Today's software landscape is extremely competitive, with thousands of software products in any number of categories. Scott Brinker, VP of Platform Ecosystems at HubSpot, recently released a report that found there are over 10,000 solutions spread across 49 different categories in the Martech software space alone.
In order to stand out and provide a compelling demo experience that increases the chance of a sale, there is a new category of software products that are trying to make things easier — sales demo software — where new exciting tools are cropping up regularly and offering more and more options to sellers who are looking to beat out the competition.
In this article, we will dive in and explore 9 game-changing sales demo software solutions, providing not only a breakdown of who they are but, more importantly, what their competitive differentiators are and how they can help your sales teams ace more demos.
The most effective solution in the market when it comes to sales demo software, Testbox Convert enables buyers to test drive your software prior to buying. Your sales and marketing teams can spin up fully interactive sandboxes of your products in seconds and send those to leads or embed them on your website.
Testbox gives you the ability to run effective POCs without spending time and energy getting custom demo environments spun up.
Here are some of the standout features of TestBox:
PLG advocates argue that the best way to convert leads is to get them into a free trial to experience the product for themselves and arrive at that “aha” moment. But a free trial isn’t always the most ideal way for customers to experience your product and discover its features.
Tools that are heavily dependent on data and integrations to work are difficult to showcase in a free trial. If leads are just exploring, they may not be willing to connect critical company systems to the trial just to test things out.
This leaves leads with a trial experience that feels empty — and makes it more difficult to see how the product will work on a day-to-day basis.
TestBox preconfigures each trial with sample data and real use cases to overcome the empty free trial problem. When leads open a TestBox sandbox, it looks like they’ve been using it for months already. They can interact with features and view reports without ever having to add their own data or integrate with another system.
When AEs send TestBox sandboxes to leads, they get detailed reports on how leads are (or aren’t) interacting with the product sandbox. TestBox reports let you see which stakeholders have accessed your sandbox, how long they spent testing your software, and which features and use cases they were most interested in.
Drilling a little deeper, you can see exactly what features of your product each stakeholder tested, as well as a high-level report on which use cases have gotten the most engagement from that company.
AEs can use this report to create truly personalized follow-up communications. Send individual decision-makers emails with more information about the features they were most engaged with, or put a plan together for a follow-up call that goes in-depth on the features your lead cares about the most when making the purchasing decision.
Customers today are entirely focused on fast time to value and having a delightful buying experience, and they want the choice to self-serve or go through a rep-assisted motion. TestBox caters to these needs by allowing customers to dive straight into a fully functional proof of concept environment that takes you just seconds to create.
The result of providing a better customer experience is better results for your company. TestBox customers like Zendesk and Dixa are generating more deals, closing those deals faster, and seeing higher win rates than ever before; Dixa’s win rates have increased more than 300% since adopting TestBox sandboxes into their pre-sales process.
Want to learn more? Schedule a demo of TestBox Convert to see how it can help you increase your win rates by more than 300%!
Figma is a powerful web-based design tool that helps you create websites, proof of concepts, and much more. You can use it to create beautiful designs and prototypes without writing a single line of code.
Figma is a great way to demonstrate your product. You can easily create a prototype in Figma based on the use case or scenario your potential client is looking for, then present it on the sales demo. This allows the lead to see how your product will work without having to wait until they start a trial or purchase the software.
Loom is a video messaging tool that helps you get your message across through instantly shareable videos. With Loom, you can record your camera, microphone, and desktop simultaneously. Your video is then instantly available to whoever you share it with.
When used in a sales demo scenario, Loom can be particularly effective as you are able to record a demo of you walking through your product, save it, and then share it with your prospects. The ease of use of Loom, coupled with the easy sharing functionality makes it an effective sales demo tool, particularly for pre-sales or post-demo follow-ups.
If you are looking for something more creative from a sales demo software perspective, then Powtoon might be for you. With Powtoon, you can create engaging, animated videos with a professional look with very little effort required.
Instead of an option for the same sales demo that the customer is used to, with Powtoon you could create a custom animation that speaks to your customer's specific use case, giving them a sales demo experience that is sure to catch their attention and help you stand out.
Walnut is interactive demo software that allows you to create guided tours of your product. You create these tours by taking screenshots of your product using a browser plugin, then knit them together with Walnut's tools to create clickable, guided walkthroughs.
Your team can make a single walkthrough to share with all leads, or if you have the time, you can create personalized walkthroughs to share with individual leads based on the features and functionality they care most about.
Related Reading: The Best Walnut Alternatives and Competitors
Saleo lets AEs and SEs inject custom data into a UI overlay of their demo environments, allowing you to customize your live demos for leads based on their industries or verticals without impacting the actual data in the core demo environment.
Sales reps simply use Saleo's browser extension to either create custom data for an upcoming demo or to select from a preexisting set of data created previously in Saleo, then all of that data will display while they're demoing to the lead, creating a more customized experience for leads.
Related Reading: Saleo vs. TestBox
Livestorm is a tool that sales teams can use to host collaborative virtual meetings. Unlike traditional web conferencing tools like Zoom, Livestorm provides far more functionality for virtual meetings — and virtual demos.
Livestorm lets you customize the design of your room and background, easily create breakout sessions, collaborate on whiteboards, host polls, include calls-to-action, accept upvotes on questions, and show a question you're answering on the screen while you're answering it. These features can be really helpful if you're demoing to a large group of individuals.
Storylane is a no-code product tour builder that lets you create interactive guided walkthroughs for prospects. While you could use these tours during your demo, Storylane tours are more often helpful as a leave-behind to give leads an opportunity to explore your product in more detail after the demo call.
Storylane also gives teams the ability to collaborate on a product tour, so your AEs and sales engineers could create the tour together in order to create a more robust sales demo.
RemoteHQ is another interesting option when it comes to sales demo software, particularly their Embed product that allows sales reps to co-browse with prospects. Instead of doing all of the clicking through your product yourself, you can give leads control to select the things on your screen that they're most interested in checking out.
RemoteHQ could be particularly helpful for follow-up demo calls after a lead has started a free trial. If they run into any issues during the trial, you could share control of the screen so they could easily show you what issues they're having and you can explain or fix the issue right there in the meeting with them to remove a potential barrier to purchase.
Each of the nine sales demo tools highlighted in this article has its own strengths and weaknesses: Create click-through product tours with Walnut or Storylane, send personalized video demos with Loom, present a demo with custom data injected with Saleo, or give leads their own demo playground to explore with TestBox.
Sales teams should carefully evaluate the different options available and choose the software that best fits their needs and goals, keeping in mind that while these tools can enhance the sales process, many have limitations and should be used in conjunction with other sales tactics.
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Oh and did we mention it’s free? Because it is.
