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Show, Don't Tell

🤫 SDT #87 - Let them leave if they want


Read Time: 4.4 minutes

Welcome to our 87th edition of Show, Don't Tell. A newsletter to help you build REMARKABLE interactive demos...3 tips at a time.

This week we:

  1. count the exits in one demo, then keep counting
  2. meet the same woman in all four of a company's tours
  3. read a line next to a demo form that nobody's taken down in a year and a half

Let's get after it...

Supported By:

  • Navattic is our favorite interactive demo platform ❤️
  • It's easy to build demos of your product, that feel like the real thing
  • With HTML screen captures, easy editing, lots of sharing options, and powerful analytics
  • Try building your first demo for free!

Tip #1: Give Every Flow Two Exits

If your demo is good enough, your prospects will hit a moment where they “get it” and are ready to move forward.

But where's the button?

Oops… it's parked at the very end of the demo, after the fourteenth step.

But Mixpanel has a fix. They open with a five-step welcome tour. And at the end of those five steps, two buttons: Sign up for free or Continue the tour.

Take the second one and the checklist opens up. Here’s where things get interesting ⬇️

If you click into Events, that flow is short too. Six, seven steps at most. And at the end of THAT one, same two buttons. If you’re still not ready, you land back on the checklist, ready to pick the next one.

Every flow is short and ends in with two doors.

Jason and I like this because:

  • The exit shows up every few minutes, wherever the buyer happens to get interested.
  • They have removed all dead ends. You either leave or you're back at the checklist.

We praised Wise last week for opening with a five-stop highlight reel. Mixpanel runs the same kind of opener and then puts a door at the end of it.

Take the five-step pass and watch where the exits land

Tip #2: Give Your Library a Main Character

Quick disclosure: AppFolio is a client and we built these. Jason put it on the list anyway, so blame him 😉.

If you open any of their four demos, you meet the same woman. Her name is Jordan, a regional property manager, and she is having a week.

In the Assistant tour, her Monday starts the way it always does… wondering how things are going across her properties. In Flows, it's peak leasing season and she's answering the same pet policy question for what feels like the thousandth time. In the maintenance demo she's got a resident, Marcus, with a clogged sink and a work order that doesn't match the problem. In Resident Onboarding she's moving a new resident, Carly, into her apartment.

Four demos, one protagonist, with new residents rotating through as the second character.

Why? Because every good story needs a familiar character.

Spend a week with Jordan

Tip #3 - Catch the Not-Yets

Have you ever seen a webpage more confident than the ‘Book a Demo’ page?

It assumes everybody who lands there is ready to talk to a person. But a good number of them aren't. The only reason they clicked was because it was the only button that looked like it led to the product.

Vertice put a second option right there on the page. Sitting next to the demo request form:

Not ready for a demo yet? Take a self-guided tour of our platform below.

That line has been on that page since early 2025. A year and a half of redesigns, new campaigns, new hires, and somebody inevitably deciding to clean up the demo page. But it's still sitting there.

Lots of teams ship a self-guided tour, stare at pipeline number for 3 months, then pull it. Keeping one in the highest-intent spot on your site for that long tells us something is working.

See what's sitting next to their demo form

Introducing Navattic Agents 🤖

Wish you could give every prospect a personalized walk-through of your product? One where you could guide and qualify them, answer questions, demo key workflows, and show content in real time?

What once felt impossible is now here, with Navattic Agents 🤖

Instead of a fixed, click-through experience, an Agent can hold a real conversation with a buyer. Qualifying them, answering questions specific to their industry and role, and adapting which parts of the product it shows.

And with built-in simulations - you can test your agent with any buyer, persona, or industry before setting it live.

What does that mean?

Your SEs can stop repeating the same intro demo, and your buyers get real answers, in any time zone, in any language.

→ Take an agent demo of Navattic Agents (super meta, we know)

Ask the Dash Bros 🎙️

A live, FREE coaching session to help you build better interactive demos (and make them your top marketing asset.)

In these 45-minute coaching sessions, Eric and Jason answer your questions about demo strategy, distribution, sales enablement, and any other challenges you're facing with interactive demos.

The next session is Wednesday, September 23rd at 12PM ET.

→ Register now - It's 100% Free

So that’s it. Our 87th edition of Show, Don’t Tell.

3 useful tips to help you build remarkable interactive demos.

Tune in next Tuesday for more advice from DemoDash.

P.S.

If you know anyone else who would love these tips, please consider sending them this edition so they can subscribe 🙏

Jason and Eric
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Show, Don't Tell

Learn how to create remarkable interactive demos that make your SaaS product easy to understand and buy. 3 practical tips and examples every Tuesday.

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