Demo automation solutions are used in presales processes to automate the creation of product demonstrations. It also enables prospects to get an early product experience through a customized and personalized demo. These solutions educate the prospect early in the process by illustrating a product’s value and highlighting its capabilities. They save presales teams valuable time developing and customizing demos for specific personas or industries. Demo automation solutions have multiple use cases, including interactive product tours, guided demos, and live demonstrations.
These solutions can be leveraged by multiple teams, such as presales teams, sales reps, and product marketers, to educate the prospect on the product benefits and aid in qualifying the prospect. Products in this category provide engagement analytics, such as views and shares, to gain insights into what demos are most successful and what aspects of the demo resonated with the prospect. These solutions save businesses the time spent creating demos and qualifying prospects earlier in the sales cycle. These solutions should integrate with key business systems such as CRM software to push prospect engagement data to associated opportunities and accounts.
Demo automation solutions can serve a variety of use cases and be leveraged at various stages of the sales cycle. Solutions in this category are differentiated based on use cases, including product tours, live demos, and sandbox or proof of concept (POC) automation. Product tour solutions provide interactive tours of a software product and can be embedded on a website or left as a leave-behind for prospects to have a guided tour; typically through HTML or screen capture. Live demo solutions enable sales reps, or sales engineers, to showcase live product versions and overlay or inject data into the demo environment or pre-configure accounts with data. Sandbox or POC automation solutions allow prospects to have a trial experience of a product through a pre-configured, or cloned, environment.
To qualify for inclusion in the Demo Automation category, a product must:
Integrate with key business systems such as CRM, marketing automation, or digital analytics software
Automate the creation of demos, such as by capturing application or screen
Provide the ability to personalize the demo for specific audiences
Provide the ability to add overlays with text or video, or modify data, for storytelling purposes
Allow for demos to be shared with prospects through email, live demonstration, or embedded on the website
Provide engagement analytics on demo usage
