A Better Buying Experience at Scale
Company Size
700+
Presales Team
9
AE:SE Ratio
5:1
Presales Workload
2-5 Intro demos per week, per SE
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The results at a glance
reduction in live intro demos
reduction in deliver lag time
reduction in buying cycle length
increased ARR on a single deal
on Demo Qualified Leads
The Challenge
Too Many Repetitive Intro Demos Causing Bottlenecks in the Buyer’s Journey
Stibo Systems’ rapidly expanding business caused demand for demos and Presales resources to surge. Their Presales reps were performing hundreds of unqualified demos causing a huge lag time between demo request and fulfillment. Upwards of 50% of the demos they were delivering were unqualified. This also left very little time for discovery or technical demos with qualified customers as Presales were spending 15 to 20 hours a week on repetitive intro demos.
The average sales cycle at Stibo was a year long due in part to manual discovery extending the process artificially. Customers waited 10 to 14 days to see even a basic demo. Often, key stakeholders fell through the cracks or missed entire demos due to scheduling conflicts.
Stibo’s Presales team was struggling to keep up with the demand from their sales counterparts while simultaneously meeting customer needs. This added to the already staggering backlog of Presales obligations and created an environment of burnout.
Presales leaders at Stibo Systems knew they were at the tipping point and began searching for a solution. They viewed the changing landscape of B2B buying and determined they needed a partner who could scale Presales while providing additional analytics and self service experience for Sales and customers.
The Solution
The Consensus team streamlined the implementation process and helped Stibo Systems realize value by creating their demo library quickly and establishing champions within the sales org. They created a library of effective demos they knew sales would want to use and invited specific sales reps to become early adopters of Consensus. Within the first week of using demo automation, these champions started identifying new stakeholders earlier in the sales cycle and evangelized the solution internally, which drove adoption with their peers.
The Results
A Better Buying Experience at Scale
As Stibo Systems’s SEs adopted Consensus, the rate of unqualified intro demos dropped by more than 50%, which saved their Presales team roughly 10-15 hours per week, per SE. They were able to use this extra time to allocate resources to discovery, customization, and more in-depth conversations with customers that created a better buying experience.
Employing intelligent demo automation meant Stibo Systems was no longer restricted by scheduling constraints. Not only were reps sending out automated video demos on-demand, but in-person meetings were being recorded so customers could review those demos repeatedly and stakeholders who were absent or needed to leave early were able to be looped in without adding additional meetings.
The lag time for demo requests fell from almost two weeks to nearly instantaneous. Using intelligent demo automation allowed Stibo Systems to customize demos and add features such as captions in other languages which aided in demo views and customer satisfaction. Stibo System shifted the focus of their intelligent video demos to be on who they are, the persona they’re working with, and
three takeaways at the end of each video allowing customers to see the true persona based value they can get from their solution.
Closing Deals with Customer Insights
Stibo Systems’s Consensus demo library became their source of truth for customer engagement. Using Consensus demolytics, sales and Presales work closely together to create better live experiences based on how stakeholders prioritize features and what they want to learn more about. This has helped them build trust, add value earlier in the sales process, and even expand deals. In fact, one Enterprise deal closed for $150,000 more than initially anticipated because of the value added by additional information shared by a sales rep via Consensus demos.
In addition to larger deals, Stibo Systems saw deals close faster and at a higher rate. They saw a correlation between win rates and how buyers engaged with demos. When a prospect came in as a Demo Qualified Lead (DQL) who watched a demo before a live interaction, their win rate was 80%. This focus on engaged buyers also helped their team find success in previously lost deals through re-engagement campaigns and follow up nurtures.
