In this episode of the Martech Minute, we speak with Garin Hess, founder and CEO of Consensus. Check out how the Consensus intelligent demo automation platform reduces the sales cycle and improves close rates for B2B Sales teams embracing account based marketing.

Q: Product demos are often a key component of the B2B Sales process, especially for B2B Sales teams that are embracing an account based marketing approach, so any solution that can streamline how demos are created and delivered is welcome. Tell us more about this concept of intelligent demo automation that Consensus talks about?

Garin Hess: Yeah well, it’s interesting, in my last startup we were really trying to figure out how we could make demos more efficient. We were demoing for all kinds of clients, large and small, and we had more leads than we could handle and at the time we weren’t sure how to do it effectively. But we had this idea: well, what if we could just have some of our smaller clients go through this demo in an automated way? So we threw up a few YouTube videos and things like that, but there are a lot of limitations with that kind of model because you don’t get any insights into who’s watching it, how they’re engaging, how they’re sharing, or what they’re doing in the buying group.

So when I left that company after we were acquired I started looking at problems that I was interested in solving and this was one of the big ones. All sales teams know that demos make a big difference, they’re a very interactive experience where you do a lot of discovery and also educate the client, and so I really wanted to try to figure out how can we automate this more effectively, because as I had in my own experience, the challenge of interacting with the client on a level of scale and personalizing it at scale became difficult to do. And I couldn’t find any technologies out there.

And so what we came up with was an intelligent demo automation, which is essentially being able to leverage technology to help discover what’s driving the interests of the different stakeholders in the buying group, and then dynamically pulling together video clips and documents that relate specifically to their unique interests.

And then we feed all this data back to the sales team to help them understand better how their different stakeholders are thinking about their interests, and how they’re engaging and how they’re even aligned or misaligned and what they’re looking for.

Q: A key idea you mentioned there was engaging the different stakeholders in the buying group, and that was one of the reasons that attracted me when I was looking at your platform, was how it might be applied to account based marketing. Account based marketing has been top of mind for a couple of years now, and engaging all of the different stakeholders in the buying process is key. So how are you guys helping to solve that?

Garin Hess: Well, when you think about the buying group you initially engage with an initial prospect and they often become your champion. They aren’t always the champion, but quite often that initial person that’s investigating turns out to be your sponsor champion, and one of the things that I like to emphasize is that as B2B sellers, whether we’re in marketing or sales, we’re all part of the sales continuum, and the buyer journey continuum, and as we’re trying to sell we often think that it’s really our role to do the selling. And what I like to encourage people to think about is that it’s really the buyer that’s doing the selling, because you have this champion that’s out there promoting your cause inside their organization right? So they’re in effect leading the charge on selling.

So when we’re talking about account based marketing, you want to personalize to every single stakeholder in the experience, and especially to the initial champion so that they are hooked and interested, and then also want to go advocate.

But the problem is that champion doesn’t really know how to sell for you. So what we’re doing is we’re providing them with the tools that they can go out and automatically personalize the message to the rest of the buying group. And I think that’s key to account based marketing because you can do this in a very accelerated fashion. So you send the demo out to the champion there it automatically personalizes to them. They’re interested so they forward it on to other stakeholders, and the demo automatically personalizes to their unique interests based on how they answer the questions. And that all happens in a way that delivers the messaging that you want rather than relying on the champion to somehow get it right.

Q: For those interested in the platform, I’d encourage them to visit your website, I’ve taken a look at it there are live examples of these personalized demos on your site. One of the use cases I thought was particularly interesting was using it with channel partners. Can you describe how the Consensus intelligent demo automation platform can be used for Channel Partner enablement?

Garin Hess: So this is one of the areas where we saw there was a real need because channel partners are often left to fend for themselves. And they have the same kind of problem that champions inside organizations do – they don’t necessarily know how to sell your platform or your solution as well as you do. So what Consensus allows you to do for partner managers and partner relationship managers is to allow you to create an automated demo that you can provide automatically to your channel partner, and then they can use that in their sales efforts, and you get to see which channel partners are engaging.

One of the key benefits this brings to you is that you get to see which channel partners are actually getting some traction and actually having activity, because one of the big problems in channel development is you have a lot of channel partners that talk the big talk, and then don’t do a lot. So probably nine out of ten partners don’t really produce. Maybe 95 out of 100 don’t.

So how can you give visibility into: one – how can you help enable them to sell for you more effectively and make it easier for them to produce, and two – how can you give visibility into whether they are getting traction. The visibility is core to what we do. It’s being able to see partner engagement. It’s being able to see champion involvement and discovering the buying group, and that sort of thing. So it’s sort of stop selling in the dark as much.

Consensus is a SaaS platform, it’s got a lot of analytics on the backend, you’re able to track who’s viewing it, when, what parts they were engaged with, what parts they weren’t. So I just want to make it clear that although you do have authoring tools, it’s not just an authoring tool for demos, it’s the whole platform behind it and the analytics that really sets it apart from some of the old-school solutions for demos out there.

And the authoring tools are there to help you, but if you have other content you can pull that in as well. And one thing I wanted to point out that I think is key on this personalization is that Consensus allows you to personalize initially to the persona so you can ask basically what’s your persona upfront, and then give a targeted video message to that persona and then let them personalize as an individual. There’s a debate I heard a while back, you know should we personalize to the persona, or to the person? And our answer is essentially you should do it to both, but in sequence. So you start with the persona, and then once you’ve targeted that message to the persona, then bring it down to the individual level and personalize it there.

Q: If someone’s interested in learning more about the Consensus intelligent demo automation platform, what’s the best way for them to get in touch with you?

Garin Hess: Just go to goconsensus.com, and there right on the homepage there’s an opportunity to jump right into one of our demos and you’ll see the different persona breakdowns right on the homepage. So that’s the best way to engage, and you’ll see an example of how intelligent demo automation works. And also if you’re interested in learning more, you can sign up right through the demo to get more information.

Thank you for watching another installment of the Martech Minute! If you’d like to learn more about the Consensus platform for intelligent demo automation, visit their website at www.goconsensus.com.

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