Blackbaud case study
Scaling Presales with reduced headcount
Company Size
~3,500
Presales Team
39
AE:SE Ratio
7:1
Avg. Sales Cycle
Two months (Downmarket)
Implementation Timeline
Jan. - Feb. 2021 (Six Weeks)
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The results at a glance
removed from sales cycle
unit sales increase
reduction in sales cycle time for down market deals
Double-Digit
growth in bookings YOY
in 15 Days fastest deal closed using only Consensus demos
Largest deals closed without live Presales interactions
The Challenge
Scaling Presales with Reduced Headcount
Blackbaud’s revenue team went through a dramatic shift in their go-to-market strategy. They wanted to shift their organization to a digital-first sales company and needed to gain efficiencies across the various segments they sell into. During the pandemic they saw the demand for live demos per SC increase. Charlie Lytle, a manager who was an individual contributor at the time , said he worked 99 opportunities in a single quarter alone, which broke down to about three opportunities per day.
While the pandemic affected resourcing and budgets, revenue goals remained unchanged. “We were supporting a double digit bookings growth number for the year” said Charlie Lytle. The 7:1 AE:SC ratio was putting a strain on the Blackbaud team as they searched for a way to scale their presales team’s impact to support business growth goals while maintaining current resource levels or without adjusting go-to-market strategies.
The Solution
Scaling Presales with Intelligent Demo Automation
Blackbaud started using Consensus in January of 2021 with the goal of automating early stage demos, especially for down market deals. They launched it to all the sales teams in their North American commercial sales organization, which encompassed roughly half of their sellers. By March they expanded the role of demo automation to half of their Enterprise sellers in the U.S. and Canada and saw quick adoption and immediate excitement at all levels with sales reps.
The Results
Rapid Sales Adoption
Once Consensus was available across the entire sales organization, communicating wins and successes with the tool became a normal occurrence in team meetings and other revenue discussions. The ease of use that came with using the Consensus SNAP plugin empowered sellers to create their own content, giving the SC team valuable hours back in their week and allowing customers to see product demonstrations earlier in the sales cycle. What’s more, the sales teams found they were able to automate 26% of deals without any presales involvement and they were closing deals faster than before.
Demolytics and Stakeholder Discovery
Two critical drivers to success amongst Blackbaud’s sales reps were Consensus’s ability to help them automate stakeholder discovery and the ability to know who has or has not viewed an automated demo. Sellers mentioned they frequently check their Demolytics in Consensus to monitor stakeholder activity and loved the ability to receive both view and no-view notifications in their inbox. As a result, the organization has adopted a demo qualified lead (DQL) strategy requiring prospects to view a demo before they get on a live call.
Better Live Interactions & Happier SCs
As automation eliminated unqualified and underqualified demos, the Blackbaud team saw their live interactions with prospects improve drastically. Solutions Consultants noted that their first interactions with customers felt more like a third interaction, and that prospects were coming to calls already bought into their solution and ready to talk about specifics and strategy for deploying Blackbaud’s solution.
The benefit of scale also gave the solutions consulting team the immeasurable benefit of increased job satisfaction. Before Consensus, Blackbaud SCs were executing four harbor tour demos per week. Automating those demos gave each SC that time back and added 10% to their capacity. What’s more, being free of repetitive intro demos made SCs feel more empowered to consult clients the way they had wanted to, which improved their overall wellbeing and work-life balance.
Shorter Sales Cycles & Automating Down Market
The greatest benefit of intelligent demo automation for Blackbaud came in how it shortened their sales cycle and allowed them to accelerate deals down market. Sellers reported that using Consensus they were able to accelerate deals by 25%, shaving two whole weeks off an average sales cycle of two months. With a shorter sales cycle, the team was able to close more business, and Blackbaud saw a 150% increase in overall unit sales year over year. Sales and presales leaders saw a number of deals close without having to engage presales resources, allowing them to focus on more important activities and keep deal momentum moving forward. Lytle reported that one deal closed for over $15,000 in 15 days using only Consensus demos to support seller activities. This has become common among the sales organization, with sellers closing deals ranging worth tens of thousands of dollars using demo automation exclusively.
By the end of 2021, 26% of Blackbaud’s deals were closed without a live presales engagement. Their YouTube style content and use of SCs as subject matter experts for automated demos accelerated trust with the client base and helped the team achieve their goals faster.
