What is a Micro Demo?

A product demo is a powerful and engaging sales tool that helps immediately showcase product value to a prospect looking to solve a business challenge. The product demo is a unique opportunity to highlight feature benefits to call out the real value a prospect is looking for in a solution.

However, the product demo can often be a lengthy and painful process for both sellers and buyers. Sellers can fall into the trap of showing off every feature and detail the product has to offer. This turns the demo into a single sided conversation where a seller is talking about product functionality that simply doesn't matter to a potential buyer.

Simply put, this is a waste of time for everyone involved.

How can you simplify the demo experience while immediately highlighting the right benefit for your prospective buyer? The micro demo can be a viable answer to help save time while showcasing the product value a prospect is looking for.

A micro demo is a highly condensed and abbreviated feature overview that focuses on a single business challenge or pain point. Unlike the full product overview demo, the micro demo is discrete and narrow in scope to highlight specific details and how they facilitate a business solution.

The micro demo is concise and direct to the point. It enables a prospect to immediately see the value of a feature that is directly related to their immediate challenge and focus area.

The real benefit of a micro demo is the immediate (or near immediate) time to value. Time to product value is a metric that is largely ignored in B2B SaaS selling motions. Modern software buyers want to explore product functionality before moving forward in the traditional enterprise sales funnel. However, buyers today are often forced to wait through days (or weeks) of calendar invites and discovery calls before they ever see the product they want to purchase.

Compare this with product experiences millennial buyers see in their B2C lives. If they are looking for a solution's value, they are used to downloading an app in a matter of seconds, playing around with features and functionality, and making a purchasing decision right then and there.

The modern software buyer is busy. Buyers have their own jobs, teams, and customers to consider. Committing to a time with a sales representative is not top of mind for buying teams focusing with their own day-jobs and priorities. This value, or "wow", moment can be a magical and powerful tool to drive the sale forward.

A micro demo can be a useful primer to set the stage for a full demonstration overview with the sales team. Here is an example scenario. A prospect is interested in an offering and has set up time with the vendor. Two days prior to the full product overview session, the seller sends over links to multiple interactive micro demos to showcase product functionality related to different pain points and business needs. The prospect takes some time to review the content and get hands-on multiple condensed product tours to develop some deeper questions and insights before the live demonstration with a seller.

Micro demos can also we a helpful marketing tool to drive prospect engagement and showcase product functionality earlier in the buying cycle in a guided and constrained environment. Rather than hand the full platform to a prospect via a trial or sandbox environment, a micro demo enables a sales team to craft a unique and tailored product experience that a prospect can explore.

In evaluating what a micro demo is, it is also essential to consider what the micro demo is not. It is not a rushed product demo. The goal is to carefully select a single feature (that directly aligns to a prospect's pain point) to showcase. A micro demo needs to be clear and concise in terms of goals and objectives. This means that timing must be a consideration and a lengthy and detailed product overview will not suffice. The goal of an effective micro demo is to identify a single business challenge and showcase how a solution can deliver value to solve this pain point.

A micro demo can be a powerful tool in the value seller's toolkit. A micro demo provides a clear overview into a single pain point and offers an evident solution to that problem. This quick time to value is a powerful driver for action. The buyer attention span is short and focus can quickly shift away from a vendor's offering once the conversation transitions from a prospect's immediate and pressing pain points. A micro demo is a viable solution to capture a buyer's attention and quickly showcase tangible product value in a highly digestible and consumable format.