Engaging prospects and building rapport with the buyers  is crucial for winning deals. Customized demos have become a valuable tool for achieving these goals. However, creating demos from scratch can be time-consuming and repetitive, leaving sales teams with less time to focus on building customer relationships. This is where last-mile customization comes in.

The concept of last-mile customization involves utilizing standardized demos and tailoring them to specific deals, creating a personalized experience for prospects without sacrificing valuable time and resources. This approach helps sales teams efficiently scale their demo best practices both internally and with partners.

According to Ludek Safar, Head of Customer Advisory Central Europe at SAS Institute, "Demoboost enables sales teams and partners to deliver a great demo creation experience for every customer. While at the same time, consultants and engineers focus on the most complex use cases. This opens up new opportunities to market efficiently and effectively."

This article will explore the philosophy behind last-mile customization and how it can benefit your sales team. 

Tackling the Challenge of Customization: Solutions for Personalized Demos

When it comes to customization, creating unique and engaging demos can be daunting for many companies. 

According to Hubspot, 50% of sales leaders say demos or sales presentations are one of the most important productivity metrics to track. This means that companies are increasingly recognizing the importance of creating effective demos to drive sales and are tracking metrics related to demos to measure their sales productivity.

In fact, many other challenges can hinder their ability to showcase their products and services effectively. 

These challenges include:

1. Lack of technical expertise

Account Executives need detailed technical expertise to deliver demos that effectively address the customer's pain points. This level of expertise simply doesn’t sit within AE’s area of expertise and they need support from presales. Additionally, keeping up with the latest releases of multiple complex products can be challenging for AEs. Having a library of always up-to-date demo libraries can provide AEs with the necessary resources to create engaging demos that showcase each product's latest features and capabilities. This approach can help sales teams stay on top of the latest developments and provide clients with the best possible experience.

2. Challenge of Scaling Presales

The biggest challenge in creating demos is the time and cost involved in the process. Presales are the demo magicians, who can translate the buyer’s needs and link them to specific solutions of the product they sell. Presales, however, work on multiple account executives and deals simultaneously, making it difficult for them to provide assistance to every deal. However, when they do, the win rates are twice as high as when account executives work alone. The key challenge here is to scale presales, and the ideal scenario would be to have SEs assist every deal to ensure higher win rates.

Involving SEs in every deal is not always possible, so having ready demos for all possible technical questions equipped with talking tracks can provide clients with SE-like treatment, even if the SE is not involved. This approach can help maintain consistency in messaging and branding while ensuring a positive customer experience.

3. Need for unique demos

Sales reps usually need to wait for a few weeks for a custom demo to be created by presales. Creating customized demos for each customer can be time-consuming and technically challenging, even if the demo answers repetitive questions and only needs a minimum personalisation. This leads to dragging the sales process and loss of momentum with the buyer.

4. Inability to re-use the custom demos

Traditionally, personalized demos are used only once for a specific deal and need to be remade from scratch for the next one. This approach is time-consuming, requires technical skills, and does not allow for reusing previously created demos. However, many demos presented during the mid-sales funnel stage could be templated with minimal changes required, such as the prospect's logo, name, or nomenclature. Organizations can save time and resources by creating a library of such templates while ensuring a consistent and engaging demo experience.

5. Maintaining consistency in messaging and branding

Consistency in the message is crucial in maintaining a strong brand image and ensuring that prospects receive a clear and accurate understanding of the product or service being offered. In pursuit of tailoring the message to each deal AEs might get off track and steer away from the established pitch.

With the use of an automated demo platform, sales leaders can track and analyze the usage of demos within their teams, especially in the live sessions. This allows for a better understanding of how each sales rep is utilizing demos in their meetings and ensures that the message being delivered is consistent across the team.

Not only does this benefit the overall brand image, but it also allows for a better analysis of the sales team's performance. With the ability to track and attribute deal conversion to specific sales reps, sales leaders can identify areas where additional training may be needed or where an individual may need extra support in delivering the message effectively.

Furthermore, the ability to track and analyze demo usage provides valuable insights into the effectiveness of different approaches and allows for adjustments to be made where necessary. This ensures that the sales team is constantly improving and adapting to meet the needs of prospects and ultimately leads to higher conversion rates and revenue.

According to a survey by Salesforce, 97% of sales executives say modern tech gives reps more time to sell. This indicates a need for a simpler solution that enables sales reps to quickly and easily customize demos for each engagement. 

Elevating Your Sales Game: The Benefits of Last Mile Customization

Customizing demos to meet each customer's specific needs is pretty much essential for businesses to succeed in today's market. Last Mile Customization can provide several benefits, including increased engagement, a better understanding of customer needs, and higher deal velocity.

For one, it increases engagement with prospects by providing a personalized experience that resonates with their specific needs. 

According to a study by Crunchbase, companies that personalize their sales process see a 6x increase in win rates. A better understanding of customer needs is another advantage, as customized demos can help companies identify pain points and tailor solutions accordingly.

Some benefits of Last Mile Customization include:

1. Increased engagement

An automated demo platform allows vendors to provide relevant and personalized information to buyers at every step of the way, creating opportunities to connect and build rapport with buyers earlier in the sales process. 

According to a study by SiriusDecisions, half the time of the purchase decision is made before the buyer meets the sales rep, making it a crucial missed opportunity to engage with the buyer. By providing a demo that is relevant to the buyer's industry, function, or use case, accompanied by a video of the sales rep, rapport can be built, and engagement can be stimulated.

In addition, personalization has been shown to be highly effective in improving engagement. A study by Epsilon found that personalized emails had an open rate of 29% higher than non-personalized emails and a click-through rate of 41% higher. By providing a personalized demo, vendors can increase engagement and build relationships with potential customers.

2. Improved customer experience

By providing buyers with what they want, vendors can improve the overall customer experience. Statistics show that buyers want to see demos early and want relevant information immediately. An automated demo platform can deliver exactly that, providing buyers with a demo tailored to their industry, function or use case  at the click of a button. This creates a better customer experience and positions the vendor as responsive and customer-focused.

For instance, a software company can showcase how its products can address the customer's specific pain points, such as data security concerns, by demo creation highlighting relevant features. By doing so, companies can improve the customer experience and build long-term relationships.

3. Reduction of sales cycles 

One of the biggest advantages of an automated demo platform is the ability to reduce the time it takes to produce a demo. 

According to research, the average time it takes to produce a demo is approximately two weeks, a timeframe that can cause delays in the sales process. An automated demo platform can reduce this time significantly, allowing vendors to deliver demos quickly and efficiently.

Moreover, the platform enables vendors to share the demo internally, which saves time in meetings with stakeholders who couldn't make it to the initial meeting. The faster the purchase consensus is reached, the quicker the deal closure.

4. Coherent messaging along the buying journey

An automated demo platform ensures messaging consistency along the entire buying journey, from marketing to sales and beyond. By creating demo libraries aligned with the product's messaging and value proposition, vendors can ensure that the messaging is coherent and consistent across all channels and touch points. This is particularly important for complex products that require a deep understanding of the product and its benefits.

Furthermore, coherent messaging is essential to building a strong brand and reputation. According to research conducted by Epsilon, 80% consumers exhibit a greater inclination towards making a purchase when brands offer personalized experiences.

5. Increased brand loyalty

Strong product adoption and updates about upgrades and additional functionalities are essential to increasing customer loyalty. An automated demo platform allows vendors to showcase their products effectively, leading to better product adoption. Moreover, the platform enables vendors to keep their customers up to date with new features and functionalities, improving customer satisfaction and loyalty.

According to research by Harvard Business School, a 5% increase in customer loyalty can result in an increase in profits of up to 95%. By creating an engaging and personalized demo experience, vendors can increase customer loyalty, leading to higher profits and growth.

For example, an eCommerce company can create customized product demos for their customers based on their browsing history and purchase behavior. By showcasing products that are tailored to their interests and preferences, the company can build a stronger bond with the customer and increase the likelihood of repeat purchases. This can lead to increased customer retention and brand loyalty.

In conclusion, an automated demo platform offers several benefits, including increased engagement, improved customer experience, faster deal closures, coherent messaging, and increased loyalty. These benefits can lead to higher sales, customer satisfaction, and growth, making an automated demo platform a valuable investment for vendors.

Last-Mile Personalisation made simple by the Demoboost Solution

Customizing demos for every potential customer can be a daunting task for businesses, often stemming from a lack of resources, time constraints, and difficulty in creating unique demos for each engagement. 

Whether it's presales, marketing, sales, or customer success and internal training, Demoboost provides a comprehensive solution to help companies achieve their sales goals. By automating the demo creation and delivery process and providing valuable insights into client engagement, Demoboost is the secret weapon of successful Go-To-Market teams.

Demoboost provides a simple and efficient solution to these challenges, enabling businesses to create personalized demos quickly and easily.

Demoboost is a powerful solution that offers a library of pre-built, customizable demos to showcase products and services effectively. 

Here are the features of Demoboost:

1. Easy demo creation and personalization

Creating and personalizing demos has never been easier. Deoboost believes that demo creation should be easy, while the end result should blow the buyer’s mind. That’s why they build a tool that is as easy to use as 1-2-3. All you need to do is capture the screens of your application, link them into journeys you want to present and provide a narrative. No-code personalisation allows for the revenue teams to make the last-mile customisation on their own without presales involvement. You can easily add your branding, messaging, and content to make the demo relevant and engaging.

Hyper-personalized demos are now available in minutes! 

2. Choose your own journey functionality 

This unique feature allows you to present a different demo based on the prospect's interests. You can include a survey upfront, and based on the answers, the prospect will see a customized demo that caters to their specific needs. This feature takes personalization to the next level and ensures that the prospect gets the most relevant experience, even before they meet your sales reps. 

3. Multimedia Mix & Match capabilities

You can mix and match screens from different environments and platforms to create a more comprehensive demo. For example, you could include your prospect’s website into a demo making it easy for them to imagine how the solution integrates into their digital ecosystem.

For instance, if a vendor sells an eCommerce solution, they can present the prospect's journey on their website and then continue the journey in the vendor's solution. A very simple, but most-powerful tool in the personalisation arsenal of the sales teams. 

4. Video narrative inclusion 

Demoboost’s unique video narrative overlay allows for building rapport and personalizing the message even before the buyer engages into face to face conversation with the vendor. For example, now the sales teams can include a personal welcome message to the demo available on the website. 

5. Support in executing last-mile personalisation for your business

By now there is hopefully no doubt about the importance of last-mile personalisation in driving business results. However, if the process of implementing interactive, automated demos into your sales process is still daunting- Demoboost’s Customer Success Team is here to help. Free of charge. We will help you map out the demos you need and will help you create them.Demoboost's unique product and support result in an unparalleled buyer experience when using Demoboost demos, with a median demo completion rate of 88 and an average demo NPS of 89. 

Don't Get Left Behind: Embed the Last Mile Customization in your Sales Process Today

Last-mile customization is crucial for businesses looking to engage and convert customers effectively. However, creating unique demos for every engagement is simply not possible due to time and resource constraints. This is where Demoboost comes in. 

By using Demoboost, businesses can pre-build customizable demos and simply customize them when needed leading to higher buyer engagement and increased conversion rates.

So, if you're looking for a way to create personalized demos without the hassle, revolutionize your demo game. Book a demo with Demoboost today!