When it comes to sales, time is money. The more you can accelerate deal velocity, the faster you can get revenue in the door.
We sat down with David Greene, Sr. Manager of SC at Gainsight, Ian Forrest, VP of Sales Engineering at Hunters, and Robert De Marco, VP of Solutions Consulting at Xactly to discuss how Demostack can cut your deal cycle dramatically. And, we have all the conclusions for you here.
You’ll see how Demostack's interactive product tours captivate prospects even before the first call and what strategic insights you can pull from pre-call interactions. Then, we’ll discuss how customized demos can be tailored to each prospect's needs, significantly enhancing engagement and reducing the time to close. Next, we’ll explain why Demostack inspires confidence in sellers, and finally, we’ll touch on the power of personalized follow-ups in the post-call stage.
So, without further ado, let's dive into these 5 deal acceleration strategies and see how they can give your sales team the edge it needs.
1. Engaging prospects pre-call with interactive product tours
When we think about demos, there are three important stages: before the call (pre-call), during the call (live call), and after the call (post-call). These stages help us with three big goals: building a good pipeline, turning that pipeline into sales, and keeping the momentum going with follow-ups and up-to-date information.
Let's talk about the pre-call stage. How do you get people interested in your product before they even talk to you?
Demostack has a great tool for this – product tours or interactive product demos. Many of our customers, including Hunters, add this to their website. These tours, explains Ian, let customers explore the product by themselves. They can see what it looks like and get a feel for it. It's like a guided tour where customers can click around and learn about the product.
This way, they already know a lot about what they might buy before they even have a chat with you.
Why is this so helpful?
When they finally do talk to you, they already know the basics. So, when you get on the phone, you can get down to business because the tour will have already laid the groundwork for you.
2. Streamlining live demos with targeted product showcases
Demostack’s product tours mean when it's time for the live demo, you can focus on the special features or the things that make your product stand out. It's like zooming in on what matters.
After all, you don't want to overload your audience with too much information. It's better to tailor the demo based on what you’ve already learned from the customer. This way, the demo hits the right notes.
That’s why Dave uses Demostack to highlight specific parts of the problem. In his own words, he says:
“It's important for us just to understand what's the jumping-off point for the SC team, right? Because we don't want to get caught in a situation where we're giving the harbor tour of everything that we have, because then we look a little too complex.”
Xactly takes this even further. There, when sales reps reach out to potential customers, if they don't set up a meeting right away, they send an email with a link to the product tour. When a prospect clicks on this link, explains Rob, the team gets a notification through Slack. This tells them what parts of the product the prospect was interested in and how much they looked at. This info is super helpful – it's like having a secret insight into what the prospect wants so customizing the demo is easy.
They can see which parts of the product caught the prospect’s attention and who in their company is interested. Are they the main decision-maker or are they sharing it with others in their team?
There's a common mistake, adds Dave, to think you'll always get another chance to show prospects everything. The truth is, that doesn't happen often. Usually, if they give you a second chance, they're already leaning towards choosing you anyway. So, it's crucial to make a strong impression right from the start. Instead of showing them everything you've got, focus on what will help them the most.
That's the smarter approach to ramping up deal velocity.
3. Empowering sales teams with confidence and flexibility
In both marketing and selling, building trust is key. But it’s not just about the buyer's trust; it’s also about the seller's trust in their own demo. Sellers must trust the demo to work perfectly and meet the customer's needs, the group discussed.
When sellers are confident during demos, they perform better. If they run into problems or feel unsure about the demo, they might give up too easily. That confidence is really contagious.
“When you're confident about what you're presenting,” Ian explains, “it makes the customer more confident that you know you can deliver the product.”
Demostack makes sure the demo process is as easy and clear as possible. Since it’s a separate demo environment, reps don’t have to worry about bugs or glitches. This boosts their confidence, leading to better conversations and higher deal velocity.
4. Customizing demos for deal acceleration
With Demostack, you can tailor your demo to fit any situation. Our main product works like a platform. You can adjust the data, how it looks, and more with a few clicks. In fact, custom demos that used to take Gainsight four days to prepare, now only take them 24 to 48 hours.
Why does this matter?
When you show up with a demo made just for that customer, you win more deals than when you use a standard one. Showing customers their logos and data in the demo helps them see their life with the product and makes them trust you that much more. So deciding to buy is far easier.
Believe it or not, Gainsight discovered that they didn’t need as many POCs as they used to once they started using Demostack to customize their demos. Often, customers ask for a POC, Dave found, because they don't fully understand the product. But when you hit the mark right from the start and build their confidence, they often don’t feel the need for a POC. This cuts down the time to make a sale even further.
5. Leveraging post-call engagement with tailored follow-ups
We've talked about how demos are used before the call (pre-call) and, during the call (in-call). Now, let's focus on what happens after the call (post-call).
After a call, you can send a sandbox demo or a leave-behind. They're a bit like a practice version of our product, or, as Ian from Hunters, likes to say an “express POC.”
Some customers need to see how their data works in our product. This helps them picture how it will look and work for them. But other customers care more about how it feels to use the product. That's where our express POC comes in. The sandbox is a demo environment customized to a prospect’s use case that they can use in their own time.
Sometimes setting up a normal POC can take up to two months, and you need the IT team's help. Some buyers don't want to wait that long or involve their IT team.
The express POC takes a day to create, because, there's less coordination. This approach saves everyone's time and cuts down on the customer’s investments. It makes everything simpler and gets them to use the product faster.
Plus, it’s incredibly effective at closing deals. If it usually takes about 6 to 8 weeks to make a sale with a normal POC, you can do it in as little as 1 to 2 weeks with our express version.
Final thoughts on using Demostack for deal acceleration
Wrapping up the conversation, the group consensus was that Demostack puts deal velocity at the heart of the demo operation.
It starts by grabbing your customers' attention even before you talk to them with interactive tours on your website. Then, when it’s time to show your product in a demo, you can customize it for each customer. This means they get more interested and make decisions faster.
After the demo, Demostack’s sandbox demos keep the conversation going and help close deals quickly.
By using these strategies, Demostack doesn’t just speed up sales; it also helps your customers see exactly what their life would look like with your product. And that can make all the difference.
