Demo Metrics Every SaaS Company Should Measure

Demo Metrics every SaaS company should measure 

“If you can’t measure it, you cannot improve it.” — Lord Kelvin. 

Understanding and measuring metrics is key to improving your SaaS business. Sales team metrics need to be measured consistently — quota attainment, number of calls, recording of sales calls, and more. Expanding on the fact that live demos (conducted by a person to a person) are a hidden stage in the sales cycle that lacks metrics to improve upon. Analyzing metrics and gathering demo data is vital to the success of your Sales team. Once your team begins to collect demo data and metrics consistently, they will start to reference these numbers and innately improve on them.  Even small changes to metrics can have a huge impact on the outcome of your sales. 

“To put numbers to it, a traditional company can sustain growth at less than 20% YOY, but a SaaS company with only 20% growth has a 92% likelihood of not making it past their first few years of business. It’s a harsh reality because on the other end of that growth is this fact: Only 15% of high-growth SaaS companies (the companies that did manage to make it out of those first few years) can maintain consistent growth,” according to the SaaSOptics team who insist that, “Measuring the right SaaS metrics at the right time is more critical than ever because the margin for error is so slim when it comes to building a successful B2B SaaS company.” 

Now more than ever, measuring every aspect of your sales process and demo is important. Learning how to compile and measure this data will solve issues and improve sales conversions over time — increasing your company's growth.  To stay competitive, SaaS companies need to record and analyze these metrics to keep ahead of the competition.  Metrics optimize the outcomes of your sales demos.

Demoleap sales playbooks open a new, intelligent way to measure demo metrics like never before. Our CRM integration lets you view your demo metrics in one dashboard.

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What demo metrics should my Sales team measure?

Demos that work and lead in ARR

Demos that lead are demos that drive revenue. Our research with hundreds of leading sales teams identified that Sales organizations are looking to create repeatable and successful processes that can be improved constantly. Using demos that were presented in a clear view of the ARR results helps with this.

Understanding the effort invested in product demos and the monetary outcome will help you improve your demo delivery initiatives.

Monthly Metrics: Who is using specific playbooks? And when? 

A breakdown of the demo playbooks that were presented by your sellers. This is an easy way to measure. You can have a daily, weekly, or monthly view of what playbooks are used the most. With that view, you can also get a glimpse that shows a breakdown of time spent on the different demo milestones, which can represent the product features that were shown or even the most used slides in your deck. 

When measuring these metrics, pay attention to the types of playbooks used. Playbooks can be compiled of different types, such as discovery, product demonstration, 2nd product demo, and more. In every deal, make sure to check when the discovery playbook was used and by whom. An SDR or an AE that is needed for further discovery due to a lack of information from the prospect or to be redirected to another company member. Understanding when the playbooks are used is important as well. In a deal lifecycle, you can check what product value or feature is needed to be pitched in order to win the deal.

New Features: Who is Demo-ing our latest features?

When adding new features or new messaging playbooks, as a manager, you want to know if the new plays are implemented correctly and used by your team.  This metric is important to understand which sellers are following new messaging and new product updates. This is a great way to see who embraces the change and who needs to work on it. As in our article, the Five Forces, the forgetting curve emphasizes that learning goes in one ear and out without immediate and ongoing reinforcement.

As a manager, your objective is to train your sales team so that they retain the key knowledge to present the product, come up with solutions to the prospects' issues, and close deals. The more your sales team is intelligent in their communication and understanding of the product and needs of the customer, the more successful your company will be. 

According to Irina at IspringSolutions, "If your salesmen know about new features coming soon, they can use this in negotiations to handle a prospect’s objections and close deals with those who are not completely satisfied with your current solution but are ready to wait for a while to get an updated version."

Playbook by Account

‍For each account, there can be several demos that are presented. It can sometimes be different sellers that are participating in these demos. It is important to see all of the playbooks that were delivered to an account to understand how educated they are about your solution and what still needs to be demoed or pitched. Who knows, you might find an upselling opportunity in front of you!

Also, playbook by account metrics helps with handshakes between sellers such as SDR to an account executive and account executive to a solution engineer, and eventually to the CSM team. It is essential to know what was presented to the client, and having all of the playbooks in a clear view can help with those handshakes between commercial teams.

Time spent — How long are our winning demos on average?

Understanding how much time your sales team spends on demos will help you optimize your demos and your sales workforce.  This information is vital to increase conversion; as indicated from data collected by the Center for Sales Strategy, we often see that less than 30% of a salesperson’s time is spent in selling activities, especially if they have a book of regular customers.”  ​​By paying attention to time-demo metrics, you can investigate your winning repeatable sales process. How much time and length was the demo from your latest won sales opportunities?

Time metrics can be more granular such as getting a glimpse that shows a breakdown of time spent on the different demo milestones, which can represent the product features that were shown or even the most used slides in your deck.

What are we learning in discovery?

The Discovery playbook is common in sales development teams and account executives.  According to Gartner, one of the best practices to gain insight into your potential clients is to dedicate time to discovery calls. What is a discovery call? “Discovery is the practice of using questions, insights, and messaging to understand the prospect and their situation.”  This includes: 

• The Account and specific Area of the organization
• The Prospects’ Role
• Business Processes and Technical Environments
• One to three Strategic Objectives
• Challenges and Roadblocks
• Implications (if they don’t solve these challenges)

Discovery metrics are important to measure first to understand that we are doing it right and getting the answers we need to continue to demo our solution.  Discovery can be updated to include more engaging content that our sellers share. Creating several discovery techniques and testing their metrics — such as time and progression of the opportunity — will show quickly what is the best discovery technique you need to use.

Demo collateral & Milestones Types

Interaction Types or Milestone Types are the different media used to tell you about the sales techniques. With Demoleap, we have several milestone types, including slides, demo scenes, talking points, and discovery. The ability to view what kind of milestones are used the most and, more importantly, what type of collateral is used will help you craft your winning playbooks. If there is a use of slides in your demo calls, and eventually the opportunity progresses, it may hint that there's a need to use more slides as an example. The option to create different playbooks according to the demo metrics you are getting from each demo your team is conducting gives the ability to measure new playbooks built differently. You can test playbooks according to our Neuroscience Tips for Great Demos or use known demo techniques such as the Show — Tell — Method.

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These are only examples. With our CRM integration, you can create your own demo metrics dashboard. 

The importance of measuring every aspect of your sales processes and that having the option to see in a clear way how your demos perform is the easiest way to improve conversion rates and to progress sales opportunities down the funnel.  

With Demoleap, each demo delivered is measured — adding more metrics you can improve upon — Creating your demo improvement cycle. 

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