Gray Matter's site details the product's effects over time: "first 15 minutes," "4-8 hours," "week one," etc. This visual timeline manages customer expectations effectively, builds anticipation for results, and compellingly demonstrates both short-term gratification and long-term value.
Related Insights
Instead of a feature walkthrough, structure your demo as a story. Remind the prospect of their current painful 'day in the life' (uncovered in discovery) and then show them the future, transformed 'day in the life' using your product. This sells the outcome, not the tool.
Customers want a quick, desirable result (the cake), not the foundational work or hard truths (the broccoli). Frame your content around an appealing outcome, like 'less frizz tomorrow,' to get them to accept the underlying, necessary steps, like adopting a new daily hair care routine.
Instead of claiming to save "billions of hours," financial software company Ramp illustrates its value by showing how a single $5 cup of coffee actually costs 13 minutes in administrative waste. Starting with a small, relatable scenario makes a large, abstract benefit feel concrete and significant, as it's easier to make something small feel big than the other way around.
The principle of 'under promise, over deliver' is best executed by engineering an immediate, tangible result for new customers right after they sign up. This initial positive shock, like a rapid weight loss in a fitness program, builds immense goodwill and loyalty before they even fully use your product.
When designing a premium service, prioritize reducing the time to value (latency). For affluent customers, time is more valuable than money. A promise to deliver the desired outcome in half the time is a far more persuasive selling point than a discount or greater magnitude of result.
Go beyond features (what it is) and benefits (what it does) by focusing on 'dimensionalized benefits': how the customer's life tangibly changes after experiencing the benefit. This is the ultimate outcome people are buying, and it should be the core of your marketing message.
Replace generic praise like "we love this product" with testimonials that feature specific, quantifiable outcomes ("saved 12 hours a month"). This helps prospects visualize concrete benefits and can increase conversion rates by over 15%.
To make the product's value tangible, a sales leader embedded a screenshot of a risk notification from Gong's platform directly into his email. This visual proof instantly communicates the problem and solution more powerfully than text alone, making the abstract concrete for the prospect.
Instead of generic praise like "we love this product," use testimonials with specific numbers (e.g., "saved 12 hours a month"). This allows prospects to visualize tangible value and see themselves in the outcome, making social proof significantly more persuasive.
Most product demos fail by giving a ground-up tour of features, integrations, and setup, which confuses the customer. A far more effective demo starts by showing the final, valuable output (e.g., the finished report) and simply stating, "This is what you get, and it all happens automatically."
