No.  While common, it's a bad idea.  Thanks for reading.  I'm here all week.

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Yes, this the second time I've started with this tactic.  If nothing else, it serves as reminder of why we shouldn't ask closed-ended questions in sales.

Now, let's dive into the use of demos as a call-to-action (CTA) both on your website and by your sales development reps (SDRs) [1].  When I visit enterprise SaaS websites these days, I see two primary CTAs:

  • "Try it":  used by the product-led growth (PLG) crowd, and a great CTA -- provided the company is actually executing a PLG strategy [2].  We won't drill into this large topic today, but know that I am working on a PLG post to go up soon.
  • "Get a demo":  in use by most others and typically promising a personal 1-1 demo, but sometimes offering to watch a video or join a weekly webinar.

See below for three clipped examples of demo and trial calls-to-action from enterprise SaaS websites (read across) [2a].

The question:  while it's certainly a common practice, is it a good idea?  If not, what are the best alternatives?

My answer:  offering a demo as your primary CTA, whether weasel-worded (e.g., "request demo") or not (e.g., "get demo") is generally not a great idea.  Here's why:

  • It leads to double qualification.  Typically, the prospect first speaks to an SDR who qualifies them and then passes the prospect to a seller to deliver the demo.  (Think:  I didn't click a button called "speak to two people"; I clicked a button called "get demo.")  Sometimes, it's actually triple qualification:  the SDR does worth-passing qualification, the seller does worth-accepting qualification, and then the seller and a sales engineer do a deeper discovery call -- all before the buyer gets their demo.
  • It raises expectations on the demo.  The SDR often justifies their (i.e., the first) call by saying, "I'm here to gather some information to ensure we personalize the demo to your needs."  That's great if the ensuing demo is actually tailored in some way; it's criminally bad expectation-setting if it's not.
  • It leads to horrific first-calls with sellers, reminding me of a quote from Fail Safe: "what you're telling me, I've been specifically ordered not to do."  We tell sellers to do qualification and discovery, understand and solve business problems, and under any circumstances never to spew features -- then we walk them in front of a largely unqualified prospect with whom we have set an expectation that they're going to see a feature demo.  The result:  sellers spinning plates -- doing qualification with one hand, demoing with the other, and doing a bad job at both.  It's a wonder they don't revolt.
  • It makes it nearly impossible for the seller to do what they want to:  discovery and qualification -- asking a series of open-ended questions to figure out if this is a real sales opportunity with a qualified buyer and a business problem our product can solve.
  • It can create super-awkward situations, where the seller thinks they're having a basic 1-1 demo and the entire buying committee shows up for "the demo" of your product, which will be delivered unprepared and without context.  Cringeworthy.
  • It wastes sellers' time.  Doing a standardized demo is arguably not selling, but marketing -- and your marketing team can likely do it as well (or better) than your sellers and SCs [3].  If sellers are doing lots of 1-1 demos for lots of semi-qualified prospects, marketing might be generating a lot of activity for sales, but don't forget the old saying about processionary caterpillars confusing activity with progress.

If you don't believe me, do one thing:  listen to a bunch of first calls using a tool like Gong.  Maybe your sellers have figured out how to do this well and it all works in your category.  Super, you can stop reading here.  But if you don't like the sound of those calls, then we need to ask ourselves a question:  what can we do about it?

Alternatives to "Request Demo" Calls To Action (CTAs)
Here are some ideas on how to sidestep this problem, all offered in the spirit reducing friction in the buyer journey while maximizing efficiency for the vendor:

  • Always have an ungated 30-60 second explainer video that explains what your product does so curious people can quickly understand what it is.
  • Publish a 2-3 minute ungated short demo video of what your product does for those who want more information.
  • Publish an as-long-as-it-needs-to-be deep demo video both on your website (possibly gated) and on your YouTube channel [4].  Remember David Ogilvy's quote:  "long copy sells!"  If you solve an important problem that I have and for which I'm actively seeking a solution, I'll have plenty of time for a 10- or 20-minute, well-executed demo video.  Just make sure it's well-executed.
  • Hold a weekly live demo which (1) gets the buyer block time on their calendar to see the solution, (2) gets us their contact information, (3) offers the buyer the chance to ask live questions ideally both during (via chat) and at the end of the event, (4) gives us the chance to spot key accounts expressing interest, (5) provides SDRs with an alternative CTA to "do you want to speak to a seller?" [5], (6) gives us a broad indicator of interest over time (i.e., weekly demo attendance), and (7) provides us with a platform we can easily customize and vary -- think:  on Tuesdays, it's the product overview; on Wednesdays, it's the demo for retailers; and on Thursdays it's the demo specific for use-case X.

Don't get me wrong.  I'm a huge believer in also having a clear call to action that says "have a seller call me."  I just understand that it won't get pressed very often, but oh, when it does -- it's likely to be a pretty interested prospect [6].

In today's post we were trying to find alternatives to the "request demo" CTA so we could better help buyers on their journey and our sellers in their work.  If I had to solve the problem myself, I'd use this as my default CTA:

In a future post, I'll make the argument that "demo is not a stage" -- but we'll save that for another day.

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Notes

[1]  I use sales development rep (SDR) and business development rep (BDR) as synonyms, and if I mean inbound, outbound, or hybrid I will explicitly say so.  By default I assume they are inbound-heavy hybrid which is the model I've seen myself most of the time.  (And not necessarily the best model.  The good news is it means there's a lot of inbound; the bad is without dedicated outbound, more rifle-shot, targeted, ABM-like outbound suffers.)

[2] And if it's not, marketing trying to do PLG on their own (because they want to, the investors want to, or the company would like to be PLG but isn't), with a product that's not designed to be easily adopted and sell itself, is a bad idea.  In this "PLG is the new black" era, the only thing worse than not doing PLG is trying PLG tactics when you don't have a PLG company or PLG product.  To mix metaphors, you could likely end up putting your best foot forward into your mouth.

[2a]  Note the wasted space by having login in this zone of the page.  I'd put login buttons or icons somewhere else completely (e.g., top right, page footer) so as to make room to have 3 calls to action as presented below.

[3]  I'd argue doing standardized things is definitionally marketing while doing personalized things is sales.  Think:  given what you've told me about your unique situation, here is how our product can help you meet your goals.  That's selling.  If you just want the White House Tour, then that's marketing.

[4]  Which I know makes it semi-gated, but it also enables people to find and watch it directly via Google/YouTube search.  Have some faith that if they like what they see, they're not going to forget to find our contact-us form and fill it in.  (And you're going to remind them to do so at the end of the video, of course!)

[5] Which, let's face it, many people don't want to do.

[6] And if with sufficient title and from a targeted account should likely be routed directly to a seller, bypassing the SDR process.