When it comes to product demos, Airtame’s customer success philosophy is based on guidelines that establish trust with potential partners. Here’s how it’s done

Here’s a big question for us at Airtame: How can we use demo calls not just for making sales, but also for building long-term relationships?

A quality demo is something that engages the person you’re talking to. For us, it’s a lot about experimentation, as what grabs the attention of a potential lead may not work the next time around.

To start off with, it’s crucial that we highlight exactly what Airtame is, in the simplest terms possible; we explain that Airtame is a wireless streaming solution that has been designed for both business and educational environments. Normally, the kind of people buying Airtame would include everyone from IT administrators working for multinational corporations, to primary school teachers and university directors.

Winning over such a diverse audience requires team members to be technically well-versed while also coming across as charming, flexible, and helpful.

On the one hand we need to standardize our demos so that they exhibit Airtame’s purpose in a way that is universally understandable.

At the same time we also need to be able to customize each demo, so that we can convey how Airtame will improve the specific situation of the person we’re talking to and the institution that they represent. Achieving these goals simultaneously isn’t easy, which is why we’ve developed guidelines to help us navigate each demo call.

Training for demo calls

Our sales team is primarily responsible for demo calls, and members of our customer success team assist. These teams work together closely, and each person is trained in a way so that they feel confident in delivering a slam-dunk demo. We maintain consistent high quality by listening in on each other’s calls, both for training new recruits and as a way to offer constructive feedback.

Aside from making an initial sale, the aim of the demos isn’t to only get one-off customers. It’s about planting the seed that will allow us to garner a long-term relationship. Regardless of how big or small the deal is, Airtame offers lifetime customer support. In many cases, the team member who originally conducted the call will keep in regular contact with the customer during and after the onboarding process, as a relationship will already be established. We really drill it into the minds of new recruits that they to always keep the long-term perspective in mind, rather than only looking at their role in terms of the money they help bring in.

We use Calendly so that anyone can book a demo with us through our website. Once booked, the team member with whom the call has been scheduled receives a Slack notification and an event pops us in their Google Calendar. This is all integrated with our CRM tool Pipedrive, giving us an overview of past calls, email threads, customer details, and purchases. A key part of getting new hires on board is teaching them to use and stay on top of their respective accounts.

Preparing for demo calls

A demo call is like a first date. If it goes well, there’s a world of potential ahead. If it goes badly, it’s unlikely that the other person will give us another shot at winning them over.

The first step is to understand what value means to the person on the other side of the call. We always do our research to find out about the organization’s mission, what they do, and who they work with on a regular basis. Taking ten minutes to read up on this allows us to contextualize our value.

We ask leads to describe the nature of their project in as much detail as possible when they initially book. The “project” could be anything from a traveling salesman looking to use Airtame as a portable presentation solution, to a school district looking to permanently equip 500 classrooms with Airtame.

With this in mind, the focus of the demo will be influenced by the working style of the user, pain points, future growth potential, network setup, size of the institution, and many other possible factors. We come up with a tailor-made checklist of what to highlight and what questions to ask. The goal is to focus only on the features that are most relevant to solving the prospect’s challenges at work.

Your big opener …

First impressions aren’t everything, but they do pack quite a punch. When starting a call, we avoid sounding like a robot at all costs. I try to speak to everyone as though I was meeting them in person. I ask them how they’re doing and often tell them something personal about how I joined Airtame, or about how the company got started. In just acting natural (i.e., not jumping straight into a script), it’s possible to establish rapport.

The tough part – delivering

We talk with people, not at them. No one likes a person who doesn’t let anyone else get a word in. It’s important to continuously ask questions to gain a deeper understanding of the lead’s needs and preferences. We concentrate on the “why,” both when it comes to learning about our partners, and explaining the Airtame solution. We want to convey that Airtame exists to make your professional life easier.

We take pride in not only being able to share clear and concise product knowledge, but also in our ability to communicate this to people with varying degrees of technical experience. We strive to come across as capable and helpful, providing insights tailored to each lead’s scenario. While each of us wants to have all of the knowledge bases covered, part of being human is also about not being afraid to let customers know that we don’t always have the answers.

If I’m unsure of how to best answer a question, I pause the call to ask a colleague to help confirm. No lead has ever been upset over this. Probably because they’re human too.

We are also not afraid to be clear on what Airtame can’t do, in addition to what it can, or perhaps might do in the future. We’d rather say less, making sure that all information we provide is accurate than try to oversell, overpromise or spout falsehoods in the hope of generating a sale. We avoid criticizing competitors and instead focus on how we are different.

Airtame is a living product; we stand out by constantly working on new ways to improve our product and the services we offer. The objective is long-term trust, which is ultimately the healthiest way to improve the bottom line.

Online demos are hosted through GoToMeeting, which is great for making the most of visual aids. With the screen sharing feature participants can view our presentation slides, experience how the Airtame App works, and take a tour through the Airtame Cloud platform. We use the Airtame App and Cloud platform exactly as any customer would, to demonstrate the simple user interface, and how easy it is to use Airtame.

We let these tools complement our conversation, which is the spirit of Airtame. Airtame isn’t meant to replace human communication, but rather to make it more collaborative.

We emphasize the fact that we provide free lifetime customer support, and we’re not afraid to give out individual work emails rather than a generic one. The message is that there are real people behind the product, who care enough to take the time to individually solve problems and come up with helpful suggestions.

Closing a demo call

When it comes to closing a call, we try to guide leads to make a sale, while not being pushy. People know that we, of course, need to sell the product, but they appreciate that we’re not afraid to poke fun at the overbearing salesperson stereotype. Our approach is to ask if they have any remaining questions or concerns.

We take on feedback from every inquiry and feed this into our communication strategy. Sometimes feature requests are added to our product development roadmap. The blind spots that potential customers have – related to what Airtame can or cannot do – are instrumental in generating clearer and more concise communication.

If they confirm that they’re interested in giving Airtame a go then we suggest that they start with ordering a few devices to test out. We never push anyone to proceed with a large purchase without first having had the chance to see if Airtame works in their environment.

Plus, we have a 30-day risk-free trial system, meaning that any customer has nothing to lose in seeing how Airtame works for their workplace. Once we know a customer is on-board, we try our hardest to make sure that they have a successful deployment and education of their staff on how to use Airtame effectively.

The results

For those who would like a condensed version of an Airtame demo before booking a live one, my colleague Phillip and I created shorter, pre-recorded demos for our two target sectors – business and education. Hopefully it’s useful for potential customers, and likeminded companies that want to get some demo inspiration. We won’t say they are perfect, and never should be – hopefully we are upping our game all the time! Check them out and let us know what you think.

You can also find out more about our process for establishing our demo style here in this video with our co-founder, Brian Kyed.