Sales has always been a cutthroat profession in the B2B universe. It is both fast-paced and illusive; you miss a beat and that hot lead will wind up in your competitor’s funnel.
This conundrum has spurred an entire industry of sales tech solutions, all looking to make the sales process more efficient and less intuitive.
Demoleap, a sales enablement platform, is focusing on helping sales representatives perform more effectively throughout the sales cycle, from qualification and discovery calls to demos and customer onboarding. The company is doing this with the help of a live “AI assistant” that guides sellers during and post calls.
Since emerging from stealth last year, the company seems to already be making headway, guiding thousands of demos and sales calls a month. Below are highlights from a recent conversation I had with Itay Sinuani, the CEO of Demoleap.
In 2022, Demoleap emerged from stealth. How long was Demoleap in the making, and how did it come about?
Before starting Demoleap, I was leading a team of solution engineers at Salesforce, and part of the role was to test the methodology behind the sales processes. One of my tasks was to create and run sales enablement programs for both internal and external sellers, which would focus on demonstrating value in the discovery and demo stages. We ran these programs globally and discovered that despite participating in these programs, sellers still went back to their old behaviors and performed at the same level. They were still relying on their individual cognitive capabilities – such as memory and focus, which are influenced by external factors, such as amount of sleep, mental state, etc. – to deliver a quality sales interaction. It was here that we learned that no matter how good the sales material was, how talented the sellers were, or how thorough the training was, there needed to be a new solution that could reinforce training and help sellers during their meetings. A solution like this did not yet exist, even amongst Salesforce’s mighty tech stack.
Shortly after, I left Salesforce and partnered with Noam Singer, who was a successful founder of a company called Tracx, which created marketing solutions based on social listening. Together, we expanded these ideas to create a solution that helps sellers in real time, and that’s where Demoleap began.
In 2020, we started to test our product with the world’s best sellers from the top companies, such as Salesforce and Zendesk, to make sure we fully understood the needs and pain points of the industry. In 2022, our product was finally market-ready, and we emerged from stealth.
What have been your company’s biggest strategic initiatives since securing your $4.4M seed funding round this past August? In what areas have you made the most progress in the past few months?
Since our emergence from stealth, we’ve seen a lot of positive feedback from our customers, which have already begun renewals and expanding to other teams and departments such as customer success.
Our seed funding allowed us to assemble the ideal team, collaborate with our target customers, and continuously improve our product.
I am proud of our team and thrilled to be working with customers such as Nice, Kumavision, SysAid, and others, addressing diverse use cases in sales, solution engineering, and customer success.
What are the biggest obstacles today when it comes to the enterprise sales cycle?
Adapting to a new reality and quickly implementing the necessary steps:
In today’s business world, enterprise sellers are under increasing pressure to deliver results with limited resources. Despite having to meet their sales quotas, they must engage with a less receptive buyer and operate within an organization that is focused on cost-cutting and resource optimization. This is driving sales leaders to re-evaluate their strategies and find new ways to demonstrate value.
According to a recent Salesforce report, 82% of sales reps have had to quickly adapt to new sales methods.
Sales leaders face a significant challenge in implementing new strategies due to the shortcomings of traditional training and coaching methods. These methods are often too time-consuming, costly, and ineffective, making it difficult for sales leaders to drive meaningful change.
In 2023, do you expect to see any changes in the enterprise sales tech stack? If so, what trends are responsible for these changes?
The current sales landscape is undergoing a major transformation as we see three interlinked trends emerge:
- Prospects are becoming increasingly hesitant to buy
- Companies are pivoting their focus from hyper-growth to sales efficiency
- Sellers are expected to deliver value and act as trusted advisors through a more adaptive sales process
This shift is leading companies to seek out innovative tools that can boost sales efficiency while reducing enablement costs. As a result, the focus of sales technology is shifting towards improving sales execution rather than just providing data and insights to managers.
Here’s what really gets me fired up – even today, many sales teams are equipped with a host of tools like CRMs, call recorders, and forecasting tools – all designed for managers. But what about the sellers? It’s crazy to think that in a world where it’s sink or swim, these tools only tell us why the seller drowned but do nothing to help them swim! It’s time for a change, and I believe that sales technology needs to focus on empowering sellers, not just reporting on their performance.
What exactly is the demo’s role in the sales cycle? How important is it, and how does it impact the cycle as a whole?
The demo can be the most powerful tool in the seller toolbox if used correctly. It can’t be a stand-alone act – organizations have to build a process that demonstrates value in every sales interaction.
According to Salesforce, “87% of business buyers expect sales reps to act as trusted advisors, and the best way to do that is to know how to educate the customer about how your product solves their own problems.”
For instance, many of our customers come to us to help their BDRs show and talk about the product’s value, even during the qualification process.
In a webinar with Peter Cohan, we discussed a possible solution of a short, impactful demo that can save time and effort by better qualifying the prospect and improving the first-call conversation by generating a higher interest with the prospect.
What separates Demoleap from its competitors?
Demoleap replaces traditional learning and coaching with real-time guidance to run perfect qualification, discovery, and live sales demos.
With a single click, sales managers can share their best winning plays with the entire team and trust Demoleap to navigate every seller during every conversation to close more deals.
Our unique technology translates cues from the seller’s actions and the meeting audio to dynamically present the seller with the right thing to ask, say or do.
When looking to improve your sales team performance, sales managers should ask themselves, “what stops my sales team from outperforming?” Is it the “car” (sales presentations, demo environment, etc.) or the “driver” (sellers)?
There are countless tools out there that aim to improve the car, offering new ways to make your sales assets shinier.
But none will work if your sellers are not up to the task.
What is really surprising is that all of the tools focusing on improving seller performance are actually built for managers, and provide managers with insights on what went wrong and what requires fixing, but none of them actually enable the seller to do better next time.
This is where Demoleap fits in. We believe the most effective way to improve your sales performance is to invest in your sellers and help them reach their full potential by giving them access to the right technology in real time.
Where and how does AI come into play in Demoleap’s offering?
The Demoleap solution is a new way to inject new technologies into the sales process, enhancing sellers’ capabilities during live interactions.
Our proprietary technology identifies cues from the seller’s browser, and we use an AI engine to transcribe the meeting audio in real time. Then, our continuously evolving algorithm prioritizes those cues based on intent indicators, which trigger the right content for the seller to follow the recommended playbook step.
Different recommendations can include the right question or talk track, the right presentation (or any other supporting resource), and even a suggested automated demo flow that is driven by our co-pilot.
To provide an analogy for Demoleap in the real world, Demoleap is like a GPS or other driver assistance systems (like Mobileye), but all in one. We recommend the best path to get to your destination is one that will trigger alerts that can keep you on track and prevent you from making mistakes, and also drive part of the demo for you, exactly like autonomous driving technologies.
Results speak for themselves. What are some eye-popping statistics you can share about the impact your product has had on your clients?
At Demoleap, we’re revolutionizing the way sellers learn and perform. Our innovative approach helps sellers achieve better results faster and with lower costs.
Speed Up Adoption: With Demoleap, new and experienced sellers adopt new messaging, processes, and feature changes five times faster than with traditional techniques.
Enhance Retention: Demoleap’s unique approach helps sellers retain 75% more knowledge, leading to consistently high performance.
More time selling: On average, Demoleap gives each seller a month’s worth of selling experience, dramatically reducing training, preparation, and administration time.
What footprint is Demoleap looking to make in the enterprise sales world?
I believe that Demoleap is changing the way organizations think about sales enablement. It doesn’t matter how much money and effort organizations spend on the best-in-class offline learning and coaching tools because at the end of the day, we’re all humans, and we are bound by the limitations of our cognitive capabilities.
Demoleap’s real-time approach breaks those limitations and provides infinite memory and the ultimate focus for every seller on every call.
In the world of Demoleap, man and machine collaborate, and technology enhances the experience for both sellers and buyers.
Starting with improving discovery and demo calls for SaaS companies, our aim is to empower all sellers everywhere, to consistently achieve exceptional customer engagement.
As excited as we are about our platform, we have so much more to develop with many more real-time capabilities on the horizon. We’re really just getting started.
