Demo Follow-up Tips: Why email attachments don’t close deals

That nasty chain of follow-up emails after a demo might be undermining your close rate.

You know the one: 

• You send a summary of the demo and attach a slide deck and a link to the recording. 
• Then your prospect responds with a few questions. 
• You answer the questions. 
• Those answers get forwarded internally to the buying team. 
• Someone new replies with more questions…

Fast forward to a few weeks later, where the email chain has dozens of people on it, a hundred emails sent back and forth, and you’re back to answering questions you answered in the original demo.

Oh, and thanks to recency bias, your prospect’s memory of your sales process will only be the continuous, pestering emails they get post-demo—rather than the fully personalized demo you so immaculately prepared for them. 

So how do we fix this?

Sales teams put a lot of effort into planning and presenting demos—only to follow up the demo with a series of emails no one wants to read.

The problem isn’t the content of the email—it’s the medium of email itself. Emails make it tough to access attachments, bring in stakeholders, or get information in the right hands without everything becoming a big tangled mess.

By ditching long email threads and optimizing your demo follow-up process, you can make it as easy as possible for decision-makers to see your demo, pricing proposal, and mutual action plan, all from one central location. 

Don’t let email drag you down—instead, use a digital sales room for a simpler, more engaging approach to demo follow-up.

Why sales reps should evolve past follow-up emails and focus on buyer enablement

What we’ve found in talking to B2B sellers while building Dock is that the most successful teams focus on buyer enablement—that is, doing everything possible to empower the customer to make an informed buying decision.

Email is quick and easy. That’s why everyone uses it. But email isn’t great for:

• Embedding more than one piece of content
• Educating your buyer on the problem they’re trying to solve
• Collaborating on next steps
• Letting your buyer advocate for your product internally

Dock workspaces consolidate all your demo follow-up into one convenient place for your buyer. 

By sharing one trackable link, you make it much easier for them to sign the contract and hit the ground running with your product.

Dock’s demo follow-up template

Demo follow-up is a key stage in the sales process because it not only bolsters the pitch you made in your demo, it shows off your customer service skills.

Setting up a Dock workspace can take as little time as it does to fire off a quick email. Our template speeds up the follow-up process, without leaving out any important steps. 

Here’s a preview:

Overview

The Overview section is an executive summary, tailored to the client, that reiterates the value proposition from your sales demo. You can talk about customer pain points, workflows with your product, the customer journey, and key takeaways from previous conversations. 

You can also add a mutual action plan to check items off as you move closer to closing the deal and onboarding the customer to your product. 

Demo recording

Here’s where you dive into the details of your product. Embed the demo recording right in your Dock workspace and remind the customer of the specific features and functionality they’ll find most useful. 

Demo slides

Drop a copy of your demo deck here to not only refresh the memory of those who were there during the sales demo, but also to share important facts and figures with stakeholders who weren’t there. 

Pricing

Pricing is a vital part of any sales strategy, and getting it right can make or break the deal. With Dock Quotes and Order Forms, you can create custom pricing plans for each client in just a few minutes. 

Show off pricing tiers for SaaS products, and recommend a particular plan in a visually appealing, easy-to-digest form. You can even give users the option to play around with different prices based on headcounts and rates. 

Case studies

Sure, you gave examples of use cases in your demo, but you didn’t provide the in-depth examples that case studies provide. Dock integrations such as testimonial videos, photography, statistics, and slides make your case studies more engaging than the average PDF. 

Customer service

Here you can list the relevant support resources available to the customer as they learn more about your product after the demo. Embed a library of self-help guides, phone numbers for customer success managers, or links to training webinars. You can also embed product reviews from third-party sites like G2 and Google Business.

Additional info

Add more sections for customers as you need. For instance, maybe they requested a time frame for implementation, or they want a more detailed report on data privacy and security, or legal compliance documentation. 

In Dock, you can hide and/or add sections as the deal progresses. For instance, you might not want to send over pricing details right after the call, unless the customer asked for it. Or you might not need to show contextual details like case studies if the deal is already far along.

The best part about using a shared workspace is that you can find all of this information in one accessible, flexible place. 

You can also track engagement so you can optimize your follow-up to improve sales rates over time. 

👉 Get the free demo follow-up template here.  

Sample sales demo follow-up email

Like we said above, we’re not anti-email. In fact, it might shock your customers if you stopped emailing them altogether. Plus, overcommunication—without being obnoxious—is another strong sign that you care about customer needs.

Accompany your Dock demo follow-up workspace with an email that gets right to the point. The goal is to direct them to your shared workspace and help them along their buyer journey. 

And of course, having some follow-up email templates makes everything easier. Here’s a sample of what to say:

Subject line: [Product name] demo follow-up

Hi [customer name],

Great to meet you earlier today, and thanks for taking the time to walk through [Customer company name]’s goals with me. Like I said in the demo, I think [Product name] will be really helpful for you going forward for [X,Y, and Z reasons].

To make next steps easier, I’ve created a shared Dock workspace [attach link] where you can see:

1. An overview of what [Product] can do for you
‍
2. A recap of our demo, including a video recording and slide deck
‍
3. Pricing
‍
4. Case studies of companies similar to [Customer company’s name] using [Product]
‍
5. Our approach to customer service

I’ve gathered the above info together in one handy workspace that you can access whenever you’d like. The link doesn’t change, so feel free to share it within your company.

If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to ask. Otherwise, I’ll be in touch next week!

Regards,

[Your name]

Your customers will appreciate the follow-up email and the clear action steps, especially if it’s their first time encountering a digital sales room like Dock. 

Demo follow-up tips

The ultimate goal for demo follow-up is to make it as easy as possible for the buyer to say “yes.” But buyer enablement is more than just this final success. It’s a successful process.

Here’s a list of our top follow-up tips from the best sales teams:  

1. The follow-up process starts in your demo. Use the last 5 minutes of your demo to establish what happens next. Better yet, use the last slide of your presentation to introduce your Dock workspace at the end of your intro call.
   
   
2. Avoid lots of links, attachments, or Google Docs. Attachment fatigue is real, and it cheapens the buying experience.
   
   
3. Use a digital sales room or collaborative workspace. Keep all information in one convenient spot for the buyer. On the buyer side, the whole team can access it, without searching for lost emails. As the deal progresses, update the digital sales room and follow up with a quick email to notify the prospect.
   
   
4. Track engagement with follow-up content. Without insights, your follow-up strategy is a black box. Data helps you forecast the likelihood of the deal closing. Connect your follow-up stats with your CRM to smooth out your overall communications and improve your close rate.
   
   
5. Make the next steps clear with a mutual action plan. Give clear next steps to avoid the deal stalling out.
   
   
6. Personalize your sales content based on what you learned in the demo call. For instance, you might seek out an especially relevant case study, or base your pricing quote on the exact number of users the customer needs. Hold off on pricing altogether, if you think the customer needs more nurturing.

Change your follow-up, change your results

Let’s close this deal with a real-life example of how changing the demo follow-up strategy helped one Sales team win big. 

Nectar, a B2B platform for HR services, started using Dock workspaces in their follow-up, after they noticed their email follow-up results were too scattered and hard to track. 

With Dock, Nectar beat out their competitors in buyer enablement, giving buyer champions the right info at the right time to bring in decision-makers and close the sale. 

As a result of this sales strategy, they increased their year-over-year win rates by 31%. 

A prospect’s engagement with their Dock space has become their greatest predictor of a deal closing.

To learn how Dock can elevate your demo follow-up, book a demo with our team today. That nasty chain of follow-up emails after a demo might be undermining your close rate.