LordBusiness

Chief Revenue Officer

"Buying Demo's" Yea or Nay?

I've had a rush "offers" for meetings this past couple of weeks in my inbox. All sounding the same, "I know your busy, but I'll send you a gift card for your time to take a demo".

I personally don't jive with this tactic, but curious to what you all think?

Is "Buying" demo's a tactically good idea?

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🔎 Prospecting

9 comments

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salesnerd

WR Officer

Head of Growth

Marketing teams LOVE to do this because it boosts their SQL numbers. It can absolutely work to get some quick demos and heck they might even close. But this is not a sustainable way of handling demos.

If you want to incentivize demos there's a right way to do it. I've seen two instances where this works particularly well:
1) Donate $XX to a charity of the demo taker's choice. This means that there's no actual financial gain for the demoee, but makes them feel good about themselves.
2) Tie the 'reward' into your product. For example if you sell a tool that helps you sort through massive amounts of data, you could give out noise cancelling headphones under a 'cut through the noise' campaign.

CadenceCombat

Tycoon

Account Executive

Boosts their SQLs but kills your conversions. This seems like a bummer to me from a sales perspective.

SalesPharaoh

Big Shot

Senior Account Executive

Exactly if it's shitty leads and then counts as inbound and you get the heat for it.

kgotti

Opinionated

Key Account Executive

I agree this isn't sustainable at all and not a way to run a sales org.

But I have had success in sending out a gift card for a call in which I just picked that person's brain to get details that helped my outbounding greatly to that account.

Prime week was upcoming and I made up some bs about we are giving away Amazon gift cards for 30 minute calls. From that call, I gained tons of knowledge about the incumbent vendor, pains, people I should be talking to etc. So it was totally worth the $25 gift card I sent.

CadenceCombat

Tycoon

Account Executive

This reeks of desperation. I’d potentially entertain the demo for a gift card as a prospect but I’d feel a bit cringe for the sales person doing the demo.

LordBusiness

Politicker

Chief Revenue Officer

I''ve always felt that all that generally happens is you end up paying incentives for folks who prolly would have taken a meeting anyway.

sahil

Notable Contributor

Deepak Chopra of Sales

I'd rather pay the prospect in cash directly ... GLG pays people for their time. Why not sales teams?

SalesPharaoh

Big Shot

Senior Account Executive

Well it's lame but I like gift cards haha and especially if im not the target customer i tell them please send it to the right person.

Usually the product should be interesting enough to without having to bribe them to demo it.

That said i advised against it.

Cyberjarre

Politicker

BDR

Had a boss who forced Xanax down the throat of an employee who was nervous about a sales call. No joke.

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LordBusiness

"Buying Demo's" Yea or Nay?

Is "Buying" demo's a tactically good idea?

9 comments

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