Nine out of ten buyers trust what real customers have to say about a company more than what the company says about itself. This presents a predicament for those conducting sales demos, a session typically dedicated to showcasing all you have to offer.
Fortunately, most modern sales teams are now more familiar with solving customer problems rather than highlighting product features in a demo. But planting that seed starts before you even jump into the product.
If you're not leveraging customer testimonials during your demo intro slides, you're missing out on an essential tactic to position your value proposition effectively. If you want to stand out from your competition and win over a potential client, you need to show them that you can fix their problems.
Here's the thing: that doesn't always mean showing them exactly how you'll solve their problem. Yes, we might strive for this, but the more social proof you can provide, the less the prospect will need to pull out the magnifying glass across every little detail.
This is pivotal in decreasing sales cycle time, and often it starts with nailing your demos.
What Most Sales Teams Get Wrong With Case Study Slides
The worst thing you can do is not have any customer testimonials, but let's assume that this box is at least checked. When a sales team typically incorporates customer testimonials into their sales demos, you usually see two slides:
The "You're in great company slide"
This is usually a slide of your best and greatest logos. They are your prized possession, and just like a fancy watch collection, you'll take any opportunity to showcase them.
The "Customer Story Slides"
This is a slide similar to a one-pager or a module you might display on your website. It's a good slide, but you probably only have a couple of them, and chances are they're also one of your top recognizable companies.
These two slides in themselves aren't bad slides, but the problem we see is how sales teams utilize them. If the brands you showcase aren't similar to the prospect you're trying to win over, then it can actually have a harmful effect.
This is particularly true if you're showcasing your top clients. These logos are precious and should be highlighted on your homepage and perhaps even noted in collateral as a stamp of approval for your financial stability, scalability, etc.
But in Sales, it's a well-known notion that if you share too many features with a customer that aren't relevant to their main pain points, they will start to presume your solution is overly complex and therefore, overpriced. You may come off as a scalable option, but not being a great fit for where they are right now is a hurdle you may not be able to overcome.
A similar phenomenon occurs when you showcase customers who are irrelevant to a customer's industry or ten years ahead of them in maturity. The actual product demo hasn't even started yet, and already, you're making them feel misunderstood.
Not a great start.
Best Practice for Testimonial Slides
Show that you really listened to them during the discovery; this is often summed up the agenda in some way if you're doing a good job, but from a testimonial perspective, highlight customer stories that showcase just how familiar you are with the prospect and their challenges.
The "We're committed to your industry slide"
If you're selling to a SaaS Healthtech company, consider consolidating all of your Healthtech company logos into one slide. Paint a picture of your familiarity with meeting their unique requirements and servicing them in a manner relevant to their industry regulations.
Explain why your company is very excited to continue expanding into the space and how your customers have been at the forefront of defining innovative best practices.
The "Relevant Customer" Slide
If you're selling to a $10 ARR SaaS company, don't present them with a customer slide showing how Twilio, a multi-billion dollar SaaS company, is decreasing integration costs with your product. This isn't helpful.
A SaaS product is one part of a multi-faceted equation to achieving business outcomes, and Twilio has more resources beyond your offering that are likely to contribute to its success.
Instead, showcase a customer that is a couple of years ahead of your prospect, let's say around $20m ARR. Speak to how the prospects situation is similar to that of the customer when they began their partnership with you.
You can then highlight specific anecdotes or features that benefited the customer later in the demo. This strategy will set the tone for the impacts your prospects can benefit from in the next couple of years.
After all, they can envision their next raise, but maybe not the company going public in the next decade.
In Conclusion
To effectively employ this level of agility across your sales demos, you need as many customer case studies as you can get a hold of. If you arm your sales team with a catalog of customer stories, they can then mold their messaging across every demo.
This means getting case studies not just from your top-paying customers or the most notable logos but for every segment you're targeting. For example, suppose you segment by enterprise, mid-market, and SMB but only capture case studies from Enterprise customers.
In that case, your SMB reps likely need help to resonate their messaging with their prospects, or vice versa.
One thing is certain: prospects don't want to be the first to navigate uncharted waters when it comes to services and systems (unless they get a massive discount). Social proof is the mechanism for surmounting this across the entire sales cycle.
Use them thoughtfully in your demo slides, and refer back to them during the demo and when speaking about your customer experience. When you do so, your prospects will trust you more, and more trust equals more customers.