Personalize your demos to make the purchase decision easier for your buyers.
B2B Selling is hard. But, have we thought about our buyers?
Gartner research shows that 77% of B2B buyers say their last purchase decision was difficult or complex.
Why is this?
The typical B2B purchase decision involves as many as 10 different decision-makers, each of whom comes with five different pieces of information they collected independently. As a group, the buying party must choose which of these 50 pieces of information to use to make a decision.
As a seller, you must find a way to cut through the noise, rise to the top, and become the reliable source through which buyers receive their information.
This is accomplished through personalization.
As Matthew Bigelow of WalkMe says, it’s time to remove the “imagine if” conversation from sales. He says, “If generic demos worked, we’d just upload those pitches to YouTube and sit back. The reality is that every demo must be customized to what you’re learning about what your prospect is trying to solve.”
When you can stop asking your prospects to picture themselves using your solution, and actually show them instead, the solution becomes clear. There will be no more debate, the product that clearly demonstrates value will rise to the top, and the purchase decision will be easy.
Here are five ways you can tailor your selling and demos to deliver personalized demos that win deals.
1. Tailor the value proposition
A personalized value proposition helps your buyers understand exactly what benefits they will derive from your solution. As Matt says, “Buyers only buy for three reasons. To make money, save money, or mitigate risk. You want to help them understand that you can do those things, and help them imagine it.”
Every customer may be unique, but there are broad themes that run across industries and roles.
Matt recommends using sales enablement functions that do not carry quotas to help assist sellers in customizing their value propositions.
Organizations should use revenue enablement teams to research buyer personas, roles, and industries to create ready-made value propositions that the sales rep can leverage along with their discovery abilities to better scale personalization.
Build a repository of ready-made value propositions to pull from as you prepare each demo. Then, use your own research and discovery to tailor value statements to specific prospects.
2. Metrics that make sense
Many sellers struggle to tell stories around the value of data and charts, especially if they are generic.
In fact, metrics can actually distract prospects during a demo and cause them to lose interest in your solution.
If you show a mid-sized company a demo that includes enterprise-sized numbers, your buyers may get stuck on the enormous amounts they see.
They will think, “maybe this is too complex for us, maybe we aren’t big enough for this, this is probably too expensive.” All while they are thinking this, they aren’t paying attention to what you’re saying, and completely missing any sort of explanation that you provide.
By showing the wrong numbers during a demo, you can introduce doubt that will lead to a loss.
Instead, customize the amounts shown in your demo. Weave them into the overall story to support the value proposition and tell a believable success story. Show your buyers what they could accomplish.
3. Include their names
What’s a better way to help your prospects picture themselves in your solution than showing them what their actual account could look like?
Whether you build a custom demo instance, or simply use a demo experience platform, personalize your demo environment to show your buyer’s names, company logo, and job title.
While it may seem simple, anything that can be done to remove the “imagine” part of your demo helps buyers see themselves within your product. When you do this, they will think specifically about how it will work for them, help them see how easy it will be to implement and make them feel more emotionally invested, all of which make the purchase decision that much easier.
4. Show them their customers
Similar to numbers and names, you should include your prospect’s customer and their logos in your personalized demo.
If you show a demo environment that contains mid-sized companies to a solution that sells to enterprises, you subconsciously introduce the idea that your solution is not advanced enough, and may not be able to meet their needs. On the other hand, showing huge logos like Microsoft or Hewlett-Packard to a mid-market company may scare them off.
Most organizations feature customers on their websites, and it is easy to deduct who else they may be targeting. When you build your personalized demo, be sure to include not only who they currently work with, but companies you believe they might want to capture are well.
Again, with the demo experience platform, this edit can be made with just a few clicks.
5. Only show them what they want to see
It’s easy to get lost in a demo, especially if there are questions or requests you are unprepared for.
Many reps find themselves clicking into different menus, visiting different pages, and showing features they were not ready for.
If not well executed, this deviation results in poor impressions, leading to a loss.
Instead, limit the scope of your demo to the specific value proposition you intend to present to your buyers. Only show the features, functionality, and benefits of that proposition.
This way, you only stick to what you know and can ensure you always speak from an expert position. If a buyer wants to see something different, you can simply explain that that’s typically something that companies are interested in after a few more periods of growth and that it can be covered later.
To learn more about how revenue teams can empower sellers with better product demos. Check out our discussion with Kimara Moodley and Matt Bigelow.
