The modern technical sales team is busy. Solution consultants (SCs) are spending their time building and delivering custom demo content to showcase the value of your solution. Today, the typical demo request requires pulling in a technical resources for a demo overview that often follows a standard talk track and click path.
Oftentimes, the prospects requesting these initial demos are not fully qualified and are “just browsing” or self-educating themselves on a new product or industry. The 30-minutes an SC spends delivering a demo to a largely unqualified prospect is 30-minutes that are taken away from a higher value initiative such as building a proof-of-value for a high intent customer.
Modern buyers at the earliest stages of the sales funnel expect to see your product first hand and don’t want to wait around to get qualified in (or out!). This changing buyer dynamic has led to “demo overload” where technical sellers can’t meet this rising demand for product demos. Scaling your presales organization to meet this new buyer demand is an imperative in today’s selling environment.
Scale or Fail
Growing your technical sales capacity is essential to keep up with increased buyer requests to get hands-on with the product. The AE to SC ratio is rising as organizations bring on more sellers and demand more of existing technical sellers. Technical sellers are stretched thin with demos, proof of concepts, and general technical enablement. SCs are a valuable asset that must be effectively utilized to avoid wasted time and overall burnout.
Easy enough, just bring on more SCs, right? Much easier said than done. Increasing SC headcount to bring on more technical sellers is often not an option for organizations operating on a tight budgets. How do you balance the demand for product demos from early stage prospects with the time required from your sales organization? Additionally, strong technical resources are hard to come by and training new SCs can be a time intensive (and expensive!) endeavour.
Building up a technical sales organization is imperative to keep up with the increased need for domain experts and product specialists. The modern software buyer is highly educated and has already done the legwork needed to understand the basics of software solutions. They don’t want to listen to marketing talk or read sales case studies, they want to see the value of the product. Understanding this evolving buyer landscape, vendors need to scale operations and change existing roles.
Meeting Changing Buyer Demands
To better understand the evolving buyer mentality, let’s evaluate the new B2B software buyer landscape. Over 45% of B2B technology buyers today are 25-34 years olds, making them the single largest demographic in this space (TrustRadius). This changing workforce comes with changing demands from these millennial buyers. They expect results – quickly.
Raised in a technology-driven world where information is available at the click of a button, millennials don’t like to waste time. This need for instant gratification translates to the B2B software buying mindset as well. This group values independence in the decision making process. They do not like being told what to do or given timelines on how to do it. These new buyers want to operate as independently as possible.
This new buyer mentality has created a real gap. Modern software buyers don’t want to wait around and waste time and vendor sales teams are hard-pressed to meet the rising demand leading to an increasing delta between buyers and seller. Bridging this gap is crucial to stay competitive and meet new buyer requests.
What is an Interactive Product Tour?
Interactive product tours can prove to be effective and engaging pieces of presales content if used correctly. These tours are intended to give users a high-level, but hands-on, product experience without needing to engage a sales rep or SC. Technical sales teams are busy and buyers want to explore the product at the earliest stages of the buying cycle. The product tour can be the answer to immediately meet this need and provide leads with the engaging overview experience they are looking for.
A product tour puts prospects in the driver’s seat. The product tour showcases basic feature functionality (without getting into detailed specifics of the platform) to quickly convey value of your offering. The interactive tour helps prospects quickly discover everything they need to know in a guided experience to drive adoption and uncover value.
Seeing is believing when it comes to enterprise software and a product tour is a show, not tell, experience. Traditionally, the product tour consists of a technical seller getting in front of a prospect (in person or virtually) to conduct the standard overview. The self-guided, interactive product tour flips that dynamic upside down. The buyer now has full control over their initial product experience and can explore the walkthrough on their own time at their convenience.
The Instant Call to Action
The Product Tour has a special value proposition for early stage leads. Prospects don’t need to commit to a meeting or full trial before seeing the solution. The instant tour reduces the time to value to enable a prospect to quickly visualize real product functionality.
The call to action (CTA) is a key element on a marketing site or email campaign that prompts a prospect to take the next steps and drive the deal cycle forward. The CTA helps point a user to the next steps in the funnel that will eventually convert to a closed deal. While there can be multiple CTAs on a single page, the CTA screen real estate is valuable and the language must be carefully positioned to maximize return.
Typically in B2B sales, common CTAs such as “Start a Trial” or “Book a Demo” force waiting, and therefor inaction, from the buyer. This holding period is dangerous as the hours and days after a lead clicks on the button, your value proposition is no longer top of mind. The immediate overview demonstration “scratches the itch” to engage with a product without needing to roll out a full POC or product trial all while clearly articulating product value.
The instant CTA gives buyers the choice that does not exist when putting time on a calendar or waiting to hear back from an Account Executive. It reduces the friction points that are typically associated with scheduling and qualification to give prospects the flexibility to explore on their own while freeing up the technical sales team to focus on higher impact initiatives.
What the Interactive Product Tour is Not
The interactive product tour is another tool in the technical seller’s toolkit. It is not intended to supplement, not replace, the existing incumbent sales motions (trials, sales-led demos, proof-of-concepts). The product tour is a way to quickly provide product value without needing to engage technical sellers. However, as the lead progresses down the sales funnel, the technical seller plays a larger and larger role to close the deal.
A product-led motion can be put in place to meet buyers where they are most comfortable. If a prospect wants to talk to sales reps and is more comfortable with a traditional enterprise selling motion, great! If a prospect wants to explore and learn on their own, empower them! Modern buyers want choices when evaluating software and a product tour provides a great option to broaden the tradition sales collateral scope.
Lastly, an interactive product tour needs to be engaging. It is a show, not tell, user experience. Current solutions like static video overviews or slide decks show a user the value of a solution but do not give the prospect the first-hand experience needed to embrace the solution and understand the value. These experiences need to be hands-on and exciting to help a user want to move forward in the sales motion.
Grow the Team without Increasing Headcount
Delivering a great product demo is certainly in the job description for any SC. A product demo is an experience to dive into customer problems and show how a solution is uniquely positioned to solve those problems. This ability to build story lines and quickly adapt to customer requests and challenges requires on-the-fly problem solving skills and a comfort with uncertainly. At the end of the day, SCs are problem solvers. They take inputs (customer pain points), consider the constraints (use cases and system functionality), and output a solution (a demonstration of working product functionality). This ability to rapidly problem solve is what draws technically-minded individuals to the SC profession.
SCs are valuable assets to any sales organization and can be hard to come by. Wasting SC time on low value demos and product overviews can lead to poor utilization and overall SC burnout. Product tours expand your coverage to give sales organizations the ability to focus technical sellers on high value initiatives rather than generic demo overviews. Interactive product tours give your prospects the ability to get hands on with a solution without needing to engage sales. This expanded reach gives you the ability to grow your sales team without bringing on new employees and increasing sales headcount.
Closing
Building a streamlined sales process is the goal of every modern sales organization. Resource constraints and a changing buyer mindset have led vendors to explore new methods to expand their sales reach while maintaining a consistent headcount. The interactive product tour provides a great, scalable way to get prospects in front of working product functionality without needing to engage valuable technical sales resources and still giving prospective buyers a great early product experience.
