How Automated Demos Shorten the Sales Cycle and Accelerate the Buyer’s Journey
Company Size
21,000
Presales Team
47
AE:SC Ratio
5:3
Products Covered
~20
Presales Workload
70-80 Demos per Month
Presales Average Demo Prep Time:
4-5 Hours per Demo
Consensus Implementation:
Two Months
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The results at a glance
Work Days Saved through Automation
FTEs Production Gained
Stakeholders Discovered
Demo View Rate
Demo Lag Time Eliminated
The Challenge
Scaling product knowledge with limited resources
Hexagon offers its customers a comprehensive portfolio of solutions that spans the entire lifecycle of industrial facilities. While this opened new opportunities for sales reps to engage prospects and customers, the presales resources were strained as they tried to share specialized knowledge across teams. They found that multiple Solution Consultants (SC) were needed on demos where numerous products would be displayed, and they wanted to make the best use of personnel and customer time to give buyers the information they needed at scale.
Keeping up with buyer demand for early-stage demos
Hexagon needed to meet the demand buyers had for demos. Buyers wanted to see the product earlier in the sales cycle, but live demos are time-consuming, with little to no guarantee that the four-plus hours spent preparing and executing a demo would add value to a qualified deal or just give an overview to an unsure prospect. Hexagon needed to scale its SC team to empower reps to deliver demos on demand, especially for high-volume deals. Buyers waited an average of two weeks for a live demo.
The Solution
Demos on Demand with Consensus
Hexagon leaders learned of Consensus from employees who came as part of an acquisition. As they evaluated solutions, they loved how Consensus allowed them to securely demo in multiple languages and give buyers product demonstrations without needing a live call.
Their implementation took two months. Gaby’s and Sarah’s teams focused on creating content that would first help sales reps with the more complex solutions. They piloted the automated demos with an elite group of sales reps. Once the concept was proven, they created self-paced learning courses for the rest of the sales teams to learn about demo automation. They also developed a continuous enablement program that included an internal website and a newsletter to update sales reps on new content, provide paths for demo creation requests, and drive adoption to add scale to their operations.
The Results
Multiplying the presales team’s impact
Hexagon increased their team’s capacity using demo automation. Because Hexagon emphasized using Consensus as an initial customer touch point, as a door opener for high-volume deals, and as a solution to move opportunities through the funnel, they could automate down-market and save their team approximately 4,000 hours of demo work. This helped SCs make a greater impact on enterprise-level deals and have deeper consultative conversations with buyers as they moved towards making purchasing decisions. Hexagon also scaled product knowledge across their entire revenue organization by giving sales reps and SCs instant access to product expertise through automated demos.
Increased operational efficiency and savings
Scaling presales and automating demos for high-volume deals drastically lowered Hexagon’s cost per demo. In 2023 alone, they had substantial savings per demo by eliminating unqualified and/or generic overviews. In addition, Hexagon achieved new levels of operational excellence by empowering their presales and sales teams to have better-focused conversations with their customers.
A better buying and selling experience
Hexagon buyers and sellers reported having a better experience by leveraging automated demos throughout the sales process. Not only did Hexagon eliminate the two-week demo lag time by sending Consensus demos earlier in the sales cycle, but they also armed sales reps with essential product knowledge needed to enhance pitches, deliver complex value propositions, and sell more of their full range of products. Consensus Demolytics became the standard for helping understand buyer interest and create better-tailored demonstrations for live calls. In 2023 alone, Hexagon’s team discovered more than 1,800 new contacts in buying groups using intelligent demo automation.
