> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.trailercast.io/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Best practices

> Things our most successful customers do that the average customer doesn't.

## Recording

* **Use a consistent meeting structure.** Demos that follow a known pattern (intro → discovery → demo → Q\&A → next steps) produce better trailers because the AI has clearer signals about what's a "moment."
* **Encourage prospect reactions.** When prospects say *"that's awesome"* or *"wait, you can do that?"*, those are the moments the AI weights highest. Pause and let them react.
* **Name features verbally.** *"What you're seeing here is our integration builder…"* gives the AI a much cleaner moment label than silent screen-sharing.
* **Use a real microphone.** Choppy / muted / heavily-compressed audio causes transcription errors that cascade through the pipeline.

## Sharing

* **Personalize the message you send the link in**, not the trailer itself. The trailer is for the prospect's evaluation team; your message is for the champion.
* **Send within 24 hours of the call.** Engagement drops sharply after that.
* **Watch the engagement heat-map before your next call.** Lead with whatever they rewatched.
* **Don't send the same trailer twice.** If you need to re-share, rebuild with different clips first so it's freshly relevant.

## Buyer Spaces

* **Use a Buyer Space for any deal above \$25k ACV.** The setup cost (\~10 minutes) is justified by the polish.
* **Keep the Discovery section concise**. 3–5 bullets, in their words. Long discovery sections lose readers.
* **Add at least one comparison row that's NOT in your favor.** Honest comparison builds trust; sycophantic comparison gets dismissed.
* **Include implementation plan even if you don't have a custom one.** Generic "kickoff → integration → go-live" timeline is fine, the act of showing it builds trust.

## Team workflow

* **Use Comments to coach.** Drop a comment on a teammate's trailer with feedback ("you nailed this objection, same playbook on the next one"). Asynchronous coaching scales better than weekly call reviews.
* **Set up a Slack integration channel for "deal alerts."** When prospects engage with high-stakes Spaces, you want the team to know in real time.
* **Reclassify aggressively.** Mis-classified calls cost you data quality. If a "demo" was actually discovery, reclassify before reviewing.

## AI Personalization

* **Revisit your form quarterly.** Positioning evolves. The form should evolve with it.
* **Be specific in pain points.** "Reps waste time" is generic. "Reps spend 30 minutes per follow-up making custom Loom videos that prospects open once" gives the AI something to actually weight against.
* **Use your buyers' actual phrases.** If they say "discovery call" not "qualifying call," put that. The AI imitates.

## Follow-up

* **Reply to "Awaiting reply" threads within 4 business hours.** Speed of response correlates strongly with deal progression.
* **Use Generate Follow-Up Message before re-engaging a cold thread.** The AI uses fresh engagement data, what they DID watch, to angle the message.
* **For multi-stakeholder deals, switch from trailer link to Buyer Space.** Each stakeholder gets their own thread.

## Operational

* **Don't try to scale outbound by sending the same trailer to 50 prospects.** Engagement is a function of relevance. A custom Buyer Space for 10 prospects beats a generic trailer to 50.
* **Run the smoke test before every release of new content.** If you're a marketing team using TrailerCast as a content engine, walk through the SMOKE\_TEST every time you ship new collateral.
* **Monitor the Activity tab daily.** Three minutes of skim time gives you a sense of where deals are alive.

## What NOT to do

* Don't overload the AI Personalization form with marketing fluff. Specific is better than impressive.
* Don't share trailers with no engagement context to multiple prospects with the same email. Engagement attribution gets confused.
* Don't mark every recording private. Privacy is appropriate for sensitive content; default openness is what makes the platform's coaching loops work.
* Don't try to replace your CRM with TrailerCast's Reports. We're a sales experience platform; your CRM is the system of record for deals.