Garin Hess, a tech entrepreneur primarily based in Utah, skilled what he calls the “demo bottleneck” at a earlier software-as-a-service (SaaS) startup whereas pitching to potential prospects. He theorized {that a} self-directed interactive demo, customized to every stakeholder, couldn’t solely streamline the method and save time, but in addition assist organically uncover and interact different stakeholders who may not usually be reached.
That led Hess to discovered Consensus, a platform for interactive video demos, which right this moment introduced that it raised $110 million from Sumeru Fairness Companions. Consensus lets engineering groups construct a library of reusable, interactive video demos that gross sales groups can ship out on demand.
“Consensus is like an ‘Iron Man mech swimsuit’ for each gross sales engineer to have the ability to do extra with what they’ve,” Hess instructed TechCrunch in an e-mail interview. “For instance, Consensus automates the routine ‘harbor cruise‘ demos in order that consultants can spend extra of their time doing what they do greatest: strategically serving to consumers via complexity when shopping for options which have many items to the puzzle.”
Launched in 2013 and now with over $139 million within the financial institution (inclusive of right this moment’s increase), Consensus permits customers to construct demo movies after which e-mail these demos to prospects. Prospects choose what they need to find out about and get a personalised demo, which they will share with their wider groups and group.
All through the method, Consensus tracks engagement and robotically finds new stakeholders by position and precedence.
“Not like generalized video platforms, Consensus tracks who engages and personalizes each a video demonstration and hands-on, click-through product tour expertise primarily based on solutions to particular questions requested upfront,” Hess defined. “It makes use of a proprietary personalization engine, then gathers information analytics for the gross sales crew to assist drive alignment within the shopping for group.”
After all, Consensus isn’t the one recreation on the town in relation to product demoing — removed from it. There’s Arcade, a startup developing a Chrome extension for product demos, which raised $7.5 million final September. One other prime rival is Demostack, which landed $34 million in April for its “demo expertise” platform for SaaS gross sales groups.
To additional set itself aside from the gang, Consensus launched Excursions lately, which lets a salesman reveal a product characteristic through video after which hand it off to a prospect to allow them to discover the identical characteristic via a self-directed click-through expertise.
“Tens of millions of {dollars} of income are locked up within the inefficiencies of the normal gross sales engineering mannequin of doing dwell demo after dwell demo. It artificially stretches the shopping for cycle and provides danger to each deal, to not point out it’s enormously costly,” Hess mentioned. “With Consensus’ clever demo automation platform, enterprise software program gross sales groups not solely enhance their very own efficiencies, however extra importantly enhance the goal group’s shopping for group effectivity, which robotically accelerates the shopping for course of, reduces danger and leads to extra gross sales with out including headcount.”
Is that promising an excessive amount of? Maybe. However Consensus hasn’t had bother attracting enterprise, apparently. Consensus’ present prospects span 15 of the 30 largest software program firms, together with Coupa, Oracle and Autodesk. Based on Hess, income grew 60% in 2022.
“The pandemic helped transfer the ‘pre-sales’ career from a deal with ‘need to be there in particular person’ to ‘Hey, we will do that remotely?’” Hess mentioned. “This forcing operate from the pandemic triggered all the gross sales business to sit down up and query the established order, which has been useful to opening minds to the usefulness of demo automation as a part of the method. We imagine Consensus is uniquely positioned to develop successfully on this slowdown as a result of we’re automating a operate that for a lot of enterprise software program firms [has] by no means been automated earlier than.”
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