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How to Craft an Effective B2B Product Demo for Prospective Buyers

By Evan Lamolinara | 05/12/2019 | 9:55 AM | Categories: Current Affairs

DemoProduct demos are an invaluable tool for material handling sales reps. Defined as a demonstration of a material handling company's product, they help prospective buyers make smarter purchasing decisions by showing them exactly how a product works. Being that material handling buyers such as plant managers, facility manager, warehouse managers or distribution center manager are essentially recommenders or influencers on the decision, it often requires greater work to convert as you need to arm them with the best information possible to take to the president or board.

Wait Until the Time Is Right

Timing is of the essence when performing a product demo for a prospective buyer. If you showcase your material handling company's product too early during the sales cycle, you'll struggle to generate a sale because the buyer hasn't developed an interest for it yet. But if you perform a product demo too late during the sales cycle, the prospective buyer may have already chosen a different product to purchase. Therefore, you need to wait until the right time -- usually somewhere in the middle sages of the sales cycle -- to perform product demos for prospective buyers.

Consider Video-Based Product Demos

Depending if you are selling a conveyor system, forklift truck, robotics or even an AGV or AGC, you may be able to create videos demonstrating how your company's product works. According to a report by Wordstream, over half of all corporate executives prefer watching product videos than reading articles or other forms of text about products. Since our material handling industry is all about the movement of goods, it’s a great idea to show them how the product performs. Now of course, they will expect it to be working perfect in a demo setting, so also include how the product works in a customer case study setting. This will allow the warehouse or distribution center manager to actually ‘see’ how it is being used within a facility.

Customize Product Demos

You can still use a general template to create your material handling company's product demos, but it's important to customize product demos so that they are highly relevant to each prospective warehouse, manufacturing or distribution center customer. Before providing a product demo to a prospective buyer, customize it for the plant, facility or warehouse manager. You'll have to invest more time and resources to create customized product demos, but it will pay off in the form of increased sales for your material handling company.

Include Case Studies

While the focus of product demos is to show how a product works, you can use this opportunity to provide written and video case studies to prospective buyers. Either at the beginning or end of your product demo, for example, describe how other customers have experienced success using your conveyor, AGV, or crane. When prospective buyers see quantifiable benefits in the form of a case study, they'll feel more confident purchasing and using the product in their own business's operations.

Showing a Demo to More Prospects

Now that you’ve got this great demo in place along with written and video case studies, who else can you show it to? You might have been exhibiting at the ProMat show, so they had a chance to see your product demo along with your competition. You need something new to sell to.

SalesLeads Inc provides industrial project reports to the material handling industry. These are leads or opportunities our researchers find and track who are planning industrial construction, expansion, relocation, equipment modernization projects. You’ll be able to stay on top of current opportunities as we send alerts when a new industrial opportunity is found. This is so you can continuously fill your sales funnel with high quality leads where you will undoubtedly give a demo… so you can bring it to a close.

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The opinions expressed herein are those solely of the participants, and do not necessarily represent the views of Agile Business Media, LLC., its properties or its employees.

About Evan Lamolinara

Evan Lamolinara

Evan Lamolinara is president of SalesLeads, Inc., a company that has been around for over 60 years, generating high quality sales leads dedicated to the sales & marketing professionals in the industrial marketplace. Mr. Lamolinara, an entrepreneur and competitor, purchased the legacy company in 2014. Since then, he's redeveloped its core software delivery platform and grew the company over 400%. Evan graduated from Mount Union College with B.A. Business Management and honed his competitive skills as a 3-year letterman on the College football team.



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