You’ve completed the development stage of your software. Congratulations! Unfortunately, I have some news for you… The hard work is not complete. Now you need to share the benefits of your product or features with an audience (big or small). The goal is to catch enough of their attention that they’ll be willing to actually make the leap to implement your product into their lives. And the best way to do that is through your software demo. Don’t worry- we’re a software company too, and we’ll share everything we’ve learned along the way. Here are our top software demo tips, just for small businesses
Your demo is how you’ll communicate to your end user what your software does, how it’s used, and how it will benefit their lives. Now keep in mind, that last one is actually first, and most important.
Ultimately, adopting a new software requires your end user to in some way change how they are currently doing something. Motivating your customer to change requires showing an impactful long term benefit to that change.
Here are four quick tips to motivate your audience with a successful software demo:
1) Start With the Benefit
Audiences have seriously short attention spans. If you don’t grab your user’s attention in the first 30 seconds, you’ve lost them. That means you have to save the “how” for later and get right to what your product can do for them. Only after they hear the benefit can your end user muster up the interest to care how to go about using the product.
Once your audience is interested in the benefit, their next question will be how easy that benefit will be to attain. Does the software involve a steep learning curve? Will they be able to experience the benefit immediately? The number one, most important software demo tip is to emphasize how easy it is to get started. Every aspect of your demo should focus on the friendliest, easiest ways for your customer to achieve their desired results.
2) Just the Basics
Your software probably does a lot of cool stuff. It probably includes several primary features that every customer will use, and several more secondary features that different customers may or not find useful for their needs.
Remember that your demo is first and foremost a sales piece. It’s not meant to be a comprehensive manual for how to use the software, so you don’t need to include every single feature of your software into the demo. Stick to the most exciting and accessible elements that will be easiest for your most basic user to implement.
3) Peek Behind the Curtain
It’s one of the most powerful rules of marketing—people love relationships. Customers love to see the people behind the product, and hear the story of how a product came to be.
Does your product have a compelling story? Maybe you and a few of your co-developers have been friends since kindergarten. Maybe your team is just really passionate and loves to have a good time. Or maybe you overcame some unique challenges to bring this particular product to life.
For non-developers, software demos can quickly feel dry and dense. So add a quick and compelling peek into the behind the scenes to break up the more technical pieces of your demo. While it’s of course not the focus of your presentation, adding this human story will make your product stand out from its competitors.
4) Stay Entertaining
Just because you’re talking about software, doesn’t mean you need to drone on like Bueller’s least favorite teacher. In fact, just the opposite is true. The more cut and dry (boring!) your software and its benefits are, the more you need to liven up your demo with as many entertaining elements as possible.
Best demo software tip or trick for this? Choose a presenter or voice over professional with a casual and fun tone. Ideally, you should think about the target customer, and choose a presenter who sounds like he or she could be that person’s best friend.
Keep your writing casual and colloquial. Cut down the jargon as much as possible. And if you have to use language that won’t be commonly understood by every end user, take the time to acknowledge and explain it.
Finally, give your audience something fun to look at! Use select cuts to animations or talking heads to break up the visuals from just focusing on the software.
Your software demo doesn’t have to be dry and boring. By getting to the point quickly, sticking with the basics, and letting a lively presenter tell a compelling story, you’ll retain your audience’s interest and quickly convert prospects to software sales.
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