Gartner has recently released a first-of-its-kind report for its customers, where interactive product demos were praised as “the next best thing” after actually using a real product. This demo revolution has been going on for a while, mainly thanks to an NYC-based startup called Walnut.
But let’s take a step back.
With economies preparing for a downturn, it is critical to make an organization recession-proof with cost-effective technology.
The global health crisis, supply-chain disruptions, and the war in Ukraine have resulted in rising costs prompting businesses to cut costs across all departments. To make a business more recession-proof, advanced planning in terms of product development, marketing, and sales is required.
However, as competition increases, sales and marketing become increasingly important for long-term growth and profitability. As a result, it is prudent to implement sales automation technology. Automation enables critical success factors such as analysis, measurement, and monitoring, allowing businesses to invest in the most critical areas, keeping them one step ahead of the competition.
Many SaaS vendors have gone 100% digital in the last two years, owing to changes in prospect spending patterns and the growth of remote life. With these macroeconomic changes, SaaS models, because of their flexibility and cost-effective nature, are increasingly becoming a part of every company regardless of the industry.
Yoav Vilner, CEO of Walnut, saw an opportunity to improve the entire sales experience. Walnut is a sales automation technology that was launched in 2020 to make the process of creating sales demos simple, useful, efficient, personalized, and reliable with no coding required. By automating the administrative activities, sales representatives can focus their time on more important tasks that will increase sales.
“Our vision is to put the prospect’s needs in the center of everything. The buying experience is horrible for prospects – or at least, was horrible before we were lucky enough to make such an impact on the sales industry,” says Vilner.
The no-code platform provided by Walnut simplifies and personalizes the process of making product demos. The software enables sales teams to easily design unique product demos and incorporate demos into their sales and marketing processes. Additionally, the sales team has access to information about the issues that their customers are facing and finds solutions based on the customer journey and interaction data.
This helps Walnut users in customizing their demos for both current and potential customers. Because demos are conducted live even when the actual product is not available, the platform is said to be fail-proof. Additionally, the drag-and-drop solution speeds up the demoing process by allowing sales representatives complete control.
“Our technology allows sales teams to gain ownership of the demo they need to customize. Think of a Wix-like editor (and we are backed by Wix CEO that’s giving us a lot of inspiration), where sales reps can drag-and-drop to create a perfect sales demo template.” Vilner recently said in an interview with CEO Today.
In addition to protecting the sales and marketing department from the upcoming recession, Walnut will ultimately boost sales productivity and profitability in the long run as well. By eliminating the need for in-person sales, the platform can save businesses millions of dollars on travel, scheduling, and failed meetings.
Many businesses, including Fortune 500 companies, are working with Walnut today because of its personalized sales demos, analytics features, cost-effectiveness, and increased sales efficiency. Walnut’s yearly recurring revenue has increased by 700% end of last year, and the company now has around 200 SaaS customers, including Adobe, Dell, Medallia, NetApp, Treasure Data, Funnel, People AI, and ContractBook.
