platform that connects your business with talented freelancers to help in these areas. The platform makes it easy to find freelancers, assign projects, and pay them all in one place.

Popular freelance services (Source: Fiverr )

Visit Fiverr

5. Explain Your Product’s Value

Once you’ve established trust and credibility with your leads, go right into the product they want to see and share its unique selling proposition . If the product has an interesting backstory, such as a unique way it was designed or an initial purpose different from today, share that story with them so they can understand your product better. Next, go into how the product works by describing its architecture, design, and how it’s delivered and hosted.

After the baseline product description, walk through the specific features of the product. During a software demo presentation, you could show the modules, such as the home dashboard that lays out the button options for navigating the platform. You might even dive deeper and show how a data entry is made in the system, then talk about the advantages and benefits of your product’s design as opposed to others.

For example, if you were selling software, go into how it’s cloud-based so the data isn’t stored on-premise and can be automatically backed up. If you are showing something tangible, such as a multipurpose printer, go through the subfeatures of the unit to show it printing, scanning, and faxing. When you show the features of a product, focus more on the end result to help your prospect remember how your product can help address their pain points.

6. Provide Use-case Scenarios

This step is arguably the most valuable one in the eyes of your lead attendees. It is your chance to take those features you briefly showed and put them into action through real-life scenarios. Directly address a pain point or daily activity the lead or their employees face. You can refer back to the answers they gave to your demo-related questions in step one.

Let’s say you’re selling a customer relationship management (CRM) system specifically for marketing agencies. Your platform has a built-in project management and content management system (CMS) . Marketing agencies often struggle with collaboration because of the many different specialists involved, such as content developers and project managers. Some of them aren’t necessarily employees of the agency, but contractors for other companies.

Therefore, focus your use-case scenario on this pain point by showing the project management module in use. Show them exactly how it works by creating projects, adding personnel, creating and assigning tasks, uploading content and materials, then updating the project status. The point is to take the “explain product” step further by adding relevant context.

7. Discuss Product Implementation

After presenting the product features and use cases, outline the implementation process. It could be a simple one-day installation, one-week order to deliver, or more complex, like a three-month process of subscribing and then going through training. This is also an excellent time to explain any infrastructure requirements of your product.

For example, your software might only work for certain operating systems, integrate with specific tools, or be restricted to cloud or on-premise environments. If it’s an industrial printer, it may need specific space dimensions and power channels to be fully installed. On the other hand, a cleaning spray might require a certain temperature for safe storage. These details should be discussed during your presentation, along with purchase costs.

Total cost, pricing model (flat fee, per unit, per user, and so on), financing options, and any warranties, free trials, or return policies should be explained. You may also have customizable options or a tiered pricing system if the lead wants to purchase from you but needs to stay within a certain budget.

Pro tip: Download and customize our free estimate templates to quickly and consistently lay out your proposed pricing model for your product or service. Our article also comes with tips for writing estimates.

8. Answer Questions

While answering questions during a question-and-answer (Q&A) session seems simple, it’s best to anticipate what might be asked prior to the product demo. Be prepared to re-show the product in use as common demo questions involve going over a feature a lead wants to see. If a question is asked but you do not know the answer, include your response in the post-meeting plan to address it in a follow-up email.

Additionally, you can offer to set up another meeting that will address the questions or concerns they had during the initial demo you were unable to answer. You can also record a video to include in your follow-up email that answers their questions.

Pro tip: You might also get outspoken concerns during this session such as the cost or fear of change or commitment. These are considered sales objections you can easily manage by reading our how-to guide for overcoming objections in sales . You’ll learn how to take various common concerns and turn them into opportunities.

9. Establish a Post-meeting Plan

The final component of a product demo is developing a plan to move forward. Odds are, the lead won’t be ready to make a purchase decision after the demo and will need some time. You’ll need to listen carefully to the position they are in during that moment. They might need to include more people in the buying process, take the idea to the board, or learn more about the product before making any decision.

To keep control of the process, offer to send anything relevant to their current position. For instance, if they expressed interest in pricing, send a proposal or quote information . Send product information following the call if they need upper management to review anything first or want to learn more about the product. Also, reference that you’ll get answers to their unanswered questions and provide them with the next steps based on their situation.

Below is one of the product demonstration examples you can use to conclude your product demo:

I hope we addressed your questions, and concerns, and “wowed” you with what our product can do. As for the next steps, based on where you are now, I’ll send a follow-up email with [proposal, quotes, more product information, an invite to another call, and so on] for you [and/or upper management, other decision-makers, other users] to reference.

I’ll also get [answers or confirmation] to those questions you had about [unanswered questions]. Feel free to reach out if you need anything else in the meantime.

Even if the lead is undecided on a purchase decision, sending more information following the demo keeps you fresh in their minds. After a demonstration, it may still be months to a year before the decision is made, especially for high-dollar sales deals with multiple decision-makers. Don’t be discouraged, as timing can be a factor despite plenty of interest. Continuously follow up to check in with the lead and see if anything will speed up the process.

Best Practices for a Successful Product Demo

An effective sales demonstration is customized to the prospect’s business needs and process. It should show your client how they would use your product or service and how the latter can address their problems or pain points. Below is a list of best practices to meet your product demo objectives.

Gather Information About Your Customers

Discovery is an essential step you need to take before presenting your product. This involves gathering data from your current customers, market research, and potential prospects. Find out what they want in a product like yours and if other stakeholders will be present during your demo. Use the information you have gathered to establish rapport with your customers and their need for your product or service.

Highlight Important Points

At some point in your demo, your prospect might be distracted and miss some important points of your presentation. To regain their attention, you can pause for a moment, address your prospect by name, and briefly highlight your point.

Keep Your Mouse Under Control

During your presentation, your prospects will be following the movements of your computer mouse. Avoid jerky and unnecessary movements and only move your cursor when needed, like when you want to show how to execute a command.

Manage Your Time Wisely

Most modern buyers research your product before scheduling a demo and are likely looking into another brand. That said, it is best to keep your presentation short and simple by tailoring it to their needs and pain points. While demos usually run for 30 to 60 minutes, the ideal time for one is 15 minutes or less.

Be Prepared for Fails & Crashes

When you give a software demo, you are bound to encounter fails, bugs, and app crashes. Prepare yourself to deal with these contingencies by opening in advance the apps or pages that take a while to load. When any of these things happen, it is best to tell the prospect the truth about what’s going on. You can also use such an instance as an opportunity to walk them through the process of contacting your support team.

Record Your Demo

When you record your live demo, you can replay it to review your performance and refine your technique in closing deals. You can also use prerecorded demos as a tool to market your product and to screen qualified prospects. It will encourage prospects who are genuinely interested in your product to get in touch with you.

Key Product Demo Statistics

Whether you’re conducting a live presentation or recording a demonstration video, these statistics show just how valuable product demos are and objective ways to optimize them:

In 75% of situations in small businesses, it takes more than three days between a demo request & the actual demo.

Takeaway: As mentioned in the previous section, customers nowadays do their own research on multiple products before attending a demo session. It is best to shorten your response time to a demo request so you can get in touch with your prospect quickly and find out how to address their business needs.

(Source: Navattic )

A standard sales demo lasts 30 to 60 minutes.

Takeaway: Demos don’t need to be as comprehensive as product training. Keep your presentations shorter by focusing on the product features relevant to your prospect’s needs.

20% of prospects engage with products via interactive demos.

Takeaway: Interactive product demos are a great way to let prospects engage with your product without the lengthy setup process. The rise of this engagement process shows users are looking for ways to try a product before they commit to a paid subscription.

96% of users have watched an explainer video to gain information about a product or service.

Takeaway: An overwhelming majority of customers and internet users watch an explainer video to learn more about a product or service. In addition, 89% of them said that doing so helped convince them to make a purchase.

(Source: Wyzowl )

36% of marketers used product demo videos in 2022.

Takeaway: Business marketers create various videos, and prerecorded product demos were among the most widely used last year. As mentioned in the previous section, demo videos are useful not only for marketing, but also for screening prospects.

Bottom Line

Business owners and sales management personnel must develop compelling product demo procedures to convert interested leads into potential buyers. This stage of the pipeline helps prospects gain confidence in your brand and see how your product will help them achieve their goals. By using our guide on how to give a product demo, product demonstration examples, and recommended software tools, you will close more deals and help your business scale.

About the Author

Find Bianca On LinkedIn

Bianca Caballero

Bianca Caballero is a subject matter expert at Fit Small Business who covers Sales and Customer service topics. Prior to working at FSB, she was in field sales and territory management. When she launched her career as a writer, she worked with companies from the US, Australia, and China. At present, she uses her 12+ years of writing experience to provide FSB readers with the best answers to their questions.

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The Ultimate Guide to Product Demos

In modern enterprise sales, sales reps only get about 5% of a customer’s time . Before speaking with a rep, most buyers look to self-educate on a vendor’s website. Even after a sales conversation, prospects may carefully weigh the purchase decision with peers via a buying committee. Regardless of the stage in the buyer journey, product demos can shorten sales cycles and increase conversions. A product demo, or product demonstration, showcases a product’s features, benefits, and functionality in action. In this guide, we dive deep into the world of product demos, exploring their benefits, types, and their pivotal role in navigating the complex modern sales cycle.

You can read this guide from start to finish or skip to the sections you’re most interested in learning about.

Benefits of product demos

The sales funnel for product demos

The best product demo creation tool

How to create a product demo in 3 steps

Product demo examples

Frequently asked questions: demystifying product demos

What is a product demo?

A product demo is a presentation or interactive showcase of a product’s features, benefits, and functionalities. It is a strategic and visual way for businesses to effectively communicate the value of their products to potential customers. Product demos provide a tangible and experiential understanding of how a product works and how it can address the needs and pain points of the target audience.

In a product demo, businesses typically highlight the key aspects of their product through various means such as live presentations, interactive demos, video presentations, or even hands-on experiences. The aim is to engage the audience, create a memorable experience, and convey the unique selling points that differentiate the product from competitors.

By showcasing a product in action, a product demo goes beyond text-based descriptions and abstract explanations, giving potential customers a concrete understanding of how the product can meet their requirements. This approach helps build trust, establish credibility, and address any uncertainties that potential customers may have about the product’s capabilities.

Overall, a product demo serves as a powerful tool in a company’s go-to-market arsenal , playing a crucial role in influencing purchasing decisions and driving conversions.

Product demos elevate sales processes to new heights of efficiency and effectiveness. By providing tangible evidence of a product’s capabilities, they transcend mere descriptions and provide evidence of how a product will work for potential customers. Sales team members can rely on direct feedback gained through the discovery process to tailor product demos to meet the needs of their prospect.

Demos give customers a taste of product ownership before they commit to making a purchase. For marketing teams , these demonstrations can elevate a company brand, creating a great first impression and instilling confidence in a product’s fit for a prospect. Ultimately, a high-quality product demo can be the driving force behind closed deals.

Product demos hold significant importance for businesses across industries, serving as invaluable tools that can make a substantial impact on various aspects of their operations and success. Here’s a closer look at why product demos are important:

Clear Communication of Value A product demo allows you to visually and experientially communicate the value of your product to potential customers. Instead of relying solely on textual descriptions or static images, a demo brings the product to life, showing exactly how it works and how it can benefit the customer. This clear and tangible presentation of value helps potential buyers better understand how your product can meet their needs.

Addressing Customer Pain Points Product demos provide a platform to address specific pain points and challenges that potential customers may have. By showcasing how your product can solve real-world problems, you demonstrate that you understand a prospect’s needs and are offering a viable solution. This personalized approach enhances the relevance of your product and increases the likelihood of conversion.

Building Trust and Credibility Demonstrating your product’s capabilities in a real-time setting builds trust and credibility. Potential customers can see the product in action, which helps establish authenticity and minimizes skepticism. When they experience the product’s benefits firsthand, they are more likely to believe in its claims and view your business as a reliable source.

Engagement and Company Brand Building Product demos are engaging by nature. They captivate the audience’s attention, keeping them focused on your product and its features. This engagement leads to better retention of information and a stronger connection with your brand. An engaging demo experience can leave a lasting impression, making your product more memorable.

Faster Decision-Making Seeing a product in action can expedite the decision-making process for potential customers. A well-executed demo provides stakeholders with the necessary information to evaluate the product’s fit for their needs. However, you don’t have to have every decision-maker in the room for every demo. Interactive demos can enable companies to build consensus in the buying process, without requiring repetitive demos to multiple stakeholders. This can reduce the time spent on research and consideration, leading to quicker purchasing decisions.

Direct Feedback Loop Product demos enable you to receive direct feedback from potential customers. As they interact with the product, they may ask questions, share concerns, or provide insights. This feedback is invaluable for improving your product, enhancing its features, and refining your marketing and sales strategies.

Differentiation from Competitors In a competitive market, standing out is crucial. A compelling product demo allows you to showcase what makes your product unique and superior to competitors. It’s an opportunity to highlight key differentiators and position your product as the optimal choice.

Enhanced Sales Processes Product demos streamline the sales process by providing a tangible and persuasive presentation. They serve as a powerful tool for sales representatives to guide potential customers through the buying journey. Well-prepared demos can help overcome objections, address doubts, and ultimately close deals more effectively.

In essence, product demos play a pivotal role in bridging the gap between a potential customer’s curiosity and their decision to purchase. They facilitate understanding, build trust, and provide a memorable experience that can set the stage for long-term customer relationships and business success.

Types of product demos

Businesses rely on different types of product demos to engage audiences and showcase their offerings in the most compelling way. Each type caters to diverse preferences and varying stages of the customer journey. From interactive product demos to product tours to personalized demos, let’s explore each of the product demo variations.

Interactive Product Demos Forrester research shows that 60% of buyers will go to a vendor’s website before accepting an online or in-person sales meeting. Interactive product demos are a great first step for buyers to explore a product’s key features and benefits hands-on. Unlike static product tours, interactive demos empower potential customers to explore a product in a meaningful way. They serve as immersive experiences that drive sign-ups and ensure customers are well-acquainted with SaaS tools’ functionalities. Many companies choose to add interactive product demos to their homepage or marketing campaigns to engage prospects looking to self-evaluate.

Product Tours Self-guided product tours offer a customer-driven way to explore features. This allows users to learn about the product at their own pace, diving deeper into the functionality that matters most to their specific pain points. Ultimately, many teams choose to embed product tours via an interactive demonstration on their product page, driving user satisfaction in the evaluation process.

Personalized Demos Once prospects are ready to talk to sales, live demos can play a critical role in closing the deal. According to a study from Bain & Co. demos are one of buyers’ most widely used sources of information during the consideration stage: 72% of respondents said the vendors they ultimately chose outperform the rest of the field by using demos and trials. By addressing the specific pain points and challenges of prospects, personalized demos bring customization to the sales process. These demos typically follow a qualifying marketing interaction or discovery call. Live product demos enable teams to achieve personalization in sales, by helping prospects visualize how a product will work for their needs, or within their specific environment.

Video Demo Tools & Videos While video demos hold potential, they come with downsides such as limited interactivity and personalization. However, when used strategically, they can provide quick insights into a product’s features and benefits. Popular video demo tools enable businesses to create compelling product demo videos that capture attention and convey value effectively. While product demo video examples abound on enterprise companies’ websites, interactive demos may get twice as much engagement as static content — such as the product screenshots typically shared within a demo video.

The Sales Funnel for Product Demos

Companies can use product demos throughout the enterprise buying cycle . In the awareness phase, marketers and product teams embed interactive demos on the website to help buyers understand product value immediately. According to Forrester, interactive product tours featured on the website resulted in 60% uplift in average website interactions that converted to leads.

From there, sales and presales teams use live, personalized demos to tailor the product experience to a prospect’s specific use case or pain points. In the closing phases, interactive product tours can help buying committees evaluate products, even in the absence of final sales interaction.

Here are a few ways different personas can use product demos throughout the sales funnel.

Prospective Customers The product demo process serves as a prime opportunity to delight prospective customers. Early in the buyer experience, interactive demos can help prospects self-evaluate. Further down in the sales funnel, personalized demos can help in building relationships and fostering trust among buyers. Live demos should be a two-way conversation rather than a rehearsed presentation — successful reps look at demos as an opportunity to engage buyers about their pain points and highlight product features most relevant to their needs.

Sales Reps & Marketing Professionals Both sales representatives and marketing professionals can leverage demos as a tool for showcasing a product, building trust, and improving the buyer experience. Through effective product demonstrations, they can forge connections with prospective customers and lay the foundation for long-term relationships.

Delivering successful sales presentations and demonstrations requires careful planning, effective communication, and a deep understanding of the audience’s needs. To do it right, honing in on your target audience’s industry, challenges, and pain points is critical to tailoring your presentation to address specific needs and concerns. Customize examples and scenarios that resonate with your audience’s experiences. Know your product inside and out, and be prepared to handle potential objections or questions that may arise during the live demo process.

Sales Cycle & Process The product demo weaves seamlessly into the sales cycle, catering to each stage of the buyer’s journey. From the awareness stage to the consideration stage and beyond, product demos accelerate the buyer’s journey, facilitating more informed decisions. Both interactive and personalized demos play a pivotal role in shortening the sales cycle, making them an indispensable asset.

Here are a few ways to use demos throughout the sales cycle:

• Awareness stage:Interactive demos can be used directly on the website or product page, or embedded within marketing materials to showcase product benefits directly.
• Consideration stage:Live demos help sales teams connect directly with buyers based on their individual needs, and are often a critical part of the sales process.
• Decision stage: According to our recent survey of sales practitioners , the majority of enterprise sales teams (86%) have lost a deal to a committee decision at least once in the last month. Instead of the typical PDF or demo video recording, an interactive demo can guide buying committees through the best features within your solution, making it much easier for your champion to help you close the deal.

Sales Presentations & Demonstrations Sales presentations and demonstrations serve as the dynamic duo that brings a product to life. Through strategic planning, engaging content, and personalized delivery, sales presentations and demonstrations bridge the gap between a product’s potential and the customer’s understanding, laying the foundation for successful conversions .

Delivering a successful sales presentation requires careful research of a buyer’s industry, pain points, and objectives. From there, it’s key to develop a narrative that highlights relatable scenarios or customer case studies. Showcase what sets your product apart from competitors, by comparing your product’s features and benefits to alternatives in the market. The ultimate goal is to clearly articulate the value that the product offers to the prospective customer.

The Best Product Demo Creation Tool

The right demo creation platform should help anyone on your go-to-market team build demos quickly and easily. Demo creation platforms make it possible for go-to-market teams to generate and share high-fidelity, custom interactive demos that look, feel, and behave just like a software solution without developer involvement.

Overview Among the tools available, Reprise stands out as the first fully integrated, interactive demo creation platform. Reprise is the only solution built for the entire go-to-market demo lifecycle. It’s easy to use and extensible for all types of demo creators, from product marketers, to solutions engineers, to account executives. Reprise enables anyone to build product demos and illuminate key features at any stage in the sales process — improving both conversion rates and the prospective customer experience. In addition, using Reprise removes the security and failure risks that often arise from a homegrown demo sandbox environment.

Features The Reprise demo creation platform is made up of three core products. Here are some of the key features and benefits of each.

Reprise Reveal Reprise Reveal helps sales team members easily customize a live application or existing demo environment on-demand, with no code required. Reveal works by sitting on top of your real product, helping you tell an interactive, compelling story for prospective buyers. Using Reprise Reveal, you can create demo templates by use case, vertical, or persona. Reveal applies edits to your live demo environment instantly so sales teams can give buyers an immersive experience, without extensive setup time or engineering involvement.

Reprise Replay Reprise Replay enables go-to-market teams to create interactive demos and product tours with ease. You can create demo templates or demo libraries by use case, vertical, or persona. With Reprise Replay, it’s simple to edit, customize, or change the look and feel of your application to create tours, leave-behinds, and demos that show off the breadth of your product’s capabilities. Depending on the prospect’s needs, you can change charts, add data, swap pictures, build animations, insert videos, show integrations, hide or highlight parts of your product, and much more.

Reprise Replicate Reprise Replicate helps teams create a safe, stable demo environment. Instead of demoing in their homegrown demo environment, which can be difficult to maintain and prone to error, teams can clone a full application into a new environment for flawless demos without the headaches of traditional sandboxes. As with other Reprise products, it’s simple to genericize your data, then customize by vertical, use case, market segment, and more.

Hundreds of enterprise customers trust Reprise to tell their story with product demos. Customer case studies from companies like Cloudera, EvaluAgent, and Unbabel showcase how Reprise shortens time-to-value for prospective customers, shrinking sales cycles and conveying complex product messaging much better than tactics such as free trials. More customer language and testimonials can be viewed on review site G2 , as well.

How to Create a Product Demo in 3 Steps

Creating a product demo with Reprise Replay is simple. Here’s an overview of how to do it.

1. Capture your application. Reprise Replay uses screen capture technology to capture screens and recreate an interactive demo that you can customize. Simply open Reprise and select the “Product Tour” use case. Press the “capture” button that appears at the bottom of the screen, and navigate through the screens in your application you’d like to capture.

Step one in creating a product demo is capturing your application screens in Reprise Replay.

2. Edit or add interactive elements to your demo. For example, using the Replay Editor, you can edit text or images directly on the screen, either in one location or across all screens. You can also add images as screens, which is a great way to show desktop or mobile apps in your tours or incorporate the first page from a deck into your demos. Interactive elements such as hotspots are easy to add using drag-and-drop functionality.

Step two includes editing text or images, or adding interactive elements to your product demo using a drag-and-drop editor in Reprise Replay.

3. Preview and publish your product demo. When you want to preview your demo, simply click “Preview” in the upper right-hand corner to preview your entire demo from start to finish. Or, if you prefer, you can preview a single screen. Once you’re ready to publish, give your demo a name and description, and press “Publish” in the Replay Editor.

Caption: In step three, add a title and description to your demo and press publish!

Product Demo Examples

Below are three examples of Reprise-powered demos that provide prospects with a firsthand product experience, communicating the value of even the most complex products. These teams have leveraged demos to accelerate their sales cycles, improve the efficiency of their sales operations, and even keep customers informed of new products or features as they launch.

1. Pendo – which provides a product experience platform supporting enterprise customers like Morgan Stanley, Verizon Connect, and Cision – needed an easier way to showcase their product and its ability to solve customer problems than spinning up trials. Using Reprise, Pendo’s marketing team built a library of product tours that offer prospects a way to experience the product independently.

Their product tour library has been a successful driver of website conversions, serving more than 200,000 views. The Pendo marketing team also used a product tour to support a recent product launch, which proved to be a top-performing call to action.

In addition to helping marketing make a bigger impact, product tours have improved Pendo’s sales team efficiency. Prospects take tours before they’re ready for a sales conversation, so they’re more qualified once they do engage.

See one of Pendo’s product tours here .

2. HR platform provider Hireology saw an opportunity to modernize their sales motion. With Reprise product tours, Hireology prospects experience the product first-hand and go-to-market processes are more consistent and efficient.

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. And they’re easy to build – Hireology’s eight feature-specific leave-behinds were created within a single month.

Across the funnel, every demo makes a bigger impact with consistent delivery and tight messaging. As a result, Hireology has seen opportunities involving product tours close 50% faster than those where product tours were not utilized.

See the Hireology product tour here.

3. Digital River is an e-commerce platform that helps organizations grow internationally while removing risk and complexity. Their sales team historically relied on sales engineers to set up demo environments before each live demo, which required extra effort and made it prohibitive to jump into a demo on the first call. This process introduced the risk of losing a prospect between the first call and second.

Reprise has evolved the way Digital River demos. Sales reps can independently deliver demos, without worrying about the stability of the demo environment. And they can be adaptive, showing aspects of the product a customer will care about most based on real-time feedback. This real-time feedback helps to qualify whether the solution is relevant earlier in sales cycles, improving efficiency.

With Digital River’s live demo platform, prospects are qualified earlier on, and sales engineers get time back that had been previously spent creating demo environments and supporting early sales calls. The customer experience is also better, because prospects get to see the product sooner, and the demo they see is catered in real time to their needs and interests.

See one of Digital River’s demos here .

Frequently Asked Questions: Demystifying Product Demos

How do product demos improve close rates? Product demos provide a tangible showcase of a product’s value, addressing concerns and building trust, which collectively contribute to higher close rates. Demos allow buyers to self-qualify earlier in the funnel so buyers are more educated and purchase-ready by the time they get to sales. And, they enable SEs to be more efficient, so they can give customized, best-practice demos that result in higher close rates.

What is the purpose of a product demo? The purpose of a product demo is to visually and experientially communicate a product’s features, benefits, and functionality, allowing potential customers to make informed decisions.

What makes a good demo? A good product demo is engaging, informative, and tailored to the audience’s needs. It effectively communicates the product’s value proposition and leaves a lasting impression.

What should you include in a product demonstration? A product demonstration should include a clear presentation of key features, benefits, real-world use cases, and a compelling narrative that resonates with the audience.

When do product demos happen in the sales process? Product demos are strategically placed throughout the sales process, from the awareness stage to the consideration stage to close, guiding potential customers toward making a purchase decision.

What is the goal of a product demo? The goal of a product demo is to provide potential customers with a firsthand experience of a product’s value, leading to increased understanding, trust, and ultimately, conversions.

In the complex enterprise sales process, product demos emerge as one of the most effective ways to showcase a product’s key features and benefits, while weaving in compelling and targeted narratives that help potential customers understand how your product will work specifically for them. Armed with this comprehensive guide, you’re now equipped to take advantage of the power of product demos, forging prospect connections, accelerating conversions, and driving go-to-market success.

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© 2024 Reprise.

About 15 mins

Learning Objectives

Choose what to demo, tell a story with your demo, demo logistics, running your demo, deciding on demo technologies.

• Challenge +100 points

Build a Persuasive Demo

After completing this unit, you’ll be able to:

• Create an effective demo.
• Use storytelling in your demo.
• Prepare your technology to demo seamlessly.

We learned in the second unit that it’s a good idea to break up your presentation with moments of interaction. You can either create opportunities for participant interaction or give a demo of some kind. Demos are great, because they show the magic behind  the curtain. They help your audience really see how something is done.

Nyah and Lek’s presentation is 40 minutes long. They plan to devote roughly half the time to interactive material, including demos. #DemosRule

“A great demo is about telling a story that is relevant for your audience and shows value. Spend time learning about their challenges and address them in your demo. Use customer stories and compressed ‘day in a life’ examples. Spice it up with analogies, quotes and humor.” —Tal Frankfurt (Cloud for Good, Salesforce MVP)

Once you decide on what to demo, you’ll also need to decide how to set the scene. You can do that in one of two ways.

• Independent Demos— Each demo exists on its own, with no story connecting them (other than that you think all the demos are cool things to show).
• Interconnected Demos— You connect all your demos with one coherent storyline.

While either option is valid, it can be more enjoyable for your audience to be taken on a coherent journey, with demos interspersed as part of the storyline. When you do this, you’ll want to keep your audience in mind as you build out your characters.

Speaking of characters…if your audience is mostly developers, then it’s a good idea to make your main character a developer. Same goes for an admin or business user audience. This doesn’t mean that you can’t include other types of characters—perhaps you’re an admin who gets requests from the head of sales—but the main character should be someone your audience relates to. If you’re co-presenting, you may choose different roles for different presenters and create a dialog between them.

Because the story that Nyah and Lek are telling is about how they overcame their own struggles, they’ll use themselves as the characters in their presentation and demo. They’ll show simplified (but still real-world) examples of components they’ve developed.

They take a look at the three tip sections of their presentation and come up with a short list of components they built that demonstrate the tips. After some discussion, they come up with a good demo for each tip. They plan to tag team doing the demos.

If you’re having a hard time choosing what to demo, look for something that will make the most impact and tells the best story.

“To get your audience involved requires you having a great story. Your listeners want to be taken on a journey. Stories allow your listeners to place themselves in your presentation and make real connections.”— Shonnah Hughes (MIA, Salesforce MVP, Salesforce WIT Diversity Leader)

You know how to choose what to demo and how to incorporate the demo into your presentation. Let’s talk for a moment about how to actually conduct the demo.

“Prepare. Prepare. Prepare. Have the formula in a text doc on the desktop, or the page already saved. Hide your bookmarks, desktop cat pics, and turn off any notifications that might be distracting. Don't worry if it all goes wrong. Live demos are inherently risky. Your audience will understand. Have a joke or two prepped just in case. If all else fails, interpretive dance.”— Amber Boaz (Code Science, Salesforce MVP)

There are different ways you can present your demos.

• Go Solo —The same person can run the demo and talk about what they’re doing.
• Tag Team —One person can run the demo while the other person speaks to it. Note that even if you’re a solo presenter, you can still have someone run all your demos for you (aka Dreamforce Keynote Style) while you talk.

Another thing to work out is which devices and user experiences you want to use in your demo.

• Mobile device or laptop
• Salesforce Classic or Lightning Experience

While you can choose to demo on anything, unless you have a need, keep it simple. Switching between environments, applications, and devices takes time and can be distracting to your audience. Try to plan your presentation in a way that minimizes the number of switches you make.

We talked with Salesforce’s own keynote demo-master LeeAnne Templeman about her favorite tips for technical demos.

• Plan your demo— Write out your click path and script for your demo and rehearse it.
• Clean your space— Clean your demo screens, close unrelated applications, and turn off all notifications. No one wants to see what’s on your desktop.
• Rehearse your demo— Practice switching between your presentation and your demo (that can be tricky when you’re in presenter mode). If you’re switching between screens or apps on a laptop (for example, between developer console and Lightning Experience) using multiple desktops, using gestures or hotkeys can be a useful and clean way to move between the screens quickly. You can also use alt + tab to toggle between your applications.
• Plan for glitches— Prepare for problems with Internet connections or technology. Have screenshots or video of your code and any screens you want to show. You can always talk through the static images if you get stuck.

At this point you’ve got a great slide deck, an awesome demo, and it’s time to take the stage…but wait…you’ve built this great presentation, but you have a sudden thought…what if no one comes to your presentation? (Cue the ominous music.)

No problem! In our next unit, we’ll cover how to promote your session. We’ll also show how to bring your audience into the conversation before, during, and after your session.

• 5 Tips to Rock Your Next Salesforce Demo
• Sample Demo Script/Click Path
• Get personalized recommendations for your career goals
• Practice your skills with hands-on challenges and quizzes
• Track and share your progress with employers
• Connect to mentorship and career opportunities

The Ultimate Guide to Sales Demos That Close Prospects

Learn how to create and implement sales demos for your team that will help you close more deals.

PERFECTING THE PITCH

PandaDoc and HubSpot came together to give you an actionable guide, scripts, and templates for closing the toughest sales deals.

Updated: 11/03/21

Published: 06/20/19

Have you ever considered buying a product or signing up for a service but felt you needed to see that product or service in action prior to making your decision? Maybe because you were unsure of how it actually worked or you didn't know whether or not if would solve a challenge you were facing.

What Is a Sales Demo?

Sales Demo Basics

Sales demo steps, sales demo best practices.

That's where a sales demonstration comes in handy.

What is a sales demo?

A sales demonstration, or a sales demo, is when a sales rep delivers a presentation to a prospective customer to show them the features, capabilities, and value of the product or service. The purpose of a sales demo is to close a deal.

Before we dive into the sales demonstration process, let's look at the difference between a sales demo and a product demo, as they're often confused terms.

Sales Demo vs. Product Demo

To reiterate, a sales demo is the process of providing a prospect with a demonstration of your product or service. A product demo is the same process but it involves a current customer .

The point of a sales demo is to create a sale whereas the point of a product demo is to show an existing client how to use the product or service they already invested their time and money in.

Now, let's answer a few more questions that may come up as you begin thinking about your business's process and as you prepare to start delivering demos to prospective customers.

Use HubSpot's Sales Hub to organize and manage all aspects of your sales processes including your demos.

Who delivers a sales demo?

At virtually every company, a sales rep will deliver a demo to the prospective customer.

Why deliver a sales demo?

You deliver a sales demo to close a deal. With a sales demo, you're showing a prospect exactly how your product or service meets their specific needs and can mitigate any pain points and issues they're experiencing. This makes your prospect want to buy your product or service (or at least want to learn more about it so they can convert later on).

When do you deliver a sales demo?

Sales demos typically occur after a visitor becomes a lead. Depending on where a prospect is in the buyer's journey, there are a few specific points in time when you might deliver a sales demo (or ask if your prospect is interested in a demo).

• When a visitor completes a micro conversion (signs up for your newsletter or requests more information)
• When a lead contacts a member of your sales team to learn more about your product or service
• When a lead requests a consultation

How do you deliver a sales demo?

There are a number of channels through which you can deliver your sales demos. You might offer your prospects different options to be flexible and meet their needs.

Ensure you have all of the tools needed to offer these sales demo delivery methods. For example, if you decide to deliver a sales demo via video chat, make sure you have access to software like GoToMeeting or Zoom , which allow easy screen share, face-to-face video chat, messaging, call features, and more.

Here are some more examples of common sales demo delivery channels:

• Automated/ pre-recorded video
• Live video chat
• Research your prospect
• Confirm the sales demo
• Plan your sales demo before the meeting
• Humanize the sales demo
• Set an agenda for the demo
• Summarize past conversations
• Provide background
• Explain the product or service
• Address any questions the prospect has
• Set expectations for next steps

1. Research Your Prospect

The first step in the sales demo process is to research your prospect. As the rep who's delivering the demo, you should have a deep understanding of the prospect's needs and pain points as well as what it is the company they work for does.

This will allow you to tailor and customize the demo to the prospect's specific needs and situation, which is a critical component of a successful sales demo .

2. Confirm the Sales Demo

A sales demo is something that's almost always planned in advance — so it's important to remember to confirm the demo prior to it happening. Make sure the planned time of the demo still works for the prospect and give them a window to postpone if they've accidentally double-booked or if something else came up.

Send a calendar invite as soon as you've confirmed the date and time of the demo (don't forget to include any dial-in information if needed). Ask if anyone other than the person (or people) you listed on the invite will be attending so you can add them. Then, follow up with a confirmation email the day before, or a few hours prior to, the demo.

Use free scheduling software to efficiently plan, organize, and manage all of your meetings.

3. Plan Your Sales Demo Before the Meeting

There are many ways to plan your sales demo in a way that will enhance it and make it more engaging depending on the channel you choose to present through.

For example, share your screen during the call with tools like the ones we mentioned above , create a personalized slide deck (with a tool like Canva) , and have any relevant links loaded and ready to go in tabs on your browser to reference so you can easily incorporate them throughout the presentation. Examples of these resources include a customer case study, an informative infographic, and any other web pages, like your testimonial web page, you think may come in handy during the demo.

You should also prepare statements around each tool or service you plan to show your prospects as well as any tie down questions — which spark agreement and invite the prospect to better define the value of a given tool or solution for their business — to ensure your prospect is following along and understanding the given information.

Plan tie down questions for each tool or section in your demo to ensure your prospect is following along, understanding your descriptions, and grasping how these tools can help them solve their problems. You want to lay out a clear path from A to B so they can envision the way your product or service can resolve their challenge.

4. Humanize the Sales Demo

If you start the demo with, "Hi. I'm Kristen ... Let's start the sales demo now!" you officially sound like a sales zombie.

To avoid coming off as a pushy, untrustworthy, and possibly unpleasant, ensure you're personable and show your caring, human side at the beginning of the call. After all, at this stage in the sales cycle, you and the prospect probably don't know each other that well. You might ask the prospect how they've been, how their latest project went, if their dog is finally potty trained, whatever. Time is precious, but so is rapport.

And rapport does not stop here. Build it at the beginning of the call and ensure it's continually injected throughout all other parts of the sales demo as well to establish a human and trusting relationship.

5. Set an Agenda for the Demo

Your sales demos should always follow an agenda. Prospects should be informed of this agenda prior to the demo beginning and can also be reminded of which stage of the agenda they're actually in throughout the demo. This sets expectations and keeps everyone organized and on task. Knowing what will happen during the demo will put the prospect at ease.

Emphasize there will be time at the end of the demo for the prospect to ask detailed questions (but you can also stress questions are welcome at any time).

6. Summarize Past Conversations

As you begin presenting the demo, mention any past conversations you've had with this specific prospect. This will remind them why they needed your assistance to begin with, why they considered doing business with you in the past, and how you determined you can help them during any previous conversations.

One way to neatly do this is by outlining the prospect's goals, plans, challenges, and timeline (GPCT) . Once they confirm this information is right, you can use this presentation slide (or brief discussion) as a springboard to jump into the meat of the demo.

7. Provide Background

As a rep, gaining the trust of the prospect is a critical component of closing any deal. To do this, provide some background information about your company. This will establish your company as a reputable and innovative potential partner for the prospect.

The ticket here is avoiding generic babble and incorporating specific facts about your company and it's products/ services that align with the needs of the prospect and their company.

7. Explain the Product or Service

Now, it's time to explain your product or service. When doing this, you'll want to ensure the explanation is both specific and tactful.

Start with an overview or the product and it's basic features. Explain why this product exists, and link it to the prospect’s needs (which you already confirmed with the GPCT) . Each feature being presented in the demo should tie back to why the product is the best solution for the prospect's challenge.

Next, bring in the "wow" factors. This should answer the question, "What unique value does the product offer?"

This is where personalization is key. For example, if a HubSpot prospect mentions they want to improve their blog's SEO, you could feature the SEO, Content Strategy, and Keywords tool . You can also always refer back to any previous conversations and plans you worked on with the prospect during earlier conversations and ask a tie-down question to ensure you're all on the same page at this time as well.

Furthermore, if your company provides excellent customer service to help with the onboarding process and beyond, include that information in this part of the demo. Knowing help will be available when needed does wonders to reassure a doubtful prospect.

9. Address Any Questions the Prospect Has

As mentioned, you'll want to ensure every demo has time for Q&A at the end of the demo. Throughout the demo, try to anticipate possible objections the prospect might have by listening to their tone and even watching their facial expressions (if they're on a video call or meeting in person).

By picking up on these emotions and concerns, you can frame your responses and answers in a more personalized way. You can also determine whether or not you should pull out that extra infographic or show an example of a customer successfully solving the same problem using the tools being referenced. This builds social proof , credibility, and shows the prospect that others have succeeded by partnering with you.

10. Set Expectations For Next Steps

Whew! You've officially completed the delivery of the sales process. Now, the big question: Is the prospect interested in moving this conversation forward to possibly make a deal?

Let the prospect know upfront what's required on their end for the solution to be successful. For example, show a final slide to summarize the discussion in terms of the prospect’s necessary commitment, skills, time, willingness to learn, and budget for the solution to be a worthwhile investment for them.

If they're interested in learning more or keeping the conversation going, you can set up a follow-up conversation. Or — even better — if the demo was highly effective in convincing the prospect, it might be time to begin a closing sequence to complete the deal (yay!).

There are some best practices you'll want to make sure you follow and consider while working on your sales demos to meet the needs of your clients and develop a consistent, effective, and repeatable process for you and your fellow reps.

Personalize the Sales Demo

Personalize the sales demo to fit the needs of the specific prospect you're speaking with. You always want to distill your demo down and customize it to your audience's situation with only the essential information they need.

To do this, make sure your demo demonstrates the ways your product is suited to address their pain points and meet their needs. Prospects and customers only care about the features that impact them in a positive way, so you'll want your demo to highlight those.

Always Explain "Why"

With everything you present and share throughout the demo, you must explain the "why" behind it. Why is your product better than your competitor's products? Why is your product or service ideal for managing the prospect's issue? Why should your prospect want to do business with you? Why do your current customers love your product?

These are the types of points and comments that may just move your prospect from an interested lead to a new and loyal customer — they differentiate you from other companies and make your demo significantly more convincing.

Remember To Be Adaptable

The sales demo steps are a bit like an adaptable script you can refer to and pull from to ensure you're providing all prospects with an on-brand, consistent, and professional experience.

You can also make sure you run through various situations regarding the reasons why prospects might need your product or service and how it can help them with your sales manager so you're ready for all scenarios. Additionally, you might choose to review some possible questions the majority of prospects currently ask the rest of your team so you're ready to provide quick, helpful, and impactful responses on the fly.

And remember, every interaction, prospect, company, and situation is unique, so prepared to adapt the demo as needed. Your job is to meet your prospect where they are to show your support, flexibility, and commitment to their success.

Prior to, during, and after the delivery of any sales demo, it's critical you listen to both the prospect and your fellow reps.

You need to listen to your prospect's needs, pain points, concerns, questions, hesitations, and positive or negative feedback. This will allow you to customize the demo and all future conversations to fit their needs and tailor the points you make during the demo to highlight the ways your product can resolve their challenges.

Additionally, you need to listen to your fellow reps. Your demo process is ever-changing and you're the group people who are actually working with prospects, conversing with them about their issues and needs, and delivering the demos every day.

So, who better to ask for feedback on the current demo process (what should stay the same and what could be improved) than the other members of your team? Because, maybe they've uncovered something you've never thought about or encountered (and vice versa).

Include Real Data

Data speaks volumes about your products, services, and ability to positively impact your customers. As we mentioned earlier, in your demos, don't be afraid to include real data about your company's success, the percentage of current customers who have solved problems similar to those of your prospects with your product or service, and more.

If a prospect asks for specific information about one of your product's capabilities, you can also pull in real data about the ways in which your solution works and functions.

Begin Creating Your Sales Demo Process

The demo is to sales what the climax is to a movie — this is the part where all the action has built up and resulted in one big moment where everything comes together.

That's why it's so important to get the demo right. Take the time to prep, understand your prospects, and determine how to tie your product back to the prospect's needs and challenges. This way, it'll be smooth sailing and improve the likelihood of closing a deal.

Don't forget to share this post!

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How to Organize Your Introduction for a Presentation [+ FREE Presentation Checklist]

May 1, 2018 | Business Professional English , Free Resource , Public Speaking & Presentations

This lesson on how to organize your introduction for a presentation in English has been updated since its original posting in 2016 and a video has been added.

Getting ready to present in English? Here’s how to make sure your introduction for a presentation in English is successful.

But first… When you think about a presentation, I know you’re thinking about something like a TED video or a presentation at a conference. You’re thinking about a speech, with PowerPoint slides and a big audience.

But did you know we use the same skills when we share new information or ideas with our work colleagues? Or when we tell stories to our friends and family? The situation or speaking task may be different but we still use the same skills.

When presenting information or telling stories, we need to:

• Capture a listener’s attention
• Share information, ideas, or opinions
• Give the important details
• Make your information memorable
• Get your audience (family, friends, colleagues or strangers) to agree, to take action, to change their mind, etc.

So today you’re going to learn how to take the first big step in your English presentation: how to start with a great introduction.

The introduction is the most important part of your presentation. It is the first impression you’ll make on your audience. It’s your first opportunity to get their attention. You want them to trust you and listen to you right away.

However, that first moment when you start to speak is often the hardest. Knowing how to best prepare and knowing what to say will help you feel confident and ready to say that first word and start your presentation in English.

Be sure to include these 5 things in your inroduction.

Lesson by Annemarie

How to Organize Your Introduction for a Presentation in English and Key Phrases to Use

Organize Your Introduction Correctly

Okay, first let’s focus on what you need to include in your English introduction. Think of this as your formula for a good introduction. Using this general outline for your introduction will help you prepare. It will also help your audience know who you are, why you’re an expert, and what to expect from your presentation.

Use this general outline for your next presentation:

• Welcome your audience and introduce yourself
• Capture their attention
• Identify your number one goal or topic of presentation
• Give a quick outline of your presentation
• Provide instructions for how to ask questions (if appropriate for your situation)

Use Common Language to Make Your Introduction Easy to Understand

Great, now you have the general outline of an introduction for a speech or presentation in English. So let’s focus on some of the key expressions you can use for each step. This will help you think about what to say and how to say it so you can sound confident and prepared in your English presentation.

“The introduction is the most important part of your presentation. It is the first impression you’ll make on your audience. It’s your first opportunity to get their attention. You want them to trust you and listen to you right away.”

Welcome Your Audience & Introduction

It is polite to start with a warm welcome and to introduce yourself. Everyone in the audience will want to know who you are. Your introduction should include your name and job position or the reason you are an expert on your topic. The more the audience trusts you, the more they listen.

• Welcome to [name of company or event]. My name is [name] and I am the [job title or background information].
• Thank you for coming today. I’m [name] and I’m looking forward to talking with you today about [your topic].
• Good morning/afternoon ladies and gentlemen. I’d like to quickly introduce myself. I am [name] from [company or position]. (formal)
• On behalf of [name of company], I’d like to welcome you today. For those of you who don’t already know me, my name is [name] and I am [job title or background]. (formal)
• Hi everyone. I’m [name and background]. I’m glad to be here with you today. Now let’s get started. (informal)

Capture Their Attention

For more information about how to best capture your audience’s attention and why, please see the next session below. However, here are a few good phrases to get you started.

• Did you know that [insert an interesting fact or shocking statement]?
• Have you ever heard that [insert interesting fact or shocking statement]?
• Before I start, I’d like to share a quick story about [tell your story]…
• I remember [tell your story, experience or memory]…
• When I started preparing for this talk, I was reminded of [tell your story, share your quote or experience]…

Identify Your Goal or Topic of Presentation

At this stage, you want to be clear with your audience about your primary topic or goal. Do you want your audience to take action after your talk? Is it a topic everyone is curious about (or should be curious about)? This should be just one or two sentences and it should be very clear.

• This morning I’d like to present our new [product or service].
• Today I’d like to discuss…
• Today I’d like to share with you…
• What I want to share with you is…
• My goal today is to help you understand…
• During my talk this morning/afternoon, I’ll provide you with some background on [main topic] and why it is important to you.
• I will present my findings on…
• By the end of my presentation, I’d like for you to know…
• I aim to prove to you / change your mind about…
• I’d like to take this opportunity to talk about…
• As you know, this morning/afternoon I’ll be discussing…

Outline Your Presentation

You may have heard this about presentations in English before:

First, tell me what you’re going to tell me. Then tell me. And finally, tell me what you told me.

It sounds crazy and weird, but it’s true. This is how we structure presentations in English. So today we’re focusing on the “First, tell me what you’re going to tell me” for your introduction. This means you should outline the key points or highlights of your topic.

This prepares your listens and helps to get their attention. It will also help them follow your presentation and stay focused. Here are some great phrases to help you do that.

• First, I’m going to present… Then I’ll share with you… Finally, I’ll ask you to…
• The next thing I’ll share with you is…
• In the next section, I’ll show you…
• Today I will be covering these 3 (or 5) key points…
• In this presentation, we will discuss/evaluate…
• By the end of this presentation, you’ll be able to…
• My talk this morning is divided into [number] main sections… First, second, third… Finally…

On Asking Questions

You want to be sure to let you audience know when and how it is appropriate for them to ask you questions. For example, is the presentation informal and is it okay for someone to interrupt you with a question? Or do you prefer for everyone to wait until the end of the presentation to ask questions?

• If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to interrupt me. I’m happy to answer any questions as we go along.
• Feel free to ask any questions, however, I do ask that you wait until the end of the presentation to ask.
• There will be plenty of time for questions at the end.
• Are there any questions at this point? If not, we’ll keep going.
• I would be happy to answer any questions you may have now.

Capture Your Audience’s Attention

Do you feel unsure about how to capture the attention of your audience? Don’t worry! Here are some common examples used in English-speaking culture for doing it perfectly!

Two of the most famous speakers in the English-speaking world are Steve Jobs and Oprah Winfrey. While Steve Jobs is no longer living, people still love to watch his speeches and presentations online. Oprah is so famous that no matter what she does, people are excited to see her and listen to her.

BUT, if you listen to a speech by Steve Jobs or Oprah Winfrey,  they still  work  to get your attention!

The don’t start with a list of numbers or data. They don’t begin with a common fact or with the title of the presentation. No – they do much more.

From the moment they start their speech, they want you to listen. And they find interesting ways to get your attention. In his most famous speeches, Steve Jobs often started with a personal story. And Oprah often starts with an inspiring quote, a motivational part of a poem, or a personal story.

These are all great ways to help your audience to listen to you immediately – whether your presentation is 3 minutes or 20 minutes.

Here’s how you can do it.

Like Steve Jobs or Oprah Winfrey, start with a:

• Personal story or experience
• Motivational quote or line from a poem or book
• Joke (be careful with this – make sure it translates easily to everyone in the audience!)
• Shocking, bold statement (Think of Steve Jobs’ quote: “ Stay hungry. Stay Foolish .”)
• Rhetorical question ( =a question that you don’t want an answer to; the focus is to make someone think)

And finally, consider audience participation. Ask a question and get your audience to respond by raising hands.

Get the complete Presentations in English Series:

Part 1: How to Prepare for Your Presentation in English

Part 2: How to Start with a Great Introduction in Your Presentation

Part 3:  How to Organize Your Presentation in English

Part 4:  How to End Your Presentation Powerfully

As I mentioned in the video, I have two question for you today:

• What is the best introduction you’ve ever heard? Have you watched a TED Talk or a presentation on YouTube with a great introduction? Tell me about it. What do you think was great about the introduction?
• What frightens you the most about preparing your introduction in a presentation? Share your concerns with me so I can help you overcome any challenges you have.

Be sure to share in the comments below to get feedback from me and to learn from others in the Confident English Community.

Have a great week! ~ Annemarie

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Thank you, Annemarie. thanks for the generosity of sharing useful and systemative information and content.

This is really a very informative message thank you.. And it’s help me a lot

hi thank you for this It was helpful. You used simple english that i understood well.

How to start with a great presentation on composition

Thankyou for the information . It was much helpful . I will definitely use this information in my presentation 🤗

Hi, I am Thang Sok Do you have a Sample presentation?

This was helpful but can you please tell me how to start a presentation in college because this is for work in a company. My presentation is on laboratory skills and all that

Its informative

Thank you for this video! I’ve learned quite a lot and will want to use all these knowledge in presenting my thesis proposal in 2 months. About your question no. 2, I’d just like to share that the mere fact of presenting in front of many respected professionals makes me already nervous and shaky even if i have studied everything about my presentation. What do you think should i do to deal with my concern?

Could you give me advise, how to start learning English for beginner.How to prepare presentation on any topic and how to make interesting..

Thank u so much for valuable advice. Definitely I will used this in my presentation!!

Thank you very much for these kind of useful advice. I hope my first presentation will be exciting for the audience.Your video is helping me again thanks a lot 😊

hi, i’m B.COM student and I have to prepare presentation about identifying business opportunities. How to start and an attractive attention to my audience.. Please Help me…

very nise and educative piece of information thank you nancy nairobi kenya

i am starting a video speech shooting in night about a famouse person how do i start my speech with a good intro.

Hi again how do you do a introduction goodbye

Hi i do not know what you are talking about

Hi Kate, I’m sorry to hear you’re not sure about the content. I recommend reviewing the video carefully if you haven’t already. Is there something specific you have a question about?

thanks a lot for guiding in such an easier way.

Your write-up on introduction helped a lot, thank you Annemarie. I work for cross-geography team and greetings get lengthy as timezones are different e.g. “Good evening to those joining from US office and good morning to colleagues from India office”. I replaced that with “Thank you everyone for joining”. Is it okay?

Hi Amit, I’m so glad it was helpful. As for your greeting, both of your options are perfectly appropriate and friendly.

How to introduce group members in online presentation?

Great question! I’d love to use that for a future Confident English lesson.

its amazing. i can’t explain in wording. this material helping me a lot. i am so happy after use this website . its make easy for me preparing my presentation more interesting. i am thankful too u.

thanks! i use your materials to teach my students(clinets) how to prepare a presentation. is it ok to use them on my materials?

Hi! I am a student from the USP from Tuvaluan and i take CEE45 so our assessment 2 is to prepared a group presentation and we presented in school. so need your help for how to start an attractive introduction to my teacher and my fellow students, they already kwow me.

Thank you.. very helpful

Very useful

It was very use Gul for or presentations

Hi. I am a 1st year BIT student and I have to prepare a presentation on 3D Printing. how to start an attractive introduction to my teachers, when they already know about me? Can you please help me out? Thank you.

I just took 1st place for my paper that I presented at an international students conference. I used a lot of your techniques to improve my speech and I have no words to say how grateful I am to you. Keep up the good work!

😲WOW!! That’s awesome, Andrew. 🙌Congratulations on your presentation. What a wonderful response to your hard work. I’d love to know what you presentation was about. And thank you for sharing your new here. I’m thrilled to know that my techniques were helpful to you.

The title of the presentation was “Handling burnout: A study regarding the the influence of job stressors over military and civilian personel”. I can sent you my paper through email if you would like to see it.

Hi Andrew, what a fascinating topic. And it’s interesting because I just had a newspaper reporter interview me about burnout as a small business owner. Must be a hot topic. 🙂 And sure, I’d love to see it.

🔥❤ too goodd

Hello Annemarie, Thank you so much for one of the best content on the English presentation, I’ve seen. I have a question: Is it impolite or informal to start the presentation without a greeting? I’m asking this question because I’ve seen a lot of TEDTalks and in only a few of them, they greet the audience and in most of it, they quickly go to the “CAPTURING the ATTENTION” with numbers and pictures. I would be so thankful if you could answer this question as soon as possible, my presentation is so close. Best regards, Helia

Hi Helia, What a great question. It has definitely become more common to skip the greeting and go straight to capturing the attention of the audience and you’re right that we often see this in TED talks. I would say it’s best to know your audience and what might be expected. For example, at more formal, traditional conferences or lecture, it might be more appropriate to start with a welcome. I prefer to welcome/thank my audience quickly at the start when I give presentations. A welcome can be very brief, just one sentence, and then you can quickly go into …  Read more »

Hi Annemarie I would like to thank you for giving such types of presentation skills but I have a question can you give me some idea about vote of thinks.

I’m glad the lessons are helpful to you. Could you clarify what you mean by ‘vote of thinks?’ I’m not sure I understand that.

Please can you give me some idea about vote of thanks

Could you clarify what you’re asking for, Bello?

Thanks a lot

Glad it was helpful!

it is agood i learn alot from this english class

Hello.i would like to thank you for giving these beautiful tips to start a presentation.This article helped me a lot.

That’s great, Radha. Glad to hear it.

Thanks for your article. It’s simply for interpersonal skill development.

You’re welcome, Mithun. Glad to know it was helpful.

Hi Annemarie . Thank you so much for giving such helpful guildelines it’s really gonna help me

I’m glad it’s helpful, Swetha! 🙂

thank you for help me

You’re very welcome!

Hi Anne Marie, i ‘m from Catalonia and i came across with your site only by chance and i think it’gonna be so helpful for me to pass the next test for c1 level. Several weeks ago i did some rehersals with my presentation and i was so nervous and terrified about what was expected from me.

Some tips in your youtube channel are so cool !!! Thank you.

Hi Tom, I’m thrilled you’ve found this site in your preparations for your English exam and am glad to know it’s helpful! Best of luck as you continue to prepare.

Hi Annemarie Thanks it’s so useful to develop presentation skill. Fatima

You’re very welcome, Fatima! I’m glad it was helpful.

Awesome, especially this simple and clear motto: “First, tell me what you’re going to tell me. Then tell me. And finally, tell me what you told me.” This three sentences exactly explain the content you need to create a memorable presentation.

Hi Dzmitry,

Yes, I’ve always loved that simple motto on how to do a presentation. 🙂 It’s so easy to remember and tells you exactly what to do.

hello I need to introduce myself to language center. i am going to learn Danish Language and i want to introduce myself to them and i am little bit nervous because my grammar is not good at that level.so will you please guide me how to introduce myself to them with an example. i did go through your examples but that is for professionals and i am just a student (Graduate). I don’t have any experience . Please guide me how to do it.

I was in a confused state about starting a conversation and proceeding in it but when I read the guidelines you mentioned above I became confident. thank you for your innumerable ………….

Thank you so much…… it’s an excellent topic, and it helped me a lot

I’m so glad this was helpful to you! Thank you for sharing.

hi annemarie i have a few questions about a speech i have to make a englishi speech of what i want to become can you help me?

Hi Rebecca,

Thank you for the question. I have several lessons on the topic of presentations in English . However, for personal assistance with English or presentations, I only do that through my one-on-one classes .

thank you so much…… it’s really helpful for me….

You’re very welcome, Shalini.

Thanks its really nice to develop the presentation skills

Awesome. I’m glad it was helpful to you, Mohammed.

I have to give a demo on one of your programs next week. I would like you to check my self introduction – Good afternoon everyone and thank you for all of your presence. Before we get into the session I would like to quickly introduce myself. My name is Dinesh . I am working as a Pharmaceutical sale and promotion of the brands for Arrient Healthcare. I am in this filed for the past ten years. Before becoming trainer I worked as a medical representatives for different pharma company . I am highly interested in learning from people and …  Read more »

Please ignore my previous comment. Yea the demo was a success. So hereafter I will say”I have been in this field for the past four years. Actually I worked for different consultancies so I didn’t include an article there.

I have to give a demo on one of your programs next week. I would like you to check my self introduction – Good afternoon everyone and thank you for all of your presence. Before we get into the session I would like to quickly introduce myself. My name is Monica. I am working as a Soft Skill Trainer at Synergy School of Business Skills. I am in this filed for the past four years. Before becoming trainer I worked as a Recruiter for different job consultancy. I am highly interested in learning from people and I think teaching/training is …  Read more »

Thank you for sharing your example! One note: “I am in this field for the past four years.” –> Don’t forget, when we’re talking about something that started in the past and continues to now, we use the present perfect. How might you change this sentence to fix the grammar?

Also, we want to add an article to, “… I worked as a recruiter for [a] different job consultancy.”

I wish you much success in your demo this week! Best, Annemarie

Yea the demo was a success! So hereafter I will say”I have been for the past four years. Actually I worked for different consultancies.

I like it but I think capturing their attention is the most difficult part in preparing a presentation. From my little experience, I used to talk about something out of the scope of the presentation in order to grasp their attention. For example, I had a presentation about medical terminology and its parts (suffix, prefix —). So I provided example which is Ultra Violet then I talked about the ultraviolet in the sun and Vitamin D deficiency. They liked the talk because it is very important to them and by this topic I captured their attention more and more.

Hello Fadia, I’m sorry I’m so late in responding to your comment! I agree with you: capturing attention is very challenging to do. It requires understanding your audience, knowing what is important to them, and how to connect with them. In English-speaking culture, we often connect by telling a story or showing we understand a problem the audience has. I think you’re exactly right to talk about something that is maybe “off topic” or out of the scope of the presentation, as you said, to get their attention first. It sounds like you did a great job in your experience!! …  Read more »

hi there it was great going through your enlightening presentation skills however i would be even more delighted if you put some quotes for various PPT’s which will give us an instant ideas during the adhoc PPT like myself…just a suggestion.

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How to Do a Demonstration Speech | ESL Presentation Lesson

Delivering an effective demonstration speech is a skill that transcends language barriers. It is a type of speech that you want your ESL students to be able to do in order to become better English speakers and communicators. In this article, we will delve into demonstration presentation, learning what it is, why it is important, and how you do it. With our easy breakdown of this type of speech, you’ll be able to give an awesome ESL speaking lesson focusing on presentations.

• Demonstration Speech

A speech is a spoken communication delivered by a person to convey a message or express thoughts, often in front of an audience. It involves organized and purposeful verbal expression to inform, persuade, or entertain. There are many different types of speech, including informative , persuasive, motivational, impromptu, expository, and debate. And demonstration presentation is also one of them.

What is a Demonstration Speech?

A demonstration speech is a form of presentation where the speaker explains a process or activity, accompanied by a live demonstration. The primary objective is to educate and enlighten the audience on the steps involved in a particular task or the functionality of an object. In simple terms, the speaker wants to inform or illustrate something.

Key Elements of a Demonstration Speech

Here are the three most important elements of a successful demonstration speech:

• Clarity in Explanation: A successful speech relies on clear communication, avoiding jargon, and using simple language. This is especially important in an ESL context.
• Engaging Visuals: Incorporate visual aids to enhance understanding. Whether it’s slides, props, or multimedia, a visual component adds depth to your presentation.
• Sequential Flow: Ensure a logical flow of steps. Organize your speech in a sequential manner, allowing the audience to follow along effortlessly.

How to do a Demonstration Speech

The following are the basic steps of giving a demonstration speech.

Introduction: Begin with a Hook

A compelling introduction sets the stage for your demonstration. Begin with a hook that captures your audience’s attention. A nice hook gives your audience a reason to listen to you. Then, provide a concise overview of what you will be demonstrating.

Body: Actual Demonstration

Break down the process into distinct steps, providing a detailed explanation for each. Use clear and concise language, reinforcing key points with visual aids. Be mindful of your pacing, allowing the audience to absorb information without feeling overwhelmed.

Encourage audience participation by incorporating interactive elements like hands-on activity. Engaging your audience fosters a dynamic learning environment.

Summarize the speech topic and what the audience learned. You may include a Q&A session to address their questions.

How to Prepare a Demonstration Speech

Keep these two things in mind when preparing your demonstration.

Choose the Right Topic

Selecting an appropriate topic is essential to a successful speech. Consider your audience’s interests and proficiency level in English. Opt for topics that resonate with them and align with their learning objectives.

Plan and Practice

Thorough preparation is the key to a flawless demonstration. Break down the process into manageable steps, ensuring each step receives due attention. Rehearse your speech multiple times to iron out any potential hitches.

Demonstration Speech Lesson for ESL Students

Learning how to do a presentation is very important for ESL students. A great way to teach them how to do it is by making them actually do one. Assign your students with a demonstration presentation project.

Presentation Project

You will need to divide these different steps into separate classes depending on the duration and schedule of the lesson. Plan the project accordingly so you can cover all of these elements.

• Objective : The goal of this project is to enable ESL students to deliver a clear and effective speech on a simple topic of their choice, applying the principles and structures discussed in class.
• Topic Selection : Students choose a simple and practical topic for their speech. Topics can include cooking a dish, creating a craft, performing a basic task, etc. Encourage variety and creativity in topic selection.
• Outline : Provide students with a template for a speech outline.
• Visual Aids : Emphasize the importance of visual aids and make sure students prepare any necessary visual aids, such as pictures, diagrams, or objects, to enhance their presentation.
• Language Practice : Review and practice using sequencing words and phrases (e.g., first, next, then, finally) to guide the audience through the steps.
• Practice : Students practice delivering their speech to a partner or small group.
• Rehearsal : Students rehearse their speeches individually, ensuring they are comfortable with the timing and flow of their presentations. This is the time to address any concerns or questions they may have with the teacher.
• Presentation : Each student presents their speech to the class. Encourage a supportive and positive atmosphere. Allow time for brief questions or comments from the audience.
• Feedback and Reflection : After all presentations are complete, provide constructive feedback on each student’s performance. Facilitate a class discussion where students reflect on the challenges they faced and what they learned from the project.

ESL Speaking Resources

If you are looking for more ESL speaking lesson resources, check out the following articles.

• Practice Speaking English
• Small Talk Ideas for ESL Lessons and Conversation Classes
• Closing a Conversation in English Politely and Easily
• Deep Philosophical Questions
• Debate Topics

FAQs About Demonstration Speech

Here are some of the most frequently asked questions about demonstration presentations.

What is a demonstration speech?

A demonstration speech is a type of informative speech that aims to teach the audience how to do something or how something works. It involves presenting a step-by-step process or explaining a concept using visual aids and practical examples.

What is an example of a demonstration?

An example of a demonstration could be showing how to tie a specific knot, prepare a recipe, assemble a piece of furniture, or perform a simple science experiment. It involves a hands-on approach to conveying information.

What is the main focus of a demonstration speech?

The main focus of a demonstration speech is to provide clear and practical instructions to the audience, enabling them to understand and replicate a specific process or activity. Visual aids and hands-on examples are often used to enhance comprehension.

What type of speech is a demonstration speech?

A demonstration speech is a type of informative speech. While informative speeches provide information on a particular topic, demonstration speeches go a step further by actively illustrating how to do or understand something.

Is a demonstration speech an informative speech?

Yes, a demonstration speech is a type of informative speech. While all demonstration speeches are informative, not all informative speeches are demonstrations. Informative speeches can cover a wide range of topics, including presenting facts, explaining concepts, describing processes, or analyzing issues.

What are the different types of speech?

Here is the list of the different types of speech:

• Informative Speech
• Persuasive Speech
• Entertaining Speech
• Special Occasion Speech
• Motivational Speech
• Expository Speech
• Impromptu Speech

Demonstration Speech: Join the Conversation

Have you ever delivered this kind of speech? Please share your experience doing it in the comments! We’d love to hear from you.

About Jackie

Jackie Bolen has been teaching English for more than 15 years to students in South Korea and Canada. She's taught all ages, levels and kinds of TEFL classes. She holds an MA degree, along with the Celta and Delta English teaching certifications.

Jackie is the author of more than 60 books for English teachers and English learners, including Business English Vocabulary Builder and 39 No-Prep/Low-Prep ESL Speaking Activities for Teenagers and Adults . She loves to share her ESL games, activities, teaching tips, and more with other teachers throughout the world.

You can find her on social media at: YouTube Facebook Pinterest TikTok LinkedIn Instagram

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Press Release Details

Nvidia brings ai assistants to life with geforce rtx ai pcs.

TAIPEI, Taiwan, June 02, 2024 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- COMPUTEX -- NVIDIA today announced new NVIDIA RTX ™ technology to power AI assistants and digital humans running on new GeForce RTX ™ AI laptops.

NVIDIA unveiled Project G-Assist — an RTX-powered AI assistant technology demo that provides context-aware help for PC games and apps. The Project G-Assist tech demo debuted with ARK: Survival Ascended from Studio Wildcard. NVIDIA also introduced the first PC-based NVIDIA NIM™ inference microservices for the NVIDIA ACE digital human platform.

These technologies are enabled by the NVIDIA RTX AI Toolkit , a new suite of tools and software development kits that aid developers in optimizing and deploying large generative AI models on Windows PCs. They join NVIDIA’s full-stack RTX AI innovations accelerating over 500 PC applications and games and 200 laptop designs from manufacturers.

In addition, newly announced RTX AI PC laptops from ASUS and MSI feature up to GeForce RTX 4070 GPUs and power-efficient systems-on-a-chip with Windows 11 AI PC capabilities. These Windows 11 AI PCs will receive a free update to Copilot+ PC experiences when available.

“NVIDIA launched the era of AI PCs in 2018 with the release of RTX Tensor Core GPUs and NVIDIA DLSS,” said Jason Paul, vice president of consumer AI at NVIDIA. “Now, with Project G-Assist and NVIDIA ACE, we’re unlocking the next generation of AI-powered experiences for over 100 million RTX AI PC users.”

Project G-Assist, a GeForce AI Assistant AI assistants are set to transform gaming and in-app experiences — from offering gaming strategies and analyzing multiplayer replays to assisting with complex creative workflows. Project G-Assist is a glimpse into this future.

PC games offer vast universes to explore and intricate mechanics to master, which are challenging and time-consuming feats even for the most dedicated gamers. Project G-Assist aims to put game knowledge at players’ fingertips using generative AI.

Project G-Assist takes voice or text inputs from the player, along with contextual information from the game screen, and runs the data through AI vision models. These models enhance the contextual awareness and app-specific understanding of a large language model (LLM) linked to a game knowledge database, and then generate a tailored response delivered as text or speech.

NVIDIA partnered with Studio Wildcard to demo the technology with ARK: Survival Ascended . Project G-Assist can help answer questions about creatures, items, lore, objectives, difficult bosses and more. Because Project G-Assist is context-aware, it personalizes its responses to the player’s game session.

In addition, Project G-Assist can configure the player’s gaming system for optimal performance and efficiency. It can provide insights into performance metrics, optimize graphics settings depending on the user’s hardware, apply a safe overclock and even intelligently reduce power consumption while maintaining a performance target.

First ACE PC NIM Debuts NVIDIA ACE technology for powering digital humans is now coming to RTX AI PCs and workstations with NVIDIA NIM — inference microservices that enable developers to reduce deployment times from weeks to minutes. ACE NIM microservices deliver high-quality inference running locally on devices for natural language understanding, speech synthesis, facial animation and more.

At COMPUTEX, the gaming debut of NVIDIA ACE NIM on the PC will be featured in the Covert Protocol tech demo , developed in collaboration with Inworld AI. It now showcases NVIDIA Audio2Face ™ and NVIDIA Riva automatic speech recognition running locally on devices.

Windows Copilot Runtime to Add GPU Acceleration for Local PC SLMs Microsoft and NVIDIA are collaborating to help developers bring new generative AI capabilities to their Windows native and web apps. This collaboration will provide application developers with easy application programming interface (API) access to GPU-accelerated small language models (SLMs) that enable retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) capabilities that run on-device as part of Windows Copilot Runtime.

SLMs provide tremendous possibilities for Windows developers, including content summarization, content generation and task automation. RAG capabilities augment SLMs by giving the AI models access to domain-specific information not well represented in ‌base models. RAG APIs enable developers to harness application-specific data sources and tune SLM behavior and capabilities to application needs.

These AI capabilities will be accelerated by NVIDIA RTX GPUs, as well as AI accelerators from other hardware vendors, providing end users with fast, responsive AI experiences across the breadth of the Windows ecosystem.

The API will be released in developer preview later this year.

4x Faster, 3x Smaller Models With the RTX AI Toolkit The AI ecosystem has built hundreds of thousands of open-source models for app developers to leverage, but most models are pretrained for general purposes and built to run in a data center.

To help developers build application-specific AI models that run on PCs, NVIDIA is introducing RTX AI Toolkit — a suite of tools and SDKs for model customization, optimization and deployment on RTX AI PCs. RTX AI Toolkit will be available later this month for broader developer access.

Developers can customize a pretrained model with open-source QLoRa tools. Then, they can use the NVIDIA TensorRT ™ model optimizer to quantize models to consume up to 3x less RAM. NVIDIA TensorRT Cloud then optimizes the model for peak performance across the RTX GPU lineups. The result is up to 4x faster performance compared with the pretrained model.

The new  NVIDIA AI Inference Manager  SDK, now available in early access, simplifies the deployment of ACE to PCs. It preconfigures the PC with the necessary AI models, engines and dependencies while orchestrating AI inference seamlessly across PCs and the cloud.

Software partners such as Adobe, Blackmagic Design and Topaz are integrating components of the RTX AI Toolkit within their popular creative apps to accelerate AI performance on RTX PCs.

“Adobe and NVIDIA continue to collaborate to deliver breakthrough customer experiences across all creative workflows, from video to imaging, design, 3D and beyond,” said Deepa Subramaniam, vice president of product marketing, Creative Cloud at Adobe. “TensorRT 10.0 on RTX PCs delivers unprecedented performance and AI-powered capabilities for creators, designers and developers, unlocking new creative possibilities for content creation in industry-leading creative tools like Photoshop.”

Components of the RTX AI Toolkit, such as TensorRT-LLM, are integrated in popular developer frameworks and applications for generative AI, including Automatic1111, ComfyUI, Jan.AI, LangChain, LlamaIndex, Oobabooga and Sanctum.AI.

AI for Content Creation NVIDIA is also integrating RTX AI acceleration into apps for creators, modders and video enthusiasts.

Last year, NVIDIA introduced RTX acceleration using TensorRT for one of the most popular Stable Diffusion user interfaces, Automatic1111. Starting this week, RTX will also accelerate the highly popular ComfyUI, delivering up to a 60% improvement in performance over the currently shipping version, and 7x faster performance compared with the MacBook Pro M3 Max.

NVIDIA RTX Remix is a modding platform for remastering classic DirectX 8 and DirectX 9 games with full ray tracing, NVIDIA DLSS 3.5 and physically accurate materials. RTX Remix includes a runtime renderer and the RTX Remix Toolkit app, which facilitates the modding of game assets and materials.

Last year, NVIDIA made RTX Remix Runtime open source, allowing modders to expand game compatibility and advance rendering capabilities.

Since RTX Remix Toolkit launched earlier this year, 20,000 modders have used it to mod classic games , resulting in over 100 RTX remasters in development on the RTX Remix Showcase Discord .

This month, NVIDIA will make the RTX Remix Toolkit open source, allowing modders to streamline how assets are replaced and scenes are relit, increase supported file formats for RTX Remix’s asset ingestor and bolster RTX Remix’s AI Texture Tools with new models.

In addition, NVIDIA is making the capabilities of RTX Remix Toolkit accessible via a REST API, allowing modders to livelink RTX Remix to digital content creation tools such as Blender, modding tools such as Hammer and generative AI apps such as ComfyUI. NVIDIA is also providing an SDK for RTX Remix Runtime to allow modders to deploy RTX Remix’s renderer into other applications and games beyond DirectX 8 and 9 classics.

With more of the RTX Remix platform being made open source, modders across the globe can build even more stunning RTX remasters.

NVIDIA RTX Video , the popular AI-powered super-resolution feature supported in the Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge and Mozilla Firefox browsers, is now available as an SDK to all developers, helping them natively integrate AI for upscaling, sharpening, compression artifact reduction and high-dynamic range (HDR) conversion.

Coming soon to video editing software Blackmagic Design’s DaVinci Resolve and Wondershare Filmora, RTX Video will enable video editors to upscale lower-quality video files to 4K resolution, as well as convert standard dynamic range source files into HDR. In addition, the free media player VLC media will soon add RTX Video HDR to its existing super-resolution capability.

Learn more about RTX AI PCs and technology by joining NVIDIA at COMPUTEX .

About NVIDIA NVIDIA (NASDAQ: NVDA) is the world leader in accelerated computing.

For further information, contact: Jordan Dodge NVIDIA Corporation +1-408-566-6792 [email protected]

Certain statements in this press release including, but not limited to, statements as to: the benefits, impact, performance, and availability of our products, services, and technologies, including NVIDIA RTX technology, GeForce RTX AI laptops, Project G-Assist, NVIDIA NIM inference microservices, NVIDIA ACE digital human platform, NVIDIA RTX AI Toolkit, GeForce RTX 4070 GPUs, RTX Tensor Core GPUs, DLSS, NVIDIA Audio2Face, NVIDIA Riva, NVIDIA TensorRT, NVIDIA AI Inference Manager, NVIDIA RTX Remix, NVIDIA DLSS 3.5, RTX Remix Runtime, and NVIDIA RTX Video; the benefits and impact of NVIDIA’s collaboration with third parties, and the features and availability of their services and offerings; third parties using or adopting NVIDIA’s products or technologies and the benefits thereof; RAG APIs enabling developers to harness application-specific data sources and tune SLM behavior and capabilities to application needs; and NVIDIA unlocking the next generation of AI-powered experiences for over 100 million RTX AI PC users, are forward-looking statements that are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause results to be materially different than expectations. Important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially include: global economic conditions; our reliance on third parties to manufacture, assemble, package and test our products; the impact of technological development and competition; development of new products and technologies or enhancements to our existing product and technologies; market acceptance of our products or our partners' products; design, manufacturing or software defects; changes in consumer preferences or demands; changes in industry standards and interfaces; unexpected loss of performance of our products or technologies when integrated into systems; as well as other factors detailed from time to time in the most recent reports NVIDIA files with the Securities and Exchange Commission, or SEC, including, but not limited to, its annual report on Form 10-K and quarterly reports on Form 10-Q. Copies of reports filed with the SEC are posted on the company's website and are available from NVIDIA without charge. These forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance and speak only as of the date hereof, and, except as required by law, NVIDIA disclaims any obligation to update these forward-looking statements to reflect future events or circumstances.

Many of the products and features described herein remain in various stages and will be offered on a when-and-if-available basis. The statements above are not intended to be, and should not be interpreted as a commitment, promise, or legal obligation, and the development, release, and timing of any features or functionalities described for our products is subject to change and remains at the sole discretion of NVIDIA. NVIDIA will have no liability for failure to deliver or delay in the delivery of any of the products, features, or functions set forth herein.

© 2024 NVIDIA Corporation. All rights reserved. NVIDIA, the NVIDIA logo, Audio2Face, GeForce RTX, NVIDIA NIM, NVIDIA RTX and TensorRT are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of NVIDIA Corporation in the U.S. and other countries. Other company and product names may be trademarks of the respective companies with which they are associated. Features, pricing, availability and specifications are subject to change without notice.

A photo accompanying this announcement is available at: https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/25d171ac-da6c-4ebb-880e-71d26b0f5f1e

NVIDIA RTX AI PC

NVIDIA's Project G-Assist is an RTX-powered AI assistant technology demo that provides context-aware help for PC games and apps.

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Pro-Kurdish lawmakers stage protest in Turkey’s parliament to denounce the ouster of a new mayor

Pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Equality and Democracy Party, or DEM, and Justice and Development Party, or AKP, lawmakers scuffle at the parliament in Ankara, Tuesday, June 4, 2024. More than a dozen legislators from Turkey’s pro-Kurdish party staged a demonstration in parliament on Tuesday to denounce the arrest and expulsion from office of a newly-elected mayor, Turkish media reported. Boards read in Turkish: “Municipalities are ours. We will not allow extortion”. (Mustafa Istemi/Dia Photo via AP)

Pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Equality and Democracy Party, or DEM, lawmakers hold boards during a protest at the parliament in Ankara, Tuesday, June 4, 2024. More than a dozen legislators from Turkey’s pro-Kurdish party staged a demonstration in parliament on Tuesday to denounce the arrest and expulsion from office of a newly-elected mayor, Turkish media reported. Boards read in Turkish: “Municipalities are ours. We will not allow extortion”. (Mustafa Istemi/Dia Photo via AP)

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ANKARA, Turkey (AP) — More than a dozen legislators from Turkey’s pro-Kurdish party staged a demonstration in parliament on Tuesday to denounce the arrest and expulsion from office of a newly elected mayor, Turkish media reported.

On Monday, authorities detained Mehmet Siddik Akis, mayor of Hakkari province, over alleged links to Kurdish militants and replaced him with the province’s state-appointed governor. Akis, a member of the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Equality and Democracy Party, or DEM, had been elected in March.

The DEM, the third largest party in Turkey’s parliament, denies allegations of links to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, which is listed as a terror organization by Turkey, the United States and the European Union.

In the past, the government of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has similarly expelled numerous elected pro-Kurdish mayors over alleged connections to Kurdish militants and replaced them with government-appointed trustees.

DEM legislators, holding placards in support of Akis, gathered around the Turkish Grand National Assembly’s rostrum to denounce the mayor’s ouster, the Sozcu news channel reported. Dozens of people also staged a demonstration outside the Hakkari town hall, defying a ban on protests.

Ozgur Ozel, the leader of Turkey’s main opposition party, also criticized Akis’ expulsion as an act against the “will of the people of Hakkari.”

The DEM this year won key municipalities in Turkey’s mainly Kurdish-populated southeast.

Pro-Kurdish lawmakers stage protest in Turkey's parliament to denounce the ouster of a new mayor

More than a dozen legislators from Turkey’s pro-Kurdish party have staged a demonstration in parliament to denounce the arrest and expulsion from office of a newly elected mayor

ANKARA, Turkey — More than a dozen legislators from Turkey’s pro-Kurdish party staged a demonstration in parliament on Tuesday to denounce the arrest and expulsion from office of a newly elected mayor, Turkish media reported.

On Monday, authorities detained Mehmet Siddik Akis, mayor of Hakkari province, over alleged links to Kurdish militants and replaced him with the province’s state-appointed governor. Akis, a member of the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Equality and Democracy Party, or DEM, had been elected in March.

The DEM, the third largest party in Turkey’s parliament, denies allegations of links to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, which is listed as a terror organization by Turkey, the United States and the European Union.

In the past, the government of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has similarly expelled numerous elected pro-Kurdish mayors over alleged connections to Kurdish militants and replaced them with government-appointed trustees.

DEM legislators, holding placards in support of Akis, gathered around the Turkish Grand National Assembly’s rostrum to denounce the mayor’s ouster, the Sozcu news channel reported. Dozens of people also staged a demonstration outside the Hakkari town hall, defying a ban on protests.

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Ozgur Ozel, the leader of Turkey’s main opposition party, also criticized Akis’ expulsion as an act against the “will of the people of Hakkari.”

The DEM this year won key municipalities in Turkey’s mainly Kurdish-populated southeast.