Why that frustrating "request a demo" button exists
And can human sellers ever be automated away?
I fell into a rabbit hole via Twitter thread over the holidays that got me thinking about the role of the “request a demo” button, and then, the role of the salesperson at large.
Here was the initial tweet that got me thinking:
If I had to guess, the inspiration for Tommy’s initial tweet was a frustration with the “Request a Demo” button- as in, why can’t I (as a prospective buyer or evaluator) get a demo on demand, whenever I want, without needing to talk to a seller?
Put simply: your willingness (as a prospective buyer) to engage with a salesperson is a really good filter for how qualified you are as a lead.
And further: if you’re upset that the website is making you talk to a human seller, you’re probably not a qualified buyer. You’re probably a tire kicker that is unlikely to buy anything.
Meaning- companies have zero incentive to give you a full product demo for free if they can’t collect information on how qualified you are as a buyer, and if it costs them the opportunity to influence your likelihood to purchase.
A sales demo is fundamentally a trade:
Prospect trades- their time, qualification information on how likely they are to buy, commitment to the next call if they’re qualified
Company/salesperson trades- their time, ability to answer nuanced questions, ability to customize a demo so it’s not impossible to navigate, eventual custom pricing, info on deployment
Rules of thumb:
A SaaS company whose main call to action is “request a demo” (as opposed to “sign up for free!”) is a top-down company. They sell to decision makers (as opposed to end users), have a high avg. deal size, and are typically more complex products.
So first and foremost, there already is a valid replacement for the “Request a demo” button- it’s the “sign up for free” button. This can also be described as “product led growth” - and this is how some of the most exciting, fastest growing SaaS companies in the world approach funnel building and growth.
Companies that avoid a “sign up for free” approach aren’t doing this because they want to, they’re doing it because they have no choice. Their product is simply too complex, too expensive, and too difficult to demo without a human.
Further, if they elect to automate the complex demo through a Loom video or a yet to be invented technology, it will likely be too complicated to actually convey the value you want to convey, point to the specific use case that’s relevant with a specific visitor, and then collect this person’s info to make sure they become a lead worth pursuing.
So how can you automate the top down sale?
Imagine that there were a technology that perfectly turned a complex product into an on demand, interactive demo that prospects could use on demand, whenever they wanted, without the presence of a human salesperson.
This would actually be a terrible idea both for the company selling, and the individual buying.
For the company selling, it’d be disastrous for a few reasons:
Doing a product demo before proper discovery is insanely risky. Why? Only a small portion of the complex product’s offering will be relevant in a given conversation. If a machine demos every feature, the value prop will not land- it will not feel specific enough.
Trusting a prospect to have the attention span and knowledge to self educate is risky.
One of the main benefits of a product demo is that it allows a seller to gather key qualification information throughout the demo. When you demo a product, you can ask questions around a prospect’s tech stack, their decisionmaking power, their buying timeline, etc. If you give away the demo for free without any friction, you won’t learn anything that helps you qualify the prospect.
For the prospect, this paradigm would be equally disastrous:
Buyers have nuanced questions about functionality that cannot be answered with even the most detailed documentation
Buyers don’t have patience to solve their own problems with detailed documentation
Buyers need help navigating the pricing conversation. Enterprise products are sold via human led negotiations (at least today) - maybe in the future we will move to a world in which expensive products are priced in a self serve fashion, but it doesn’t happen today
Buyers need help deploying products. They don’t want the first person who understands what they’re trying to accomplish meeting them for the first time post sale.
What will replace the “request a demo” button, if not the “sign up for free” button?
Replacing the demo request button would require a “product” that not only turns the demo into a self serve experience, but a product that could also accomplish the following:
Master a company’s value proposition and complete product knowledge
Stay up to date with that value proposition as it evolves
This product would need to gather key qualification information from a prospect, and adjust their strategy based on what they collect
It must collect this qualification information in a way that wouldn’t frustrate the prospect. If I (as the buyer) know a human being is taking time out of their day to lead a custom demo, I will answer their questions. If a machine/AI is asking me qualification questions and expecting me to answer them, it’d be very annoying- I’d feel used, like I’m giving a lot without getting anything in return.
Ultimately, this product would be responsible for holding prospects accountable to buying timelines (which humans do today) - and again, human sellers use social capital, relationships, and psychology to hold buyers accountable to buying timelines.
This type of automated system would also be responsible for ensuring successful deployments, and minimizing churn- again, a highly complex set of technologies that would need to be built.
Unintended consequences
Replacing the “request a demo” button would require you to replace the entire role of the human salesperson.
Once AI is advanced enough to do this, it will be advanced enough to do elements of other jobs as well: design, product management, even (gasp) software engineering.
Check out this tweetstorm from Jordan Singer, who describes using GPT3 to describe an app within a Figma plugin, and then sits back as the AI turns his instructions into a design. It’s wild, but still pretty far away from replacing human to human interactions.
When it comes to prospects, the stakes are too high for experimental automation
Unlike iterative design brainstorming, the stakes are too high to plug in GPT3 as a replacement for key sales functions. If GPT3 designs a bad app, the designer can simply scrap it. If GPT3 provides bad information to a prospective buyer, misunderstands something, mis-forecasts a deal, etc. it’d be disastrous.
Working with customers is simply too high stakes for sales to be patient zero in the race to automate everything. So, for at least the near future, the job of the seller seems safe- although it’s certainly possible that advancements in AI allow sales orgs to do way more with way fewer sales staff.
But at the same time, the role of the “request a demo” button isn’t going anywhere anytime soon- it has evolved out of necessity, and it has evolved to survive because, as it turns out, human led sales conversations are extremely valuable.
In summary:
You can’t replace the “request a demo” button with an automated product demo. An automated product demo is never going to be complete enough for a qualified prospect to feel satisfied, and it causes the company providing the automated demo to miss out on key qualification information.
And beyond that, it’s not just key qualification information- it would prevent the company from establishing a human relationship that will ultimately culminate in a planning discussion, a pricing discussion, a deployment discussion, and a renewal discussion.
If given the opportunity, why wouldn’t you start that relationship with qualified buyers as early as possible? Why would a prospective buyer “buy the cow” (talk to someone at your company) when they could get the milk (a fully functioning product demo that doesn’t require them to give anything in return) for free?
Thanks for reading EarlyGTM post #5!
Mike Marg
Principal, Craft Ventures
(for more thoughts on go to market, and occasional sports-related frustration - @mikemarg_ on Twitter)
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I agree that Request a Demo will certainly begin to diminish as PLG becomes more prevalent. I think the one thing missing here is Request a Demo as a crutch for really poorly designed SaaS websites that provide almost no information on what the product actually is or if a product exists.
This CTA is a good filter to generally know if someone is qualified but I think there are a substantial portion of potential qualified leads that simply don't want to invest an hour with a BDR/AE without a high-level understanding of the value the company provides.
If that company's competitor has a better website that hits on the pain point and value prop more directly, the buyer will invest that hour with them instead.
Mike - this is a very sharp and enlightening post not just for sellers but for buyers of B2B software. Made me reflect on a sales call the other day. I’m currently a prospect for Influencer/social media relationship management software. I found myself feeling frustrated I had to request and then wait for a demo. But the sales rep was incredible and helped me get to a conclusion faster than on my own or with a click-through demo. Maybe what we need to productize is not the “request demo” experience, as you argue, but the moment where you realize as a customer, you’re going to get exactly what you need to make the best decision in the most efficient way (even if not real time/automated) through a call. *sorta* useful parallel —> when I book a dentist appointment or gym class, I don’t feel irritated that I have to wait x days for it or that it’s not productized online. I know it’s going to be useful, I understand it’s fundamentally an in person/human experience, and I know what to expect. I inherently value it. Most people don’t have the same expectations for a sales call. They don’t do it often enough to know what to expect or that it can feel helpful/good (unless an IT admin...but so many non-IT business leaders buy software nowadays). And so the result is barely anyone inherently values a sales call or finds satisfaction in “requesting a demo”. Somehow that needs to be either better marketed or productized...no idea how 😂.