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Accelerate Pipeline Production: The Power of Personalized Demo Automation in Pre-Sales

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While all the glory may be in the closed deal, we can’t forget that the effort we invest in marketing and pre-sales is what landed us the seat at the table in the first place. Pre-Sales is essentially everything that has to come together before a sale can happen. Sounds so simple, but it grows more complex when you start to juggle each customer’svarying verticals, technologies and components. There are a lot of moving parts and as a result, a lot higher risk of losing your deal along the way.When it comes to sales, there are the obligatory boxes that must be checked off before a deal can officially close…product demonstrations, proof of concepts, customer’s’ technical requirements and formal proposals are just a few of the contributing factors complicating today’s B2B sale.  As salespeople we often get ahead of ourselves and make the mistake of narrowing our focus entirely to getting the deal closed, but in doing so we lose sight of the early and most critical stages of the sales cycle.

How Can We Have an Impact on the Sales Cycle Pre-Demo?

Today we are inundated with technologies and industry expert recommendations claiming to accelerate the sales cycle, but it is nearly always focused on the tail end of the sale… from demo to close. We realize that the sales cycle has already been set in motion long before the account comes to the attention of your account executive, so why aren’t we asking the question… how can we have an impact on the sales cycle pre-demo?

Imagine if you had the ability to automatically discover which of your solutions is the best fit for your customer while educating and qualifying your prospect before they even want to engage with your sales rep. Imagine if you could free up the time your account executives spend doing repetitive, high level demonstrations… valuable time they could spend pushing other deals through the pipeline. What would that mean for your sales cycle?

Personalized video demonstrations are a powerful tool throughout the entire sales cycle, but are especially undervalued in the marketing and pre-sales stages. Personalized video technology allows you to discover and engage the buying group stakeholders before they’re even ready to initiate a conversation with you. This is where you have the opportunity to directly impact the length of your sale cycle and watch your pipeline production soar, increasing the likelihood that a prospect will become a qualified opportunity by 81%.

See how Consensus is accelerating production for pre-sales in our infographic.

There are several complementary types of automated demos you can use throughout your customer’s buying journey:

The Vision Demo:

This is your high-level, big picture messaging that hooks your prospect and helps them to understand the problem that your solution solves and most importantly, how it directly will impact them. 

Target audience: High level executives and leadership who are wrestling with the problem you solve and understand the broad vision and potential ROI. 

The benefit of having a personalized automated version of the vision demo? Your account executive is already giving a version of this demo on their first meeting with a prospect, time and time again. Now the messaging stays consistent and instead of wasting time with a repetitive and explanatory demo, your account executive has a meaningful conversation with a prospect who is more likely to be a qualified opportunity. 

 

The Qualifying Demo:

This is where you can suss out if your lead really is a prospect by allowing them to determine on their own time if your solution is a good fit and if they are able and willing to make a purchase decision.

The benefit of having a personalized automated version of the qualifying demo?  How often does the first conversation with a lead end with them disqualifying themselves? Maybe it’s interesting, but they don’t have the budget right now. Maybe they don’t have the authority or influence to make a decision. Maybe the solution simply isn’t a good fit for their business. By automating a typical discovery call through interactive videos, you allow prospects the freedom to determine if they have a need for your solution with minimal time and effort. They can even determine which solution/use case is most interesting to them and if it makes sense, now they are more prepared and willing to have a conversation with sales. 

 

The Technical Demo:

This is a pre-emptive response to the technical questions that are inevitably asked by prospective customers… to help them understand not only what your solution offers, but how it actually accomplishes it.

If you have a sales engineer, this is likely their domain.

Whether you currently have the resources to dedicate to pre-sales or not, either way you will reap the benefits of leveraging these different types of personalized automated demos to educate your customers and ensure your solution is the right fit from the very start. Your customer will arrive at the conversation highly educated and ready to talk specifics, which in the long run makes for satisfied customers and productive sales.

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Connect with our sales team today to discover how Consensus can empower your team with personalized, interactive demos, driving higher conversions, shorter sales cycles, and increased revenue.