Sales Demo Environments: The Definitive Guide

Everyone wants to speed up the process of converting prospects. Well, you're in the right place! The main purpose of any sales demo environment is to help prospects move through the sales process as quickly and efficiently as possible.

Over the years we've conducted thousands of sales demos. We've tried everything. Some tools weren't great, others absolutely blew our numbers out the park! In this article we want to share these tools with you, so you can get set up quickly with minimal hassle.

Before we jump into it, let's go over what exactly a sales demo environment is.

Essentially, it's a collection of tools that when combined in the right way, maximizes the rate at which we convert business prospects to customers. The combination of sales demo tools can be represented as a funnel or pipeline:

Step 1: Book meetings with your prospects

Previously, booking a meeting was a clunky process of emailing back and forth with potential times.

These days we have much more efficient tools for scheduling sales calls. 

The first step in setting up your sales demo environment is to implement a booking system.

We love Calendly.

Calendly is easy for your prospect to use as it allows them to see when your calendar has openings that fit with their schedule without revealing any of your sensitive calendar information.

Use an automated calendar booking system like Calendly for a seamless sales demo booking experience.

Step 2: Video calls with your prospects

Without question, Zoom is the industry leader in virtual meeting places, having risen to prominence during the COVID pandemic.

From virtual backgrounds to camera optimizations, Zoom is the #1 choice for sales demo environments.

So why Zoom?

There is no platform that has been as widely adopted as this one. This means that there is a strong chance that your prospect is already familiar with using Zoom to communicate.

Staying with our theme of making the customer experience as easy as possible, why reinvent the wheel?

We recommend Zoom be your go-to for hosting your sales calls.

Step 3: Customer Relationship Management (CRM)

Now that you have prospects booking calls and zoom meetings in place, it’s time to manage your leads and organize them into a place you can quickly and easily stay on top of things.

Again, keeping with our theme of ease-of-use, it’s important that the way you get organized is also easy.

Enter: HubSpot CRM

Hubspot boasts more than 12,000 companies who use their platform every day.

HubSpot allows you to organize your leads with minimal effort. 

Without turning this article into a “how to use hubspot” article, which there are plenty of, I’d encourage you to sign up and give it a try - once you get setup with a CRM you’ll never look back!

Step 4: Automated follow up

If you’re not following up with your sales prospects after the initial sales call, you’re leaving a ton of money on the table. 

There are a few ways to automate your follow up that we’re going to mention here.

First, Calendly. In your meeting settings, you have the option to include a follow up email after every call.

I strongly recommend you doing this as it’s an additional touch point for your leads and makes it easier for them to quickly reach you if they have additional questions.

Secondly, use your HubSpot CRM to schedule consistent follow up tasks.

I recommend following up a couple of days after the initial call to answer any questions and to keep your call top-of-mind and again weekly until the deal is won or lost.

Bonus Sales Tips

Now that you have a super tight sales demo environment, I wanted to pass on a few best practices in sales that I’ve learned over the years.

Roll Call

At the beginning of the call, find a comfortable way to ask “Before we get started, are you the one who will be making the purchase decision if this is a fit?”, if not ask to invite them and reschedule. 

Sometimes you’ll find a lower level person will be assigned to take your demo call. This is okay, but it’s best to know that from the start. That way you can ask questions like “Is there more detail other people on the team need to know about X before we move along?”

Hard Stops

“By the way, just wanted to make sure I’m respectful of your time, do you have a hard stop coming up? I have 30 minutes slotted for this call”

If they say they do, then say something like “No problem, we don’t need to max-out the entire time together. I’ll try to get you off the call at least a few minutes early so you don’t have to go back to back with your next meeting”.‍

Stick to Your Plan

If you’ve been doing sales demos for a while, you’ll find that you fall into a rhythm of how they go. You make small tweaks call after call that make the process smoother. 

Stick to your process.

Sometimes when I get on a call the other party will be very assertive and asking lots of questions up front that throw me off. I like to give them a brief answer but emphasize that I’m going to show them something that will answer all these questions in a way that makes sense during the call.

Don’t let yourself get steamrolled on a sales demo. Nobody likes being pushed, neither the seller nor the prospect. Stick to your plan.

Conclusion

There are tons of other tools that can be used as part of your sales demo environment. There may also be tools specific to your industry or niche that you want to use, so make sure to hunt those down.

Take it from us though; the combination of Calendly, Zoom, and HubSpot form a very powerful core for your sales demo environment, and one that can be built upon easily via plugins and APIs.

Finally, remember to follow up and be consistent in your sales efforts and you will see results. Happy selling!