It’s still crystal clear in my mind when my revops leader showed me our 72% close rate! It almost seemed too good to be true, but when he walked me through what we did, it made total sense.
Close rates are one of the most important metrics for measuring efficiency for individual reps and the sales organization at large. The average close rate is around 20%, depending on a host of factors, but that number could be much higher!
At Consensus, we noticed patterns emerging when we engaged with customers in certain ways. That, combined with some tweaks in our lead qualification process, led to a close rate of up to 72%.
Thinking back, I asked myself, “How exactly did we do this?” The short answer: we practice what we preach! Our teams use demo automation to enable our buyers. But the long answer is that we followed these six steps to dramatically improve our sales win rates.
Step 1: Track Demo Views
Pay attention to who is watching the video demos you send out. We found that when customers watched 9+ demos during a deal’s lifecycle, those deals were 10X more likely to close. This trend even holds true for enterprise deals. When an enterprise deal had 9+ demo views, its win rate was 8.2X more likely to close.
Step 2: Discover Additional Stakeholders
Automated demos are great for uncovering unknown stakeholders. We’ve even had customers uncover entire buying groups with automated demos! But you don’t need to discover many stakeholders for it to significantly impact your close rates. If you uncover one stakeholder with an automated demo, which means just one more person watched the demo, you increase your win rate by 6.6X. This is much harder to do with live meetings because you have to deal with schedules. Having a demo shared within an organization can happen organically without you being there.
Step 3: Do Frequent Check-ins
Meeting with customers weekly gives you a win rate just shy of 70%. Compare that to monthly, which is only around 10%. Getting them to agree to a recurring scheduled call can be tricky since they require a hefty time commitment from both the buyer and the seller. If you and your customer can’t find time on your calendars, using interactive demo software can keep the conversation going. The most important thing is for your sales reps and your buyers to walk away from each interaction with clear actions they can take to move the deal along over the following week. This could include an invitation to share a security demo with the infosec team, sharing your micro demo with a new executive stakeholder, or sharing pricing with the key decision makers in the buying group. Buyers need to be coached through buying, and weekly syncs give your sales team a perfect opportunity to do that.
Step 4: Schedule Meetings at the Right Time
Time is the killer or savior of deals. When the meeting happens three weeks after qualifying the opportunity, your win rate doubles. You can make these meetings more effective by coaching your customer to watch a demo before the live call. Not only will that help with lead qualification, but it will also help educate the customer leading to a more predictive call. Your buyer will show up to the call ready to talk about specific points in your solution that connect to their problems, and you will come to the meeting knowing what your buyer is hoping to accomplish. This makes the live call a tailored discussion centered around the buyer’s challenges and how your solution can improve their life.
Step 5: Shorten the Average Number of Days Per Stage
Every deal goes through stages, even when they are labeled closed lost. If you can move customers through each stage quickly, you’ll increase the odds of the deal closing. There are many ways to shorten the number of days per stage, but we found that having customers watch at least one demo per stage was the easiest way to reduce that number. In fact, having at least one demo view per stage reduces the average day per stage by a significant amount, even for enterprise deals.
Step 6: Use Deal Momentum to Accurately Predict Win Rates
When accurately calculated, the average deal momentum can predict the win rate. At Consensus, we created a scoring system to determine how quickly a deal was progressing, which we called deal momentum. We discovered that deal momentum could fairly accurately predict the win rate. When the deal momentum was 40+, deals had a win rate of 70%. What’s more, deals with a lower deal momentum can be given additional resources to improve the deal’s chance of closing.
Automate Demos for Higher Close Rates
You can obtain a much higher close rate if you incorporate demo automation in your sales strategies. Demo automation allows you to track demo views, discover additional stakeholders, and shorten the average number of days per deal. Pairing that with using deal momentum to accurately predict win rates, and you’ll see close rates soar.
Want more information on why interactive demos can close deals 2X faster than live demos alone? Check out our extensive resource center, view a webinar, or even watch your own demo on demand.
