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According to a new study from Reprise, presales teams spend a lot of time with demos — but not necessarily in the most efficient ways. Instead of meeting with high-value prospects who require their technical expertise, all too often, SE resources are allocated in the wrong places.
Fortunately, many of the issues SEs reported are fixable problems. Addressing them will make a major difference in your team’s ability to win more deals. Why? Product tours are the top resource that buyers consult as they evaluate your product. In addition, live sales demos and interactive demo leave-behinds can help buyers understand how your product works to solve their own use cases and pain points.
Let’s explore some of SEs’ biggest frustrations detailed in the 2024 Presales Landscape Report, alongside some pro tips on how to solve these problems. Following these steps, you can collaborate better with AEs, and speed up your sales cycles in the process.
Demoing to unqualified prospects
Frequent demos can be a good thing, but unfortunately SEs spend too much time delivering demos to unqualified prospects. Nearly a quarter (23%) of SEs said that more than half of their weekly demos are unqualified. On the lower end, 40% of SEs said a quarter of their weekly demos were delivered to unqualified prospects. Either way, SEs should be used strategically, presenting to a higher percentage of prequalified prospects.
Solving the problem: According to Gartner, the modern B2B buyer journey is not linear; 27% of buyers are researching independently online. Using demos earlier in the sales cycle, such as on a product page or homepage, can help get customers to the information they need when they need it — prequalifying themselves before they talk to sales. As a bonus, a product tour can provide valuable data on where the prospect spent the most time exploring certain features of your product — allowing you to tailor the first call to their specific interests.
Cleaning and maintaining demo environments
On the high end, SEs reported spending a whopping 21 days per year cleaning and maintaining demo environments. When it comes to demo environment maintenance, 79% spend more than an hour per week, while 16% spend between 3-10 hours. Whether this demo environment is a production environment or a live application, SEs often serve as the gatekeepers for keeping it clean and trustworthy. The problem is, these environments are expensive to maintain and have a high risk of failure — whether that involves an application crash, slowdown, or unintentionally exposing private data.
Solving the problem: Sixty-six percent of SEs said the most important capability in a trusted demo environment is stability and reliability. This is particularly important in enterprise environments with extensive security, privacy, and compliance obligations. Select a demo environment that is completely separate from your product’s backend. This will enable your team to make the changes they need quickly, and avoid the impacts of unexpected product updates or changes. In addition, choose an enterprise-grade demo platform with easy anonymization capabilities, which follows stringent SOC 2 compliance standards.
Preparing custom demos for every meeting
Many SEs reported spending a lot of time preparing custom demos for every meeting. Some SEs took the time to fill in custom responses about this issue, such as: “Non-scripted demos average 7-10 hours of prep. Scripted demos typically require 40+ hours of prep,” and “Varies, the prepared demos take 1-3 hours. Sometimes we tailor a demo for a specific qualified client — and this can take days.”
Solving the problem: While personalization is critical to the demo process, there’s no need to reinvent the wheel for every single prospect. Building a demo library in advance can save a lot of time, and enable AEs to customize their own demos. A demo library can be organized by vertical, pain point, or sales plays in a playbook, depending on what’s most effective for your team. From there, AEs can use these templates and handle the last mile of personalization with low-code or no-code demo editing tools.
The last-minute demo scramble
Scrambling to prepare for prospect meetings is an all-too-real issue for SEs: 39% reported that AEs are not sharing information from discovery soon enough, and 14% said they aren’t being given adequate notice to prepare for calls with prospects.
Solving the problem: Presales leaders: encourage your SEs to speak openly and honestly about fixable frustrations like these. SEs should feel empowered to tell AEs when they’re not being given enough time to prepare. If the problem persists, sales leaders may need to take a more active role in helping AEs manage time effectively. A demo library can come in handy to solve this problem, as well. If a demo must happen last-minute, it’s far easier to customize a template than to build an entire demo from scratch.
Inadequate information from discovery
Related to the last-minute scramble, 31% of SEs said that getting adequate time and information to prepare for a technical demo would improve their collaboration with sales. Fortunately, there are many ways to address this issue.
Solving the problem: Forty percent of SEs said they’d like to collaborate with sales on discovery questions before the first call. This initial collaboration could lead to better outcomes, giving SEs the information they need to prepare for more technical demos later in the sales cycle. In addition, the analytics your team gets from a product tour could provide key insights into a prospect’s interests. These can help SEs focus and tailor the demo toward features where the prospect spent the most time exploring independently.
The Reprise 2024 Presales Landscape report goes into much more detail about strategies to increase presales efficiency and effectiveness — including best practices for creating and using interactive demos throughout the sales cycle. Thinking through your team’s challenges and addressing them proactively can not only help improve productivity and morale, but also help you win more deals.
Get the Report
According to a new study from Reprise, presales teams spend a lot of time with demos — but not necessarily in the most efficient ways. Instead of meeting with high-value prospects who require their technical expertise, all too often, SE resources are allocated in the wrong places.
Fortunately, many of the issues SEs reported are fixable problems. Addressing them will make a major difference in your team’s ability to win more deals. Why? Product tours are the top resource that buyers consult as they evaluate your product. In addition, live sales demos and interactive demo leave-behinds can help buyers understand how your product works to solve their own use cases and pain points.
Let’s explore some of SEs’ biggest frustrations detailed in the 2024 Presales Landscape Report, alongside some pro tips on how to solve these problems. Following these steps, you can collaborate better with AEs, and speed up your sales cycles in the process.
Demoing to unqualified prospects
Frequent demos can be a good thing, but unfortunately SEs spend too much time delivering demos to unqualified prospects. Nearly a quarter (23%) of SEs said that more than half of their weekly demos are unqualified. On the lower end, 40% of SEs said a quarter of their weekly demos were delivered to unqualified prospects. Either way, SEs should be used strategically, presenting to a higher percentage of prequalified prospects.
Solving the problem: According to Gartner, the modern B2B buyer journey is not linear; 27% of buyers are researching independently online. Using demos earlier in the sales cycle, such as on a product page or homepage, can help get customers to the information they need when they need it — prequalifying themselves before they talk to sales. As a bonus, a product tour can provide valuable data on where the prospect spent the most time exploring certain features of your product — allowing you to tailor the first call to their specific interests.
Cleaning and maintaining demo environments
On the high end, SEs reported spending a whopping 21 days per year cleaning and maintaining demo environments. When it comes to demo environment maintenance, 79% spend more than an hour per week, while 16% spend between 3-10 hours. Whether this demo environment is a production environment or a live application, SEs often serve as the gatekeepers for keeping it clean and trustworthy. The problem is, these environments are expensive to maintain and have a high risk of failure — whether that involves an application crash, slowdown, or unintentionally exposing private data.
Solving the problem: Sixty-six percent of SEs said the most important capability in a trusted demo environment is stability and reliability. This is particularly important in enterprise environments with extensive security, privacy, and compliance obligations. Select a demo environment that is completely separate from your product’s backend. This will enable your team to make the changes they need quickly, and avoid the impacts of unexpected product updates or changes. In addition, choose an enterprise-grade demo platform with easy anonymization capabilities, which follows stringent SOC 2 compliance standards.
Preparing custom demos for every meeting
Many SEs reported spending a lot of time preparing custom demos for every meeting. Some SEs took the time to fill in custom responses about this issue, such as: “Non-scripted demos average 7-10 hours of prep. Scripted demos typically require 40+ hours of prep,” and “Varies, the prepared demos take 1-3 hours. Sometimes we tailor a demo for a specific qualified client — and this can take days.”
Solving the problem: While personalization is critical to the demo process, there’s no need to reinvent the wheel for every single prospect. Building a demo library in advance can save a lot of time, and enable AEs to customize their own demos. A demo library can be organized by vertical, pain point, or sales plays in a playbook, depending on what’s most effective for your team. From there, AEs can use these templates and handle the last mile of personalization with low-code or no-code demo editing tools.
The last-minute demo scramble
Scrambling to prepare for prospect meetings is an all-too-real issue for SEs: 39% reported that AEs are not sharing information from discovery soon enough, and 14% said they aren’t being given adequate notice to prepare for calls with prospects.
Solving the problem: Presales leaders: encourage your SEs to speak openly and honestly about fixable frustrations like these. SEs should feel empowered to tell AEs when they’re not being given enough time to prepare. If the problem persists, sales leaders may need to take a more active role in helping AEs manage time effectively. A demo library can come in handy to solve this problem, as well. If a demo must happen last-minute, it’s far easier to customize a template than to build an entire demo from scratch.
Inadequate information from discovery
Related to the last-minute scramble, 31% of SEs said that getting adequate time and information to prepare for a technical demo would improve their collaboration with sales. Fortunately, there are many ways to address this issue.
Solving the problem: Forty percent of SEs said they’d like to collaborate with sales on discovery questions before the first call. This initial collaboration could lead to better outcomes, giving SEs the information they need to prepare for more technical demos later in the sales cycle. In addition, the analytics your team gets from a product tour could provide key insights into a prospect’s interests. These can help SEs focus and tailor the demo toward features where the prospect spent the most time exploring independently.
The Reprise 2024 Presales Landscape report goes into much more detail about strategies to increase presales efficiency and effectiveness — including best practices for creating and using interactive demos throughout the sales cycle. Thinking through your team’s challenges and addressing them proactively can not only help improve productivity and morale, but also help you win more deals.
Get the Report
According to a new study from Reprise, presales teams spend a lot of time with demos — but not necessarily in the most efficient ways. Instead of meeting with high-value prospects who require their technical expertise, all too often, SE resources are allocated in the wrong places.
Fortunately, many of the issues SEs reported are fixable problems. Addressing them will make a major difference in your team’s ability to win more deals. Why? Product tours are the top resource that buyers consult as they evaluate your product. In addition, live sales demos and interactive demo leave-behinds can help buyers understand how your product works to solve their own use cases and pain points.
Let’s explore some of SEs’ biggest frustrations detailed in the 2024 Presales Landscape Report, alongside some pro tips on how to solve these problems. Following these steps, you can collaborate better with AEs, and speed up your sales cycles in the process.
Demoing to unqualified prospects
Frequent demos can be a good thing, but unfortunately SEs spend too much time delivering demos to unqualified prospects. Nearly a quarter (23%) of SEs said that more than half of their weekly demos are unqualified. On the lower end, 40% of SEs said a quarter of their weekly demos were delivered to unqualified prospects. Either way, SEs should be used strategically, presenting to a higher percentage of prequalified prospects.
Solving the problem: According to Gartner, the modern B2B buyer journey is not linear; 27% of buyers are researching independently online. Using demos earlier in the sales cycle, such as on a product page or homepage, can help get customers to the information they need when they need it — prequalifying themselves before they talk to sales. As a bonus, a product tour can provide valuable data on where the prospect spent the most time exploring certain features of your product — allowing you to tailor the first call to their specific interests.
Cleaning and maintaining demo environments
On the high end, SEs reported spending a whopping 21 days per year cleaning and maintaining demo environments. When it comes to demo environment maintenance, 79% spend more than an hour per week, while 16% spend between 3-10 hours. Whether this demo environment is a production environment or a live application, SEs often serve as the gatekeepers for keeping it clean and trustworthy. The problem is, these environments are expensive to maintain and have a high risk of failure — whether that involves an application crash, slowdown, or unintentionally exposing private data.
Solving the problem: Sixty-six percent of SEs said the most important capability in a trusted demo environment is stability and reliability. This is particularly important in enterprise environments with extensive security, privacy, and compliance obligations. Select a demo environment that is completely separate from your product’s backend. This will enable your team to make the changes they need quickly, and avoid the impacts of unexpected product updates or changes. In addition, choose an enterprise-grade demo platform with easy anonymization capabilities, which follows stringent SOC 2 compliance standards.
Preparing custom demos for every meeting
Many SEs reported spending a lot of time preparing custom demos for every meeting. Some SEs took the time to fill in custom responses about this issue, such as: “Non-scripted demos average 7-10 hours of prep. Scripted demos typically require 40+ hours of prep,” and “Varies, the prepared demos take 1-3 hours. Sometimes we tailor a demo for a specific qualified client — and this can take days.”
Solving the problem: While personalization is critical to the demo process, there’s no need to reinvent the wheel for every single prospect. Building a demo library in advance can save a lot of time, and enable AEs to customize their own demos. A demo library can be organized by vertical, pain point, or sales plays in a playbook, depending on what’s most effective for your team. From there, AEs can use these templates and handle the last mile of personalization with low-code or no-code demo editing tools.
The last-minute demo scramble
Scrambling to prepare for prospect meetings is an all-too-real issue for SEs: 39% reported that AEs are not sharing information from discovery soon enough, and 14% said they aren’t being given adequate notice to prepare for calls with prospects.
Solving the problem: Presales leaders: encourage your SEs to speak openly and honestly about fixable frustrations like these. SEs should feel empowered to tell AEs when they’re not being given enough time to prepare. If the problem persists, sales leaders may need to take a more active role in helping AEs manage time effectively. A demo library can come in handy to solve this problem, as well. If a demo must happen last-minute, it’s far easier to customize a template than to build an entire demo from scratch.
Inadequate information from discovery
Related to the last-minute scramble, 31% of SEs said that getting adequate time and information to prepare for a technical demo would improve their collaboration with sales. Fortunately, there are many ways to address this issue.
Solving the problem: Forty percent of SEs said they’d like to collaborate with sales on discovery questions before the first call. This initial collaboration could lead to better outcomes, giving SEs the information they need to prepare for more technical demos later in the sales cycle. In addition, the analytics your team gets from a product tour could provide key insights into a prospect’s interests. These can help SEs focus and tailor the demo toward features where the prospect spent the most time exploring independently.
The Reprise 2024 Presales Landscape report goes into much more detail about strategies to increase presales efficiency and effectiveness — including best practices for creating and using interactive demos throughout the sales cycle. Thinking through your team’s challenges and addressing them proactively can not only help improve productivity and morale, but also help you win more deals.
