I tracked my demos for a quarter. 15+ per week. Maybe 3 turned into real pipeline. The rest were basic product education that could've been a 5-minute video. I mapped out the full demo flow at a multi-product B2B SaaS company: 9 steps from inbound to close, 8-12 SE hours per opportunity, about 40% conversion. The biggest time sink wasn't the demo itself. It was repeated walkthroughs across different stakeholders who all needed the same context, and PoV setups for deals that never closed. For SE teams of 1-3 people: do you even have a qualification step before the demo hits your calendar, or does every inbound request get a live call? Curious how this plays out at earlier-stage companies vs. the enterprise motion I mapped.
Just to confirm, SE means “sales engineer”, correct? If yes, this situation is unique to your organization. It is not common for a sales engineer to get involved in the sales process prior to opportunity creation. If the company has the role of Sales Engineer, they are typically conducting somewhat customized demos, hence need a lot of information from the sales rep prior to that.
Tony W. yes, sales engineer! You're right that in an ideal world SEs get pulled in after qualification. The reality I've seen (and lived) is that at a lot of companies, especially smaller ones or those with technical products, the SE IS the demo. There's no AE doing a first call and then bringing in the SE. The prospect books a demo, the SE runs it, and there's no filter for whether that person is actually buying or just browsing. Curious if that matches what you've seen or if most orgs you've worked with have a cleaner handoff.
No I haven't seen that. If the company is that small, it's the founder who is doing the selling and the demo then. I've only worked with about 40 companies though
Hey Dylan M. - I've been an SE for 10 years now. Typically, there's a pre-demo call or technical discovery call that the SE has with the prospect to properly scope out the demo. That allows them to ask the questions they need to avoid the multi-demo situation to different stakeholders... your problem is very common though and many Sales team experience that deal silence. I actually built a tool that helps that post-demo follow up for individuals that haven't seen the demo and are only interested in the "Highlights". Check out Trailercast.io
