The Four Types of Demo

For B2B software sales, there are four different types of demos. They are: 

  1. The Opening Demo: Early in the sales process, to show a single customer or team what you do and, hopefully, why your product is better. 
  2. The Trade Show Demo: Short demos to crowds, from different companies and with differing needs. The challenge is to be relevant when you don't know anything about them! 
  3. The VIP Demo: VIPs don't need to hear the whole story. But they do want to know why you are important in the big picture. No feature dumps here!
  4. The Closing Demo: You've finished the evaluation or the pilot program. Now it's time to unequivocally prove that they should buy your product, and soon!

These four demos each require a fundamentally different approach. For example, you wouldn't show the same demo to a CFO and a design engineer. Nor would you take same approach at a trade show, with 20 people from different companies watching, that you would when you do a closing demo for five evaluators you've been working with for 90 days. To explore each of these demos in more detail, click the links in the list above.