Sales is a complicated game of strategy, communication, and patience. When it comes to selling high-tech hardware and software, the complexities of closing a deal grow exponentially, dragging out sales cycles, impacting revenue, and potentially causing high turnover rates. One of the keys to successfully selling hardware and software is the ability to quickly set-up demo and virtual POC environments.
According to a study from Lead Connect, "78% of customers buy from the company that responds to their inquiry first." This post reveals how using an Environment as a Service solution can help your organization accelerate your sales cycle to increase revenue, optimize productivity, and reduce time to value for your prospects.
How to Shorten Your Sales Cycles with Environment as a Service
Demo on Customer’s Environments
During the demo, you’re telling a story of how your prospect can use your tool to help them solve a challenge, avoid negative consequences, and achieve their desired outcome. That’s why personalizing the demo as much as possible can help you build trust, forming a deeper connection that your product is the solution to their problem.
In technology, it isn’t enough to personalize the demo by speaking to the prospect’s pain-points and mapping your solution to their desired outcome. You also need to personalize the demo by showing them how your product works in their environment, on their equipment. With an Environment as a Service solution, your sales team can demo your product on a replica of your prospect’s environment to show the true value that your prospect will get from the solution.
Provide Self-service Environments
Time is money. When your prospect is ready to enter the demo stage of the buyer’s journey, you must be prepared. Unfortunately, setting up the demo and virtual POC environments is full of manual steps and complex configurations that draw out your sales cycles and impact your revenue.
With a drag-and-drop editor, your sales engineers can quickly configure complex replicas of your prospect’s environments using a library of out-of-the box integrations, and then make these environments accessible for your sales team to demo on-demand—shortening the sales cycle time and increasing productivity.
Standardize Demos
Having a standard sales process can help you win more deals, increase revenue, make your sales team more productive, and accelerate the onboarding of your sales staff as your organization grows. One article notes that “90% of all companies that use a formal, guided sales process were ranked as the highest performing.”
By giving your sales force a catalog of preconfigured environment blueprints, you can standardize your sales demo process while providing flexible personalization to show your product’s value to your prospect.
To learn how your sales team can benefit from on-demand access to demo and virtual POC environments through Environment as a Service solutions, download this solution brief.
