r/startups • u/jp_taptale • 3d ago
I will not promote What do you send prospects after a demo call? (i will not promote)
Founder-led sales question. After a good demo call, prospective customers usually has to sell it internally to people who weren't on the call. What I usually see is people sending decks or a recording of a meeting, and i suspect nobody looks at it.
What do you leave behind that actually reviewed/shared? A short video? A one-pager?
I'm working on this problem for B2B teams, so I'm biased, but I'd like to hear what's working before I make too many assumptions.
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u/Tstriple_R 3d ago
As some who evals and has a hand in the decision I mostly want to see clear pricing (#1), a 1-pager about what it does, and a live demo video on YouTube goes really far. Lets me review at my own pace and see what the product actually looks like, rather than a promissory list of features.
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u/jp_taptale 3d ago
in that order: pricing > value > seeing it ?
as the person reviewing the content - is there anything that would make it easier? like quick answers to possible questions, recaps, direct access to the seller?
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u/Tstriple_R 3d ago
Yep, that order. For content review....I don't get a ton of this - they don't usually have videos, which IMO is a shame. But if there is a video, a timestamp for each feature would be helpful. For the 1-pager, if I can't get a good idea in 1 page then I usually ask someone else to explain it to me (that person now being Claude). I'm not really interested in the fancy "how we add value" slides a lot of sales calls try and build into their presentation and neither is my CISO. If we're on a call with you we already know we want your product (or something like it) and we already understand the value prop, we just want to see how it works, and make sure it does what we need it to do.
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u/Greedy-Fun-5734 3d ago
Clear documentation on pricing, as well as the agreed upon value and benefits that most resonate with the user who represents the company’s initiatives driving the need for the demo.
Great use of call transcription is to have a trained AI agent that listens to the call for needs based language from the prospective client and converting it into direct a marketing assets just for them.
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u/dmdbGroup 2d ago
The person who matters most was never on your call. Your real buyer is whoever the prospect has to convince on Monday, so your leave-behind isn't for them, it's their ammo.
- Send it within 2 hours of the call while it's fresh. Same day or it dies. I once sent a deck at 9pm on a Friday and watched it sit unopened until Wednesday.
- One page, three blocks: what they said the pain was (their exact words from the transcript), what it costs them now (a number, even a rough one), and your pricing. The internal buyer opens it cold and should get it in 90 seconds.
- Make it forwardable. No personalization inside the doc itself. A clean one-pager with pricing gets shared to 3 people. A personalized video doesn't. Nobody forwards a video of you talking to their CFO.
Rule of thumb: if your leave-behind only makes sense to the person who attended the demo, it never reaches the person with the budget.
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u/rakeshkanna91 2d ago
The one-pager got forwarded when I wrote it for finance, not the person I demoed.
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u/propelearth 2d ago
i'd ask who else needs to approve it before deciding the format. finance needs the full cost and terms; whoever implements it needs to know what work lands on their team. a generic deck can miss both.
for the recap, include what was actually agreed, what's still unverified, and the next decision with an owner. if you discussed a pilot, spell out what would count as success and when you'll review it. don't put an estimated saving in there as a fact unless the buyer confirmed the inputs. plain email is fine if they can forward it without explaining the whole call.
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u/eandi 2d ago
Leave behinds are dumb. You book the next step. Depending on what works to sell your product you're booking them for a demo or for a planning session on how you crack the buying committee/budget owner with them if they can't just buy stuff themselves.
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u/jp_taptale 2d ago
fair, booking the next step on the call is ideal. what do you do when they won't commit to a date on the call and say "send me something"?
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u/RajatKhoware 2d ago
Send them a recap, not a proposal. One page: what they said their problem was, what you showed them, and the next step with a date. Proposals get forwarded to a committee and die. Recaps get a yes or a no, and a no is worth more than a ghost. The close rate on our demo follow-ups doubled when we stopped sending PDFs. How long is your current follow-up, honestly, and how much of it does a prospect actually read?
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u/RobCatalanoGTM 2d ago
Short recap email within a couple hours, and write it for the person who wasn't on the call, not the person who was.
Your champion is going to forward it, so it has to survive being read cold by someone with 90 seconds and no context. What worked when I was selling into HR teams:
- What they told you the problem costs them (quote their words back), 2. what you proposed, and 3. the one decision you need from the person forwarding it.
I'd send a deck, but just refernce if they wanted a slide/quote/stat.
Biggest thing I did tho, was ask them how I can suport their vision moving forward, and make myself available for anything they need. That's it.
But i'd only follow-up 2-3 times in a month, and those would ALWAYS be value add. Check out reserarch. See this stat. Share their LinkedIn posts. etc. Value add, not selling. No one likes being sold to imho
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u/LaurenceDarabica 3d ago
A fully featured trial access.