For B2B SaaS businesses, the product demo is a moment of truth. Demos are the proving grounds, where prospective customers form initial impressions about product offerings and begin to solidify software buying decisions. The stakes are high for product demos. And yet, many small-scale SaaS businesses take a surprisingly laid-back approach to how they showcase their solutions. For countless reasons, demos often just…kinda…happen. Bad idea.
At Lock 8 Partners, we participate in a lot of product demos, either in collaboration with our portfolio companies or while performing due diligence of businesses for potential investment. We’ve observed that even just a bit of intention and rigor can help businesses increase the impact and lower the administrative burden of doing demos. Below is a short list of Do’s & Don’ts to help small-scale SaaS businesses elevate their demo game, without requiring a ton of resources.
- DO: Frame it up // DON’T: Give them what they want
Too many product demos start with the presenter immediately logging into the solution. This happens because that’s exactly what many prospects / audiences want: “I don’t want to see any slides, just show me the product!” But don’t fall into this common trap. Instead, use a few invaluable minutes to take control of the session, frame up the business problem your software addresses, and provide a roadmap for the product journey the group is about to experience together. We like this framework from Geoffrey Moore as a short, simple way to do that, but many approaches work. If you just start clicking around, though, you’ve already lost their attention; and you will likely spend the rest of the session reacting to questions that could have been cogently addressed up-front. This also often takes you to the dreaded “YouCan” territory: “You can do this with the software; you can do this and this and this.” Far better to tell a compelling story about the business problem you solve than to rattle off a laundry list of features.
- DO: Keep demo environments current // DON’T: Show old (or too new) stuff
Make sure the demo environment is updated and in sync with the most recent staging and production versions of your solution, so that it always reflects the most recent capabilities. While this seems obvious, it bears mentioning. Possibly even more obvious, make sure those features are included in the demo script. Sales execs can innocently forget to showcase the newest capabilities, especially if they're not sure how they into their tried-and-true talk track. On the other end of the spectrum, presenters are too frequently forced to admit that the demo is a couple versions / releases behind the offering that top clients are currently using. The opposite is also true, where presenters wax poetic about forthcoming features that can’t currently be shown in a demo. There may be some circumstances where slideware / Figma mock-ups get buyers on-board, but small-scale B2B SaaS businesses don’t tend to live in that world.
- DO: Use fresh, relevant data // DON’T: Get creative!
Ensure demo data is up to date, realistic, and easy to follow. If workflows involve dates, don’t show expired or irrelevant ones. Data should be clean, consistent, and reflect content that resonates with the audience. For some reason, businesses tend to miss the mark here in a couple ways. Some companies use dummy-data that is clearly out of date or shockingly incomplete: “You could have 56 data fields for this record, but we haven’t filled-in any fields in the demo tenant.” Also ensure that graphs / analytics / dashboards reflect data that makes sense – avoid showing a Budget of $100 and an Actual / Variance of $1B. Yet another misstep is getting creative or having fun with dummy user data. I can’t count the number of demos where the System Admin persona is someone named Taylor Swift or the Exec User is Bruce Springsteen (get it, “The Boss?”). B2B software solves serious business problems. Don’t get silly here.
- DO: Separate-out demo versus PoC / trial versus production sites // DON’T: Expect one environment to serve all needs
Keep environments separate to avoid confusion about the unique purpose of each. This will ensure that neither unwanted trial clutter nor unlawful / confidential data accumulate in the demo site. Best practice is to go further and provide each sales / account manager with their own demo environment. This will avoid your salespeople having to make the dreaded admission, “I had this all personalized for this meeting with you, but someone’s been messing around with my demo tenant.” Most importantly, take pains to avoid polluting your demo environment with actual client data. Once in a while, I still get shocked by a business proudly demoing the tenant of a close customer, from which they’ve received permission to share. Just…don’t.
- DO: Showcase multiple personas // DON’T: Assume audiences understand Sys Admin rights
It’s tempting to conduct a demo in the persona of the highest-level System Administrator. After all, the Sys Admin has the most privileges (and, therefore, the most tabs / widgets / features visible in a demo). Demo presenters will often advise, “I’m seeing all the capabilities because I’m logged in as a Sys Admin; consultants will only see X, project managers will see Y, and execs will see Z. That’s too confusing for most people to process, especially since they are not intimately familiar with the solution being demoed. Audience members need to see exactly how the offering will solve their specific problem; so be very clear about showing the varied user persona experiences. Likewise, if you have different subscription levels (e.g. Good / Better / Best or Bronze / Silver, Gold) or access rights, be sure to switch between them. Don’t just show the highest level offering and then later withhold those capabilities once contract conversations start (aka bait-and-switching).
- DO: Bookmark key screens & flows // DON’T ask prospects to follow the click-storm
It is well worth investing time in advance to set up shortcuts to your highest-impact views. This avoids having to wait for pages to load in case there's any lag time. It also avoids bludgeoning audience-members with dozens of clicks to set-up the most compelling use-cases (which are also often also the most complicated). Again, it pays to reduce demo friction by pre-configuring integrations, notifications, AI prompts and dashboards so they work live. Remove any broken links or half-configured features that might cause disruption. What is NOT an option is to avoid showing your best capabilities because they are overly complex or because they are experienced on a different form-factor than a web-browser.
- DO: Maintain a demo reset kit // DON’T Go back-to-back
Establish a simple reset checklist to enable demo-leaders to quickly refresh the demo environment. Likewise, set clear expectations via training for the steps and frequency for resetting the demo environment. This will ensure that data and workflows are always clean for the next presentation. Without these guardrails, sales people and account managers can get booked back-to-back on meetings; this leads to them leaving a demo and simply “leaving the keys in the car with the motor running.” Set policies / practices that build in even 5-10 minutes for a demo leader to do an after-action clean-up following each demo presentation.
- DO: Tell a story // DON’T: Fall into the “YouCan” Trap
To show your offering in its best light, explain how it will help the audience’s business. Tell this story through one (or more) of only three main plot lines, all of which map back to creating value: (a) generating more revenue, (b) operating more efficiently (managing expenses), or (c) reducing risk. Do take control of the session; arrive with a plan that validates and leverages learnings from pre-demo discovery work. No matter what, avoid just showing a laundry list of things users can do in the software. When the demo repeats the phrase “YouCan” over and over, it’s a bad sign. This generally means that the offering isn’t focused on solving real problems. Always remember: just because you can do something, doesn’t mean you should.
