
> A demo sandbox environment or interactive product demo is a controlled and isolated environment for prospects and customers. It allows prospects to get an understanding of what your product is like to use by offering a low friction, guided experience of your SaaS product.

# The different types of product demo sandboxes

There are three broad categories of tools available:
- Screen recorders / slideshow creators - Arcade, Supademo, Storylane (starter)
- Front end replicators - HowdyGo, Storylane (growth), Navattic
- Cloned applications - DemoStack

## How you create a product demo sandbox

In almost every case (apart from DemoStack), you install a Chrome extension which lets you capture your SaaS product. 

The chrome extensions either require you to manually capture each page, or will automatically capture your product as you click-through a user flow.

# Let's compare each category

Each category differs by price point, advantages and disadvantages - let's explore the differences between each.

## The screen recorders / Slideshow creators

> Typical pricing: Around $40 per user, per month

The simplest form of interactive demo is essentially a screenshot or video recording of your application. These tools make it easier to connect and annotate screenshots, effectively creating a slideshow of your application. 

There are many examples of these tools on the market, a few you might have heard of include:
- [Arcade](https://www.arcade.software/)
- [Supademo](https://supademo.com/)
- [Storylane](https://www.storylane.io/plans) with the solo (free) or starter plan.

These options are affordable, but as the old adage goes, you get what you pay for. 

While they are easy and cheap to use, the end result feels like you're clicking through a series of screenshots. It's not unlike creating a PowerPoint/Google Slide presentation with screenshots and linking the slides together with speech bubbles.

They don't give a true representation of your product, but they make slideshows easy to create.

### An example - Arcade Demo

Let's take a deep-dive on this [Arcade demo](https://app.arcade.software/share/Ae8iYAfnY2hlSJVp9TNT).

There are a few limitations to point out, and these are common limitations for Arcade, Storylane and Supademo:
1. **Not actually interactive** - When you move your mouse over elements they are not actually interactive, you are seeing a screenshot or short video
2. **Low Resolution Videos** - The dynamic sections of the demonstration are clearly video replays and as a result, the quality reduces as interactions are replayed
3. **Limited View** - You cannot scroll around the page, so the viewer is limited to what was captured during recording
4. **Accessibility** - Images and videos are inherently problematic for screenreaders, so if you or your prospects will be particularly concerned with accessibility, you may want to skip this category
5. **Limited modifications after recording** - Because you're capturing screenshots or videos, these tools are limited in what you can modify after you've finished your recording.

Although these tools don't create particularly realistic replicas of your product, they are very quick to get started. You also don't have to worry so much about ensuring every aspect of your product is perfect because they are only creating a small capture of your entire product.

## The front end replicators

> Typical pricing: From $120 per month for your entire company (HowdyGo), with alternatives starting at around $500 per month minimum

If you're looking for a more realistic alternative to Storylane, Arcade or Supademo a front-end replicator might be the answer.

The process of recording is similar to the screen recorders, but rather than creating a series of screenshots connected together by annotations, you are capturing the original HTML and CSS. This creates a very accurate representation of your SaaS app, while still offering a guided demonstration of the features. 

To ensure the recording works as expected and is isolated from the original environment, all webpage content like fonts and images are stored by the service.

There are a number of advantages to these tools over Arcade or Storylane:
1. **Actually Interactive** - You get a much higher level of interactivity, if you look at the HowdyGo demo below it is possible to hover over elements and get an immersive feeling of what the application is like to use. This is really effective in tools that rely on hover animations to display additional information, like in analytics dashboards that have "tooltip" data
2. **Perfect representation of animations** - Because the website is effectively being "replayed", things like drag-and-drop animations and typing into input fields look perfect. Rather than relying on a video recording of these animations
3. **Full capture of page** - The viewer can scroll down the page and see the entirety of the page, below the fold
4. **Accessibility friendly** - Screenreaders are able to read the demo because it perfectly replicates the existing accessibility implementations 
5. **Easy to modify and personalize** - Since the underlying web content is available, it is relatively simple to switch images or replace text, creating a dynamic demonstration that can even be personalized for individuals and companies.

DemoId=2601b55a

Despite not requiring much additional time to produce a more immersive experience (depending on the tool), some of these tools can be quite affordable - for example [HowdyGo](https://howdygo.com/product/pricing) is offered at a comparable level to screen recording products despite offering a much higher level of interactivity. 

On the other hand some other tools in this category like [Storylane](https://www.storylane.io/plans) (with their HTML recording growth plan) or [Navattic](https://www.navattic.com/pricing) are quite expensive, both starting at $500/month to use (as of publication).

## The cloned applications

> Typical pricing: Prices not listed, but anonymous sources estimate in the $tens-of-thousands per year with per-user variable costs

At the highest end of reproduction quality are tools that fully replicate an app front-end and intercept all network requests to the original web back end. 

This allows an even greater level of control compared to front end replication tools. By default, you will get a similar output to the front-end replicators like HowdyGo or Navattic. These tools really shine when you start modifying the data sent to your application by your server to modify things like graphs. 

However, making these modifications can be complicated and it takes a lot of time to create a demo sandbox and become comfortable using the tool's full capabilities.

The higher levels of complexity have an additional financial cost, for example [DemoStack](https://www.demostack.com/pricing) offers a cloned app, but only at their highest price point, which is not disclosed. 

That said compared to the cost of using engineering time to create modified versions of graphs on demand, it could be quite a time saving and thus may financially make sense if this use case is required often.

# What is the best sandbox option for you?

Every company has a different use case and thus requirements vary but, you should ask yourself the following questions:

## If you are just getting started and/or are not using any solution currently?
Test with something on the cheaper end of the spectrum like a screen recording tool, particularly if you're not too concerned with interactivity.

Or use [HowdyGo](https://howdygo.com) as a starting point and you'll end up with something that's relatively future-proofed and will give you freedom to modify down the line. Most of the products offer a free tier to get you started including HowdyGo, so this is probably a good option.

## If you want to personalize demos by modifying images or replacing text in your app?
In this situation, you want to use a front-end replication tool like [HowdyGo](https://howdygo.com) or the others mentioned above.

## If you are spending a lot of time manipulating network requests for demos and want to find a better solution?
Use a tool that clones your front end and lets you manipulate the network requests, this will probably require some calls to some potential providers to try and understand what the cost might be and if a business case can be made.

Interactive product demo comparison

By this point, the definition of a non-technical SaaS buyer is a little blurry. 

Most of the prospects and leads that SaaS vendors interact with are comfortable with subscription purchasing models and cloud based platforms. 

There are some industry hold-outs, particularly where they are highly concerned with data privacy (Health Care and Legal for instance).

> Non-technical SaaS buyers are typically individuals who hold operational roles. 

These individuals are responsible for managing teams, overseeing workflows, or ensuring that the business is running efficiently - not necessarily evaluating and purchasing SaaS products that make their area of responsibility (AOR) more efficient. 

They aren't likely to have a background in IT or software selection, and may not be familiar with the technical aspects of SaaS applications. 

Most importantly though, **they are the ones who will ultimately be using your software** and are therefore critical to the success of any SaaS implementation. They often also hold the budget for these purchases.

# Why they are challenging to sell to 

The most important part of their day-to-day is ensuring that the wheels stay-on-the-cart and the business continues to operate effectively. 

They will be delegating and participating in projects that push through improvements in their areas of responsibility.

> Aside from a small-few, they aren't personally looking for the cutting edge technology that will facilitate improvements to their workflow. Rather, they are reliant on individuals and working groups within their team to assist in that selection process.

## They care about the practicalities, not the technicalities

They are more interested in how the application will help them streamline their workflow or reduce costs, rather than the specific features or functionalities of the application. 

This can make it difficult to communicate the value of the application and highlight its unique selling points. Showing value, *quickly*, to these users is extremely important, dropping them into an empty shell of your application isn't effective - they want to have the value your software delivers spelled out to them, rather than relying on their imagination.

> An interactive demo using HowdyGo is a great way to educate non-technical operational SaaS buyers, because it lets you immerse them in a guided demonstration and add valuable context to what they are seeing.

## They are more risk averse

Non-technical buyers can be more risk averse about things like data privacy and downtime. Take the dental industry as an example, many dental practices continue to have managed servers installed and maintained on their premises by Practice Management Software providers because they are concerned by downtime and lag. 

These risks are hurdles, but not complete road blocks.

The best approach to jumping these hurdles is to mitigate the risks and instill confidence in your prospects. You can do this by having clear and understandable explanations of how your company mitigates them.

> An example; Education organizations (Universities & High schools) value data protection and privacy. Having an ISO27000 certification and clear GDPR practices is useful outside of countries that require them by legislation. 
> 
> The ability to say "Yes, we take data privacy seriously and adhere to GDPR and ISO27000 guidelines" is extremely effective. 

# You might not be selling directly to these individuals

Depending on your product, they may not be the people you are engaging with directly. 

Operational SaaS buyers will often delegate roles and responsibilities significantly, particularly if the organization is relatively large. An established large-scale business might have an operational SaaS buyer who has **as many as 8 different departments** falling under their umbrella. 

An example of this is the Education industry, Universities and High Schools will have a Provost, Head Teacher or Principal. In all cases, these individuals are typically dealing with a diverse array of priorities from many different sources:
1. Departmental - Education focussed priorities
2. Purely Operational - Finance, Student Wellbeing, Human Resources 

In this selling environment, you need to figure out how you can inform and educate them without having a direct line of contact.

## That doesn't mean they don't matter

In the case that you aren't selling directly to them, you have what is called **an economic buyer** - the person who holds the budget. Unfortunately, they are un-engaged and possibly only being made tangentially aware of your product through one of their colleagues or team members.

> We have an article on [Empowering Prospect Champions](./empower-your-prospect-champions) that explains in more detail how you can empower champions to help you close an opportunity.

You must ensure that the opportunities you have to educate these individuals is extremely effective and cuts right to the value proposition.

## Focus on High Quality, Low Friction Collateral

You should look at the collateral you're sharing with your contact person within the organization and shape it to clearly articulate your value proposition quickly and effectively.

Remove any friction you can to make sure that they immediately see how good your SaaS product is. 

> If you're relying on them to sign up for a free trial, you've missed the boat. They might literally just want to make sure that the recommendation that's come across their desk from their team is easy to use. 

A perfect example of this, a company that delivered digital textbooks to universities regularly worked with libraries and student services, the final check-point for each sale was typically through the Head of Department.

Delivering a single-link which dropped the person straight into a trial textbook and allowed them to view the interface **from the student's perspective** was all that was required to progress the deal. Identify what you can do to streamline these individuals having an "aha!" moment with your product - helping them immediately understand why their team sees the value in what you are offering.

### Some tool recommendations for this:

1. [HowdyGo](/) - A guided interactive product demonstration that shows and explains your product in a single package with no logins required.
2. [Qwilr](https://qwilr.com/) - A digital proposal platform that helps you gather everything about your offering in one place. You can also embed an interactive sales sandbox directly into your proposal.
3. [Notion](https://notion.so) - An alternative to Qwilr is to send a private Notion page containing your proposal.
4. A personalized sales deck - A simple PDF might be sufficient
5. An executive summary - Depending on the organization, more established businesses may prefer a document detailing your proposal.

# Industries that often have influential non-technical SaaS buyers

If you are in one of these industries, you may want to consider how you can educate the people you are working with more effectively during your marketing and sales processes:

1. Education / EdTech
2. Real Estate
3. Construction
4. Operations (Warehouse, Food Preparation, etc.)
5. Trades
6. Revenue Operations / Finance
7. Manufacturing
8. Not for Profits
9. Logistics
10. Legal
11. Health Care and Dental

There are plenty of other industries out there, and equally, not all organizations or people in the industries I've listed above are non-technical. But they will equally benefit from the improvements you make to your collateral.


Selling to non-technical SaaS buyers


# What is a good conversion rate?

Answer is - it depends! The typical signup page rate across SaaS companies is in the range of [2-5%](https://www.klipfolio.com/metrics/marketing/sign-up-rate/), however depending on your business, your own landing page rate may be significantly different. 

For example if you have a high customer lifetime value (LTV) in a relatively niche sector a 3% conversion rate might be totally acceptable, and your company could be wildly profitable.

## Why do people not signup?

Low conversion on your signup page is usually caused by a combination of issues:

### Your signup form is too long

Having additional form fields i.e. company name, position/title and/or phone number have been [shown to decrease conversion rates](https://www.heap.io/blog/good-conversion-rate-signup-flow), so where possible keep the number of fields to an absolute minimum.

### Allow social logins

By using a social login you can access most of the information you'd normally ask prospects for (name, email, etc.) automatically. With the added bonus that the prospect doesn't need to create a password for your service. This removes multiple points of friction in your signup flow and thus improves your conversion rate.

### *Not demonstrating value*

Giving prospects that ability to trial your product can be challenging from a technical perspective, so businesses often use "request a demo" buttons as the next stage of the funnel.

Unfortunately this isn't a great solution as a potential user might not want to invest 30 minutes of their time in a meeting just to see your product in a screenshare. This is particularly true as prospects have become increasingly less comfortable speaking to vendors. Most prospects are now looking for buyer-led purchasing processes, even for more complex products.

This is obviously a complex issue that might require a lot of product development time to solve, or not be possible for your product. We have some suggestions for how you can demonstrate value in a buyer-led environment without complicated technical changes.

# How to demonstrate value

One way to demonstrate value to a potential prospect is to embed a snapshot of your product in your signup form, including a screenshot has been shown to [improve conversion rates by 73%](https://www.mutinyhq.com/playbooks/alpha-sense-conversion). 

Adding a video can [increase conversion rates by up to 85%](https://goconsensus.com/blog/product-demo-videos-increase-conversions-up-to-85/) because demonstrating your product in action builds confidence in the prospect that your product not only exists, but does what your marketing says it does.

The absolute best way to show off your product to prospects is with an [interactive product demo](/), which lets the prospect get a feel for your product in a guided sandbox. These take *less* time to create than a video demo and are much more engaging.

DemoId=2601b55a

## 1. Think about the viewer

On your signup page, you only get an extremely short period of time to get the attention of your potential lead so any product demonstration is going to need to be short and to the point, you should ask yourself the following questions.

- What is the easiest to demonstrate value proposition?
- Is there a common "wow" moment while using the product that you would like them to see?
- Is there a way to highlight a specific piece of interactivity in the product?
- How can I make this even shorter, without making the demo too short that it is confusing?

## 2. Record a simple demo

Using the [HowdyGo chrome extension](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/interactive-screen-captur/kflpgokojhjknkikmnclhcpepnhgkcno), this is a super simple process.

1. Install the extension in your browser
2. Pin the extension to your toolbar
3. Click "Start Recording" and walk-through your SaaS product's "Wow-moment"
4. Click the "Stop Recording" button.

## 3. Edit your recording

Once you have finished recording and the upload is completed the editor view will open in your browser automatically.

The editor page for HowdyGo is super easy to use and should only take a couple of minutes to have your recording ready to publish, you just need to fill in the details of each of the annotations that appear on-screen as shown below.

DemoId=ea7ec77f-1011-4712-93bf-7c0997d70e86

> Make sure to edit the final call to action, this is a really effective way to push your most engaged prospects to the next stage of the funnel. They will be pre-qualified and high-quality so you can confidently close these opportunities.

## 4. Publish and embed into your signup page

Use the Publish button in the editor and you'll get a ready-to-share link. 

Most of our users like to either link directly to the share page, or embed their demo directly into a landing page. 

DemoId=c3ddcd4d-2173-4374-8f6b-f2db4e8092dc

In the HowdyGo editor page click the "Publish" button to get your share page.

You can also embed your demos using an iFrame, like so: `<iframe src="https://app.howdygo.com/embed/xx" title="My Demo"></iframe>`

## 5. Record the results

One of the most important parts behind the scenes of any landing page is to ensure you are seeing the desired uplift in conversion rate, so tools that work quite nicely for this include:

- [Posthog](https://posthog.com/tutorials/funnels)
- [hotjar](https://www.hotjar.com/blog/website-conversion/)
- [Google Analytics](https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/13138793?hl=en)

Use one of these tools to track your conversions and see if the changes you are implementing are improving your conversion rates.

## 6. Analyze, optimize and iterate

By looking at analytics you can work out how you can continue to iterate on your sign up flow, some potential ideas to explore  include:

### Do prospects not complete the demo?

If people are not completing the demo you should look at reducing the number of steps in your demo flow. Over time you can develop a collection of demos to try out, showing off different USPs of your product and using different copy to improve click-through. 

> Using multiple demos you can effectively A/B test the features that resonate the best with your prospects.

### Is the signup form not getting completed?

Maybe your potential prospects are filling in the first field on the signup form and then just leave the page? If this is the case you should run an experiment where you reduce the number of fields in the form to see if it improves the form completion rate. Also look at implementing a social sign-in process.

### Are prospects completing the demo but not using the CTA?

This may be evidence of an issue with your product demo, the product itself, or the prospects you are targeting in your marketing and lead-generation. Prepare a new collection of ICPs and test those customer profiles in your marketing. 

Make sure you are linking the demos you deliver to the ICPs. If for example, you have a patient CRM for health providers, the demo you deliver for a Physiotherapist might be completely different to the one you deliver to a General Practitioner.

Improve your signup page conversions with an interactive demo

Interactive product demos help companies showcase their SaaS products to potential customers. In simple terms, they provide a simulation of your platform that allows the viewer to interact with it as if they were using it in real life. These demos can be accessed online, and users can be immersed in your platform, in a safe, controlled and engaging environment. They have a very low barrier to entry and are particularly effective in buyer-led sales environments.

> Think of an interactive product demo as a sandbox environment that guides the viewer through a specific journey, while giving them the ability to test drive and get a feel for your product. 

## Why are Interactive Product Demos Important?

Interactive product demos are more effective than screenshots and videos in a few ways:

1. **Improved Understanding:** They provide a hands-on experience that helps your prospect understand your platform's functionality better. This deep understanding can lead to higher adoption rates and increased customer satisfaction.
2. **Increased Engagement:** They are more engaging than traditional marketing materials like videos or screenshots. The viewer is able to get a feel for your product, and can take their time to understand what each view of the userflow is doing, unlike a video walkthrough. This engagement can lead to higher conversion rates and a more significant impact on potential customers.
3. **Customizable:** They can be customized after recording to showcase specific features or use cases, making them an excellent tool for targeted marketing campaigns.
4. **Higher Retention Rates:** They are more memorable than traditional marketing materials because the user is using your product, leading to higher retention rates and increased brand awareness.
5. **Competitive Advantage:** They provide a competitive advantage in the marketplace by showcasing a company's software in a unique and engaging way, which is becoming really important in for Product Led Growth strategies and buyer-led purchasing environments.

## How Do Interactive Product Demos Work?

You start by capturing a flow inside your SaaS app using a browser extension. Some tools will have you capture individual screens and map them together, or in HowdyGo's case, you start recording and just click your way through a flow. The tool captures and saves your platform as it appears in your browser, and stores all the files required to replay your app. Effectively, this creates a time-capsule of your flow.

The viewer can then interact with your platform in real-time, making adjustments and seeing how different features work together. Interactive product demos can also include pop-up tips and information boxes to provide additional context and information.

Your demos is be shared through your company's website or marketing materials. They can be integrated into your existing marketing strategy, providing a seamless experience for potential customers.

## What Do Interactive Product Demos Look and Feel Like?

Great interactive product demos look and feel just like the real thing. They are full clones of a website and not screenshots or videos, meaning that each button and element is fully interactive just like on the original website. The best way to show this is of course with an interactive product demo, so here is one showing you how to create a new issue on one of our favourite software tools, Linear.

DemoId=27f36327-7986-433c-8e92-2985c91ade49

Interactive product demos are an excellent tool for companies looking to showcase their software products to potential customers. They provide a hands-on experience that helps users understand the functionality of your SaaS platform better, leading to higher adoption rates and increased customer satisfaction. They are customizable, engaging, and provide a competitive advantage in the marketplace. 

By incorporating demonstrations of your sales environment in your marketing strategy, you can improve your conversion rates and increase brand awareness.

What are interactive product demos?

> A prospect champion is someone who is willing to advocate for your product or service within their organization, and who can help you navigate the complex decision-making process that often occurs in enterprise sales.

Empowering prospect champions requires a multi-faceted approach that involves building trust, developing a deep understanding of the prospect’s needs and challenges, providing value and using that momentum to build your network within an account. In this article, we’ll explore a 4 part approach to ensuring you have a strong relationship with your prospect champion, and they feel empowered to help you.

# 🤝 1. Build trust
Building trust is the foundation to working collaboratively with your champion. You need to establish credibility, demonstrate your expertise, and show that you’re genuinely interested in helping them achieve their goals (whatever they are).

1. **Show off your knowledge:** Provide your champion with content that demonstrates your knowledge and understanding of their specific challenges. In order to do this, you need to ensure you know what those goals are, we'll cover that shortly.
2. **Be transparent and honest with them:** If you don’t have an answer to a question, don’t try to bluff your way through it.
3. **Share success stories:** Share success stories with the prospect champion that demonstrate how your product or service has helped other companies overcome similar challenges. This will show that you have a track record of success and can be trusted to deliver results.
4. **Provide referrals:** Provide referrals to them for other companies or individuals that have successfully used your product or service. This will demonstrate that you’re invested in their success and are willing to help them achieve their goals.

If you're confident you have your champion's trust it will give you more clarity about the internal blockers and potential risks associated with progressing the deal to the next stage of your pipeline. 

# 🏔️ 2. Develop a deep understanding of the champion's personal needs and challenges
Relationships drive sales and decision making. Your champion will likely have aligned goals with the organization they work for, and while that's helpful, the ideal approach is to understand who they are as an individual and what their personal needs and goals are. Your relationship with your champion will give you a deeper insight into the goals of the organization and the relationships at play, than what you can understand from an outsider's perspective.

Understanding who they are will allow you to more effectively provide value to them in a way that resonates with them. Like "Love Languages", different people react positively to different things. 

For example, if you have a Type-A ambitious prospect champion who is still climbing the ladder at their business, it could be that they are trying to make a name for them self. Delivering value that resonates with that goal will build your relationship with them, and ensure that you can meet their needs in a way that directly helps them achieve their personal goal. See Providing Indirect Value below.

> To empower prospect champions, you need to have a deep understanding of their needs and challenges. 

In order to have a deep understanding of their needs and challenges, you need to perform research on the business and the individual, and then coordinate a discovery call or meeting with them, and potentially their team.

You can supplement the information you gather from your champion by researching their competitors and identifying areas where your product or service can provide a competitive advantage.

# 💰 3. Provide value
Providing value to a champion can be difficult, particularly if you're not in a position to offer some form of your product to them. But value comes in many forms, and if you're confident that your solution will eventually offer solutions to their challenges, that value can either come from your product, or it can be a little more creative.

Value at this point in the sales process generally fits into two categories:

## Direct Value
> A solution (in some form) to the direct needs and goals that they expect you or your product to offer.

You can provide direct value by offering a proof of concept, a pilot program or an [interactive demo of your product](/) that allows the prospect to test your product or service before making a larger commitment. This can help them see the value of your solution firsthand and can increase their confidence in your ability to deliver results. 

By providing this type of collateral, you are able to use your champion's internal network to amplify the effects of your efforts. Things like leave-behind demos or decks are really effectively and give the champion a low-barrier to entry for stakeholders within the organization that have influence and decision making roles. (See #4 Multiply your champions below).

If the ticket-size of your product or service is high enough, you may be in a position to offer some subject matter expertise through people within your network, or your organization. This is an extremely effective display of capability and gives the champion an opportunity to invite other people from the sales process into the loop.

Offering to arrange an internal workshop to brainstorm the use of your product or service, or discuss the problem that your product solves, is a fantastic way to demonstrate your own capabilities, and also lifts your champion's profile internally.

## Indirect Value
> Something that builds your relationship with your prospect, even if it's tangential to your direct offering.

Delivering indirect value can also come in different forms, one approach is to offer education and training that helps the prospect and their team develop the skills they need to use your product or service effectively. If you find the right outlet for this, it can also give your champion a boost to their career and set them up for success in their own role. 

There are a couple of major benefits to this type of indirect value:
1. It helps build long-term relationships with the prospect and can position you as a trusted advisor who is committed to their success.
2. It can be serious dividends in the long-term. Your prospect champion might stay at the current business and "climb-the-ladder" giving you a more influential champion, or they might leave their business and potentially bring you another opportunity!

Another approach to delivering indirect value is to build your champion's network. You see this very often in some industries, hosting dinner, drinks or some other kind of social event (conferences for instance). The benefit to this type of value delivery is that it has the potential to grow your network as well and in some industries, the opportunity to collaborate and get to know their peers from other organizations is really beneficial to them.

# 4. 👥 Multiply your champions
In enterprise sales, it’s rare for a single person to make the decision to purchase a product or service, there are often multiple stakeholders involved in the decision-making process, each with their own priorities and concerns. 

You will often read about a matrix of "Influence" vs. "Impact". We're talking about their influence within the organization as a whole vs. their impact on the deal or project you're trying to get across the line.

This essentially puts stakeholders into 1 of 4 categories:

1. **High Influence / High Impact:** Manage these people closely, as they will have the strongest effect on the outcome of your sales process. **Note:** Hopefully your champion fits into this category. If not, you may want to cultivate a champion who does. 
1. **High Influence / Low Impact:** Keep these people satisfied. **Example:** Executives that act as gate-keepers to the budget.
2. **Low Influence / High Impact:** Keep these people informed, while they have low influence you will want to make sure they are still happy. **Example:** Technical users of your product within the account. 
3. **Low Influence / Low Impact:** Monitor these people, assess whether they may change their position if the deal/project goes in a different direction. **Example:** People who are tangential to the deal. In some cases this could be a legal team that is unlikely get involved unless there are particular concerns about your contract.

Develop relationships with key decision-makers, influencers, and end-users using your champion's network and by delivering direct & indirect value to them. You can then assess how the people you meet fit into the matrix I've described above, and decide for each person how you need to handle their role within the account.

> For those who are High Influence or High Impact, giving your champion something like an interactive demo is the perfect type of collateral. It's a low barrier way for your champion to say "Check this out, I think this will deliver value to our business." and it's more likely to engage than a slide deck or video. 

By having multiple champions in an organization you amplify the value delivered to each of them, and you may identify conflicts that could potentially put a pause on your deal or project.

# Empowering prospect champions is a win/win 

If you're working with someone within a target account, consider how you can turn them into a champion. Build trust, understand their goals (both personal and organizationally), **deliver value** to them and use that momentum to build more relationships. 

This will give you more confidence in how you position your product, and more confidence in your assessment of the opportunity. 💪

Empower your prospect champions and you can both win

> Funnel velocity refers to the speed at which potential customers move through different stages of a sales or marketing funnel, from initial awareness to conversion. It is a metric used to measure the effectiveness of a company's sales and marketing efforts in converting leads into customers.

# Buyer intent is at an all time high

When a prospect is on your website, they often have a specific problem they are looking to solve. They've discovered your product and they are at the awareness / education stage of the funnel. 

## An immediate need with a disappointing solution

While your "book a demo" button is intending to solve their next immediate need (trying the product out), it actually ends up putting a huge hurdle in front of their progression toward becoming a paying customer. 

Prospects find this "trick" extremely disappointing. When they click "try it now" or "book a demo" what they are actually saying is:
> "I like what you're offering so much that I'd be willing to try it right now."

So they click on the link and are presented with a form which offers them:

1. A delay to their next goal (trying your platform out)
2. A social and time commitment that they might not want or need in order to purchase your product
3. In some cases (often it's just the form!), a walk-through video or screenshot that doesn't actually involve them getting to try and feel your SaaS product for themselves.

None of the outcomes listed above are as effective as the prospect trying the product out immediately, even though plenty of businesses _want_ to put this blocker in place.

# Marketers are hamstrung by practicalities

There are a million reasons why marketers don't offer an immediate way to try out the product. Here are a few that we've come across:

## 1. Product is too complex to have a self-guided demo

Dropping a prospect into your platform without a guide can lead to a negative perception of your offering. This is particularly the case when the product is:
- Very complex
- Utilizes data that might not exist yet
- Requires a lot of knowledge about the problem-space
- Needs configuration, team members or users on-boarded

## 2. Creating a sandbox environment is too difficult

Development and engineering teams would love to have a solution for their marketing and sales function that shows off what they are building. The challenge with this is that it can be extremely complicated to create a demo environment that effectively demonstrates the platform for a wide variety of reasons. We've encountered a few of these issues in our time:

1. **Dashboards & Data:** Fake data is very difficult to generate on an ongoing basis, but for enterprise applications this is often the most valuable thing you can present. Having a cohesive narrative to that data is even more challenging. 
2. **Authentication:** Creating simplified ways of accessing your platform is the antithesis of security. The security team within your engineering function can find it very challenging to find the commercial balance to providing access to the app, without effectively removing some very valid and necessary constraints on access to your system.
3. **Ongoing Maintenance:** How do you reset the sandbox, when does that occur, is it every day, week, month? This needs to be automated/set-and-forget, but doing that requires even more development time. Even if you do automate it, how do you make sure the maintenance is being kept in lock-step with the application as it changes over time? It's _really, really_ easy to accidentally break your sandbox environment. 
4. **On-boarding Tutorial Tooltips:** Once you've solved the challenges above, providing context to those new users is really important. You could implement a series of onboarding tooltips to improve the experience, but this requires _more_ development time and requires your engineering team to include the product marketing function in the development process on an on-going basis. Otherwise, your tooltips can end up out-of-sync or worse, removed unintentionally because there is a need to change the underlying UI/UX.

## 3. We don't want to deliver a "generic" demonstration

It's important to remember what the prospect's intent is at this specific moment. 

They've identified that they have a problem, understood roughly what your solution offers and they are interested in seeing how it actually works. In a sense, they want proof that the solution actually exists and that if they wanted to solve their problem immediately, it would be possible.

"Generic" is a limiting perspective, it's possible to identify the motivations of the prospect and direct them to a demonstration that represents an approximation of the solution to their problem - they aren't expecting perfection here, this is just the next stage of educating themselves. 

If you have a tool that differs in delivery between industries, it's almost a certainty that the call your team has with them will show them a demonstration suited to that industry. This is a generic demo, it's just been refined for a specific prospect persona.

# Interactive product demos are the answer

Crafting a demo, or collection of demos that work for every inbound prospect isn't easy (we're happy to help you though!). The counter argument to this is:
Yes - The empty, unconfigured, complicated, awesome, amazing SaaS platform that you and your team have built isn't very inspiring if you're dropped into it without any context.

The demo calls delivered by your sales team and prepared and maintained by sales enablement are an excellent starting point to understanding how you can cater to different prospect requirements.

Prospects who decide to click on the "Book a demo", "Request a demo" or "Try it now" buttons will generally fit into two categories:
1. **For prospects who want a sales call:** Use an interactive demo to give them an immediate result while the call gets arranged. This gets them excited for the call, and gives your sales function breathing room to perfect the pitch.
2. **For prospects who are more interested in self-assessing product fit:** Use an interactive demo to give them that self-assessment and progress them more quickly to the next stage of the sales cycle.

You can craft something that _captures your prospect's imagination_ and feeds their immediate need to understand your product better. 

This could be enough to close the deal, or at the very least it carries them through to the call with a richer understanding of what you offer and makes that call even more productive. Most importantly, in both situations, you are increasing the velocity of your sales funnel.

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