Removing Barriers to Product Experience Automation and other GTM Transformations

Product experience automations can be a magic missing piece and most potent asset in your sales organization. Enterprise product experience platforms like Consensus have the transformative power to give your solutions AND your talent a real competitive advantage. Many CROs are reluctant to introduce product experience solutions, including demo automation,  in SaaS sales processes because of potential bottlenecks in creation, failure to strategize consistent distribution, and funding concerns. Another fear is that they will remove the human connection by integrating video experiences, but the human connection can be increased through properly strategized and planned content. 70% of modern software journeys are initiated before even speaking to an account executive. 2Win Consulting addresses these perceived barriers to product experience strategies and shows you how simple automations and experiences can be the key to selling complex software solutions.  

Despite increasingly user-friendly technology, advanced analytics and tracking, and decreased production time, reluctant CROs adopt customer-facing experiences, slowly. Leaders hesitate because they perceive talent and budget constraints, and most videos fall flat when discussing software. But the next generation of product experiences is anything but flat. From dynamic tours to VR simulations to carefully curated automations, the real barrier is the complexity of product experience strategy and planning. What makes these experiences so exciting is that they introduce sales talent and give them real star power as the driver of a sale, before the first meeting. In turn, this frees up solutions engineers to listen and present the "technical" demo, with standard features out of the way, accelerating the buyer journey.  

Increasing FaceTime through Demo Automation 

According to Gartner in 2020, 80% of B2B sales interactions between suppliers and buyers will occur in digital channels by 2025. Here we are, in 2025, and sellers continue to rely only on IRL engagements without considering the power of automating product experience and building recognition and trust digitally. Wouldn’t it be great to grow influence and continue selling between meetings? One of the most significant barriers to successful software sales is the lack of time you get with your prospect. You get little face time with your prospects and champions, until now.

Product experiences build buyer confidence and answer questions before they arise. When we provide an interactive experience delivered at scale, you relieve pressure on solutions engineers and give customers a better experience aligned with their organizational goals. A product experience strategy can maintain buyer momentum and track preference. This does not replace face time, but extends it and pre-educates them. An example would be multiple "video demos" that can be assembled, allowing a choose-your-own-adventure, meaning you can serve a buffet of content and monitor who consumes what, how much, and if they share it. Furthermore, video demos combined with tours and simulations allow a more immersive OnDemand experience for the buying committee. This data gives you vital information on what drives a stakeholder's buying interest. 

Oh the Places Demo Experiences Go!

Demo experiences shepherd buyers through frequently asked questions, introduce them to new product suites, and better qualify them. Consensus and our leaders at 2Win Consulting identify six different types of demos, each with characteristics that solve specific needs for B2B buyers through the buying process. Product experiences including simulations and tours fit within these videos. In the below explanation, we are assuming a buyer journey as follows, B2B buyer process identifies a buyer journey as first recognizing a need for change, then learning and qualifying vendors and solutions, then committing to the change, and finalizing a deal. 

The type of videos and product experiences you will use depends on your specific process and solutions. It also depends on your tech stack.  We discuss how types of demo video experiences drive a sale forward, using the Consensus software for demo video automation and product experiences.  If you use any type of demo automation software, you may already be incorporating these types as they span the entirety of the sales funnel.  

Vision Demo: The vision demo presents the problem, solution, and benefit. This should not be very long, under 5 minutes, and should be product-light and built by marketing. It can be automated and delegated.

Buyers in the initial stages of recognizing a problem and needing a solution benefit from this type of high-level video. It shows a buyer what their lives would look like if they adopted this solution and is usually delivered in the first week of a cycle. 

Micro Demo: The micro demo is generic and product, industry, and persona-oriented. It reviews the problem, solution, and benefits. Solutions engineers build these, and it should take longer, depending on the scope of content. 

The Micro Demo transitions an interested prospect from the need phase into the learning phase. It does not necessarily show a suite of products, rather one feature to pique the interest of the buyer. An account executive usually sends this, which is a qualifying video prior to the first appointment.

Qualifying Demo: The Qualification Demo is not typically automated. Some product "features" could be digitally deflected by way of a "trailer" or "teaser," but this is often known as a "Disco Demo." The Sales Team would use data and insights from the Vision & Micro Demos to take a prebuilt industry/solution/use case demo and use the live meeting to flip between listening and showing, improvising along the way. These live demos are often ~1hr or in the case of complex ERP systems, could be 0.5 day for an initial overview.

A qualifying demo is intended also during the learning or comparison phase. As the name suggests, it is a deeper dive and a qualifying demo to determine whether a prospect receives presales resources and time. The information you share should distinguish your potential solution from competitors.  

Technical Demo: The technical demo is customized, deep on product, built by the solutions engineers and should not be automated or delegated. This is "the traditional demo". Either from buyer-supplied use cases and data or from "Discovery", the SE team will tailor and configure the demo specific to a prospect's needs. The product experiences shorten the time of traditional or technical demos, and give solutions engineers more capacity in the live engagement to focus on what matters.

Being able to record live demos means that the recording can be served back on the Product Experience platform to form interactive tours, allowing the Buying Committee to quickly review the demo for greater understanding and share it with those not present in the live demo. 

The technical demo is in the decision-making stage and secures trust and confidence in the solution and your sales organization to deliver it. The demo is delivered in-person and, when executed properly, can yield a decision. 

Closing Demo: The closing demo is product-oriented, built by solutions engineers, and can be automated, but not delegated.  These should address concerns regarding APIs, data security, and other logistical considerations to remove fear or doubts. 

Closing demo answers any lingering questions and is delivered at the end of the sales cycle. It also can answer common onboarding questions and secure buyer trust to move forward with the solution. 

FAQ Demo: Your FAQ Demo should address common questions, it can be reviewed anytime, across the buying cycle.

The FAQ Demo is asynchronous and should be used to answer routine questions throughout the buyer process. 

Organizational Fitness for Product Experience Automations 

Product experience automations can catapult your sales velocity through increasing your influence, addressing standard features early on, and creating platforms for your sales team AND your solutions engineers to shine. Building the structures to hold product experience content and properly place it in your selling cycle requires a deep understanding of your buyers and their goals. Leaders may not know where to start with automation and product experience platforms. Most understand the value and need for the type of video automation typically produced by a marketing team for product and brand awareness, but where product experiences are concerned and are customized, the who, what, when, where, and how can be daunting.  

Modern buyer journeys have more stakeholders and take longer. Much of the journey takes place before sellers even are aware of a prospect, so sellers need to be able to present content throughout the buyer's journey that is relevant, easy to consume, useful, and credible. Complex solutions need to be delivered remotely, and more custom information needs to be available to buyers before a technical demo, and experience platforms like Consensus meet this need.

2Win Consulting helps assess organizational readiness for products like Consensus video automations and product experiences to derisk your investment when transforming your go-to-market motions using new technologies. We build a blueprint for success that helps break down the concept of the content lifecycle into a framework that includes content strategy, creation, curation, distribution, and engagement.