This article is from WeChat official account:I think I’m here (ID: angelplusdevil) span> , author: I think I pot in GN, title figure from the visual China

I used to work for an IT consulting company in the United States, similar to Accenture. Responsible for the implementation and delivery of the plan in the first year, and go to the front line as a consultant in the second year. The company is small, but the customers it serves are almost the top 500, such as Coca-Cola, GE and Johnson & Johnson.

In the first year of delivery, most of the time will follow the project. When the sales contract is signed, the project manager will take us to meet the needs of the customer and negotiate the system plan and implementation plan.

There is a considerable amount of time left. I need to cooperate with them to quickly make a product Demo for the intended customers and their potential needs before selling orders or during business negotiations.

Sales is the customer’s first impression of the company, and Demo is often the customer’s first impression of the product.

The production process of the Demo looks like this:

  • First, tailor the complete product according to the customer’s industry attributes and basic needs;

  • Secondly, you need to assume the core scene, and then fill in the relevant “fake data” to simulate the customer’s Actual usage;

  • Finally, according to the sales instructions, personalize the configuration on the interface, in line with the industry or customer’s operations habit.

It is not troublesome to make a demo, but when the delivery time of the project is often tight, and when a demo of a new industry is to be made for sales, the time taken up is unpredictable.

Finally, on the day of the show, we also want to be online at all times. If there is a new demand on site, it must be responded remotely immediately in order to create a good experience for customers.

Sometimes, customers will also request to display the Demo in other real customer environments, namely “Production environment(Production environment)” Really feel.

Therefore, during the whole process, the work pace and efficiency of the back-end personnel are often greatly affected.

As Friedman, the founder of Demostack, wrote in his blog:

Every time a sales order is placed, everyone suffers from “Demo anxieties(Demo anxiety disorder)“.

Demostack was born to solve this series of problems, just like the slogan on the homepage of the official website:

Great demos win deals.(Use a good demo to win orders)

On March 9, the company announced the completion of a US$12.5 million Series A financing led by BVP, a well-known venture capital firm that had invested in Twilio, Shopify and LinkedIn in its early stages. So far, this mysterious company that was established in September last year and quickly completed the angel round surfaced in December.

In simple terms, Demostack is a “No-code product demo experience platform(No-code product demo experience platform)“.

The product is fully serviced by sales or marketing personnel, without the cooperation of back-end programmers. The business can independently create virtual scenes and “fake data” to demonstrate the latest products to customers anytime and anywhere.

The core value of the platform is reflected in:

  • Empowering business personnel, allowing them to flexibly create Demo at any time, creating a good on-site experience for customers, Increase the sales rate;

  • Liberate programmers, don’t let them do repetitive and tedious tasks, especially sometimes they need to be on standby at any time And being distracted in your own work;

  • Avoid the risk of real data being exposed, and ensure the safety of customer data in the production environment and the stability of product operation .

At the same time, for the production and research teams that are iteratively testing new products, they also need to get rapid business cooperation during the development process, such as targeted delivery to the internal test user group and collecting feedback.

Of course, for the business and even the entire company, the most important thing is to win the order.

So from the perspective of product positioning, Demostack rightfully belongs to a new species in the Martech(marketing technology) field.

There are already more than 8,000 Martech companies in the United States, but so far there is no category called “Demoing software(Demo software)“.

So, how does this platform create demos of different products in a code-free manner?

The official website did not reveal much information. There was only a brief introduction in the Techcrunch report:

“They provide a full demo building tool that starts with a recording of the environment, so it looks and feels like the live product…”(They provide a tool to create a demo, which can simulate the real online status by recording the screen of the running environment)

The core is “screen recording” to “learn” the interface and interaction of the product, and then restore a “fake product”.

In other words, an interactive virtual prototype.

There should also be a lightweight database in the background, which is convenient for business personnel to create and store data for presentation.

Another value is that with this interactive Demo, the previous solution that programmers had to take screenshots and paste into PPT would gradually be replaced because programmers had no time to cooperate.

Sales on the platform can also quickly add personalized settings such as the customer’s Logo to convey the value of the product, and can also centrally manage the Demo schedule and customer feedback in the background.

Expand the imagination again. In the future, the platform can not only manage offline demos, but may also be able to quickly create a short video presentation so that sales can share anytime and anywhere, and even initiate online presentation meetings.

Online Demo is not as simple as opening Zoom. Sales need to record and answer customer questions at any time, the final feedback and follow-up plan, usually these records need to be followedThe company’s CRM gets through and so on.

In this field, Demodesk, a startup that graduated from YC Winter Camp in 2019, took the lead in gaining favor during the epidemic. Not only did it gain more than 150 customers, it also completed a round of financing in September last year.

“The best product doesn’t always win the customer, but the best demo usually does.”

It is true that the best products do not necessarily win customers, but the best demos often do.

Demostack founder Friedman and Lianchuang CTO Hakim are serial entrepreneurs. The two founded Reactful, a company based on machine learning technology that analyzes user browsing behavior by burying points on customer websites to increase user click-through rates and activity the company.

The founder was then responsible for product and market strategy in a corporate travel expense control and payment management company. It was also during this work experience that he discovered the above-mentioned pain points and immediately started his own business again.

From the official website, customers under test include WalkMe, Salesforce, Hopin, Intercom, etc. Almost all B2B companies need Demo, and this demand is extremely universal.

The value it provides-helping sales and ordering is the most willing part of a company’s marketing budget, especially in China.

Soon I had a conversation with several domestic entrepreneurs and sales from major manufacturers, and while excited, I also asked the following questions:

First, from a functional perspective, products recommended in real time based on user behavior may not be fully demonstrated. Due to the separation from the back-end server, the algorithms and calculation results behind it cannot be transmitted to the front-end.

Secondly, from a scenario perspective, what Chinese customers often want is not a simple Demo, but a PoC(Proof of Concept). From the beginning, the back-end must work with the business to understand the customer’s customized needs, and at the same time filter out any unachievable or low-ROI function development. A thin Demo does not necessarily create a good experience and increase the single rate.

Finally, from a management perspective, sometimes in order to sign orders, sales may add functions or configurations that do not exist at this stage in the Demo, that is, “Overpromise (overpromise Commitment)“. Whether it is really necessary to separate the front and back ends in the sales process is also doubtful.

Demostack has not yet opened a public beta. Interested friends can log in to the official website and click “Get Early Access” to apply for the internal beta.

Finally, add a small episode: One night the company’s official website suddenly failed to log in. After determining that it was not a network problem, I sent a message to the founder on LinkedIn to report this situation. I didn’t expect to be returned by the second, and said to deal with it immediately. It didn’t take long for the website to return to normal.

This may be just a microcosm of countless startups.

After all, a good CEO is the best “Demo” of the company.

This article is from WeChat official account:I think I’m here (ID: angelplusdevil) span> , author: I think I pot in GN