Five tips from a Sales Engineer to crush your demo interview

I have had many people reach out for advice on how to nail their demo interview.  I have been on both sides of the interview (interviewer and interviewee) and I have seen a few that have stood out but most lack both preparation and creativity.  Personally, demo interview are my favorite type of interview as they enable the interviewee to express their passion on a product and set themselves up for success (since often they can create the use case).  As the interviewer, it gives me insight into how you will demo in front of customers, respond to difficult questions and time management.  What I have seen after interviewing numerous sales engineers is that the best engineers do 3-5 of the following: 

Set up the opportunity.

One of the areas that SEs tend to overlook is setting up the opportunity for the interviewers.  In my opinion, this sets the tone for the rest of the interview since it’s where you can tee yourself up to crush the demo interview.  The best candidate identifies where in the sales process the opportunity is currently at, who the stakeholders are for this meeting (e.g. CTO, VP of Engineering etc) and recaps any background on the sales opportunity (e.g. competition, discovery summary etc).  I have seen this information delivered in numerous ways such as a deck, pre-read via email or a quick dialogue before presenting the demo.  

Clearly convey product value.

A common belief is that most people listening to a presentation will only remember 3 things that you say.  Therefore it’s important to make sure that one of those things is the value of the product you are demoing.  In other words, the question you should be answering is “what’s in it for the buyer?”.  I find that many interviewees will set up the scenario and roles for the interviewer but forget to explain why the buyer is interested in the product or what’s the problem that the buyer is trying to solve.  Next time you are doing an demo interview, remember to explain the value that makes the product unique in solving the buyer’s problem.  

Take a quick pause.

This one might be a pet peeve of mine but one of the worst demos I have to sit through are the ones where the interviewee starts their demo and just talks and talks and talks without ever engaging with the interviewer.  I believe this happens because of nerves or over preparing for the demo (e.g. reading off of a script).  There are numerous ways on how you can involve the interviewer into the demo (even if the interviewer has no idea about the product) by pausing and asking a question or asking if what’s being presented is clear.  One of the KPIs I have now when I interview candidates is how many pauses did they create.  

Manage your time.

Although this one is self explanatory, I will just say this: it is the job of the interviewee to keep track of the time when demoing.  If the interviewer gives you 20 min to demo, keep it at that time.  Whenever I prepare for a demo, I always ask how much time I have for a demo and subtract 5 min from the time to account for questions and answers.  Almost every engaging demo will involve some Q&A during the actually demo.  

Recap the important stuff.

My last piece of advice is to always end the demo interview by recapping the 3 most important take aways from your demo.  This helps remind the interviewer what was discussed or shown during the last 20 min or so of the demo.  Also, it helps with opening up Q&A as it will trigger to the interviewer the 3 things to focus on from the demo.

I’m interested to hear what are your best tips when doing a demo interview.  Let me know.