How to Use Interactive Demos for Upsell and Cross Sell

Upsells are a fantastic source of new business. But new product lines often come with time-consuming setup and beta testing.

But there’s an easier way to get your customer on board: interactive demos.

Interactive demos get their hands on your new features — without any configuration or the potential for bugs or crashes. Below, we explain how interactive demos simplify the upsell process and share three ways to integrate interactive demos into your land and expand strategy.

There are two main ways interactive demos facilitate upsells — by showing off pre-release functionality and by getting buyers aligned and excited about new features.

1. Show off pre-release functionality

While some customers are eager to participate in beta programs or try out new features before they’re live, that’s not always the case. Most people have a lot on their plate and want to be sure they get something valuable out of it before they commit.

Interactive demos let customers see what they are signing up for before they agree to dedicate time to try a new product pre-release. And even if customers can’t enroll in a full beta program, they can use interactive demos to offer feedback on a new UI or specific functionality. Instead of hopping on multiple calls, they can just run through a two-minute demo and provide their thoughts.

The team at Crossbeam has even used interactive demos to showcase new features and conduct user upgrades at live events like conferences:

“We recently used Navattic to spotlight pre-release functionality at a conference. This led to many attendees hand-raising to be part of our beta program and helped our team gather early feedback just from the event, which directly impacted the feature build itself.”

Navattic made it possible to showcase the functionality earlier in the development process and helped them get early feedback to their product team.

2. Ensure everyone knows what is being pitched

By the time a customer is ready to be upsold, they’ve likely got multiple POCs at your company – their original sales rep, their CSM, and potentially a different AE who is closing the new upsell deal.

And all of these parties must convey the same message. Interactive demos ensure you have a consistent pitch across departments and customers aren’t oversold. Crossbeam uses Navattic for this exact use case as well:

“We use demos for internal enablement and have heard from our Sales and CS teams that these help them align on talk tracks for features that are going to market soon. Demos have helped Sales and CS teams discuss upgrade features in more depth and feel equipped to answer more customer questions that come up.”

Sydney Lawson, a Product Marketing Manager at Athennian, has also recognized interactive demos as a key aspect of external and internal development, “They are a really useful tool for ensuring the adoption of new features and just further enablement for our own internal teams.”

Interactive demos aren’t just useful during a feature launch; they’re helpful pre and post-launch, too. Here’s what to optimize for each stage of the product lifecycle.

Option #1 (pre-feature launch): Create enablement demos for customer and internal use

In this stage, the purpose of interactive demos is to get customers excited about the feature(s) you’re about to release. So, create a simple demo showcasing the value and use case, and send a link directly to your customer list.

At the same time, share that link internally so everyone knows exactly what the feature is, how it works, and how to pitch it.

Your feature doesn’t even have to be built yet to start marketing it. You can use Navattic’s screenshot builder to show Figma mock-ups, prototypes, or snapshots of test environments.

Option #2 (during feature launch): Create landing pages or blogs with interactive demos

Now, the focus should be on promoting the new feature to a wider audience. You can do that by embedding a demo into a clean and clear landing page on your website. You could also add the interactive demo to an in-depth blog post or an email newsletter.

All of this content can be used as marketing collateral during the public feature announcement on social media and in customer success email campaigns. CSMs can drop a link to the new feature during or after their regular calls with customers or email it to their entire book of business.

Try adding query strings to your demos — that way, you can identify which customers are opening the feature demo and track how they interact with it.

Option #3 (post-launch): Embed in your existing product so customers can upsell themselves

Once you’ve validated that the new feature is a success, you’ll want to mass market it to your existing customers and free trialers.

The easiest way to do that is to directly link to your interactive demo from your product with a no-code tool like Chameleon. The Navattic-Chameleon integration allows you to launch in-app interactive demos from any prebuilt Chameleon Experience.

All you have to do is activate Navattic in your Chameleon instance and then copy and paste the embed code into your existing Chameleon Experience.

At that point, users will have the option to see a demo of a new feature before diving into your product. Clicking on “See Demo” will open the demo in full screen and guide them through various use cases for and selling points of the new feature.

Not quite sure where to start? Gain some inspiration from three examples of B2B SaaS companies leveraging interactive demos for product launches and upsells.

Klue

Earlier this year, Klue launched a new product: Competitive Revenue Analytics. As part of their announcement, they published an in-depth blog describing how revenue leaders can prioritize their efforts, see the biggest threats to their pipelines, and monitor individual rep performance against competitors.

To hammer home these value props, Klue embedded an interactive demo directly in the post, enabling readers to try Competitive Revenue Analytics for themselves — right then and there.

The demo covers Klue’s Competitive Analytics dashboard piece by piece, from revenue gaps to threats to open opportunities. Running through the interactive demo shows exactly how the competitive revenue engine looks and feels, generating excitement among Klue’s potential and existing customers.

Crossbeam

Crossbeam went in another direction with its interactive demo upsell strategy, placing the tour just below the fold on a landing page for its Crossbeam Core product.

After a brief pitch for the product and an invitation to sign up for Crossbeam’s free trial, users can immediately start interacting with the product, learning how Crossbeam can maximize partner-sourced revenue, identify co-selling opportunities, and pinpoint potential integration partners with the Account Mapping Matrix.

At the end of the tour, Crossbeam prompts users to sign up for a free trial, reinforcing all that they’ve seen and learned in the interactive demo and pushing them even further toward conversion.

Gorgias

With a limited number of account managers available, Gorgias has tried to make their upsells more self-serve using Candu pop-ups within their product.

For example, on the Gorgias app homepage, customers can click on “Discover our Add-on products” to see what other features are available.

Once they do, a pop-up will appear, giving them the option to add the new feature right away or “Take a Tour” of their Automation, Voice, or SMS add-ons.

If a user decides to take a tour, they’ll be taken to a full-screen interactive demo showcasing the feature and its benefits. Within the demo, Gorgias adds CTAs to keep exploring other add-ons or to “View plans” to review pricing for each add-on.

Taking this multi-faceted approach helps Gorgias meet customers where they are and decreases the need for AMs to facilitate every upsell. All the time they save can be put toward closing other strategic accounts.

Product demos can enhance your feature launches and accelerate your upsell workflow by aligning internal teams, stoking customer excitement, and preparing customers for what’s to come.

But they have plenty of other valuable use cases, too. Here are just a few other ways to get the most out of your interactive demos:

• How to Use Interactive Demos for In-App Activation
• 3 Ways to Use Navattic Embed Events with Event Platforms
• Email Marketing Strategies for Product Demos