Businesses today face a difficult task in trying to engage and capture buyers who are bombarded with information and options. Personalization and efficiency are crucial for closing deals successfully in the current market. They’re not just essential to customer engagement—they’re also non-negotiable for driving conversions.

Demo automation tools are helping businesses reach their target audience and streamline their sales process. Interestingly, the growing importance of these elements is mirrored in the expanding market for demo automation tools, which is projected to reach $2.1 billion by 2026. Among the various options available, Consensus demo automation software is the longer-established offering. 

In this blog, we're going to delve into what sets Consensus apart, exploring its unique functionalities and how they can align with your business needs. But first, let’s look into the evolution of demo automation tools. 

The evolution of demo automation tools

The journey of demo automation tools has been a remarkable one, marking a significant shift in how businesses present their products. From the early days of manual, time-consuming demonstrations to the sophisticated, streamlined processes we see today, demo automation has continuously evolved to meet the growing demands of a digital-first world.

This evolution has been driven by the need for efficiency, personalization, and scalability in sales and marketing strategies. Modern demo automation tools have risen to this challenge, offering solutions that save time and enhance the quality of interactions with potential customers.

What is Consensus Demo Automation Software?

Consensus software is a specialised platform designed to enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of sales demos. It stands out in the B2B sales space by offering a unique approach to demo automation, primarily focusing on video demos. This tool is tailored to assist presales and sales teams, highlighting the platform’s strength in engaging prospects effectively, especially in scenarios between meetings.

Which teams use Consensus demo and for what?

Consensus demo helps revenue teams create personalized, buyer-driven experiences that accelerate deals and prompt action. Let’s look at how the platform supports different teams and helps them reach their goals.

1. Sales Teams

Consensus helps sales teams remove friction and sell anytime, anywhere with on-demand demos. The platform ensures sellers stay in front of buyers, providing them with the product info they need to make decisions. It also takes the guesswork out of the process by revealing key stakeholders and buyer intent, helping AEs uncover champions and better assess opportunities. As a result, sales teams win more deals, close faster, and land bigger deals.

2. Marketing Teams

With Consensus demo, marketing teams can give prospects instant access to demos, removing the need for them to request one. The platform captures a higher number of product-qualified leads than traditional landing pages, helping set the stage for successful buying conversations. Whether using a PLG or Hybrid PLG approach, Consensus delivers a personalized product experience and helps you identify which prospects are ready to engage. 

3. Channel Partners

For businesses that work with channel partners, Consensus demo offers a fast and efficient way to onboard and enable them. With automated, customizable demos, partners can quickly get up to speed on your products and start selling effectively. Consensus ensures your brand and messaging stay consistent by providing reusable assets that scale across your channel. This helps resellers confidently represent your solution and drive sales without overwhelming your presales teams.

4. Pre-sales

Consensus software helps presales teams scale their impact by automating repetitive and unqualified demos, freeing up their time to focus on higher-value tasks. By providing buyers with personalized, on-demand demos, presales can provide them the content they need at their own pace. This not only empowers buyers but also allows presales to engage more effectively, personalize interactions, and coach through complex sales.

5. Customer Success

Consensus helps customer success teams add value at every stage of the customer journey with on-demand, reusable demo content. From easy onboarding to efficient implementation and faster adoption, demo automation ensures customers stay engaged and confident in your solution. By providing content for every scenario, you can showcase ROI, introduce new features, and arm champions with shareable assets to drive continued success. This helps turn sceptical users into supporters and loyal customers into advocates.

What are the key features of Consensus Software?

The Consensus software is equipped with a suite of powerful features designed to transform the way businesses engage with prospects through demos.

Interactive Video Demos: Consensus offers interactive, personalized demos that engage buyers with relevant content at scale. With advanced branching options, buyers can explore your product, learn by trial, and customize their journey through videos. This creates an authentic, hands-on experience that shows exactly how your product works, and helps buyers understand your value better.

Tours: Interactive tours help buyers link your product’s value to real-world problems. You can guide them through key concepts by adding hotspots on each page to highlight important features. Target Areas further simplify navigation, making it easy for stakeholders to explore your product's story and see how it addresses their needs.‍

DemoBoards™ and BuyerBoard™: Provide customized, branded landing pages for each buyer, offering a personalized, secure experience. Plus, empower champions to track how their colleagues engage with shared demos. This gives you valuable insights into stakeholder alignment and demo effectiveness.‍

Comprehensive Demo Library - Easily organize, search, and subscribe to the demos that matter most to your team. With Consensus software, you can also scale your demo resources by giving reps instant access to reusable assets they can share on demand.‍

Screen Recorder and Demo Player: Automatically capture and edit video demos to spread product knowledge and brand messaging across your organization. Plus, deliver seamless digital demo experiences on any device, anytime.‍

SNAP Plugin: Simplify demo creation with instant recording and automated custom links. Use Consensus SNAP and Capture Chrome extensions to quickly create video demos or capture screenshots that highlight key product features.

Merge links: With Merge links in Consensus software, easily create custom links to embed in your email tools, delivering personalized experiences at scale—no matter which tool you use.‍

Analytics and Tracking: Consensus software lets you qualify leads and track stakeholder engagement with in-depth insights at every stage of the process. With high-level demo tracking, heatmaps and solution-specific dashboards, you can easily monitor video completion rates. Focus on the best deals by drilling down into buyer group analysis, team performance, and demo effectiveness. This helps you stay on top of your sales process and make more informed decisions.‍

Seamless Integration: Consensus makes it easy to integrate with your favorite sales and marketing tools, so you can work seamlessly within your existing tech stack. With its open API, you can build custom integrations, BI dashboards, and third-party apps to suit your needs. This flexibility lets you leverage Consensus data wherever it’s most valuable, helping you streamline processes and make smarter decisions.

How Does Consensus Software Work?

Getting started with Consensus software is a straightforward process. Here's a step-by-step guide on how users can start creating their first demo:

Signing in:

Head over to their official website and sign in. Consensus doesn’t have a freemium or free trial.

Adding Users:

• Access User Management: Once signed in, admins can go to the gear icon and select 'Manage Users & Access.
• Manage Users: Here, you can add user licenses, assign different access levels, and disable users as needed.

Uploading Content:

• Prepare Your Content: Record and gather the video content you want to use, such as existing videos, screen recordings, or webinars.
• Upload Videos: Navigate to the Demo Management section and use the Demo Wizard to upload your videos.

Building Demos:

• Use the Demo Wizard: Found in the Demo Management section, the Demo Wizard helps you combine videos into demos.

Choose Demo Type:

• Single Video Demo: The demo consists of one video. 
• Advanced branching demo: Include multiple videos with branching logic.
• Standard Personalization demos: Create personalized demos to allow buyers to choose their own adventure. 
• Add Documents: Attach related documents to any demo for additional context.

Share Demos via Distribution Options

• Personalized DemoBoard links.
• Embedding on your website.
• Social media channels.
• Email or integrations like Salesforce.
• Receive analytics on who viewed your demos and what parts they watched.

What are the benefits of using Consensus Software?

Let's explore how Consensus demo automation software can transform your sales and marketing efforts:

Shorten Sales Cycles: Consensus demo can cut your sales cycle by up to 30%. By using interactive video demos, you can educate and qualify buyers, and help your sales team focus on the most promising leads. Plus, with on-demand demos, you engage buyers on their terms, speeding up decision-making and keeping deals moving forward.

Empower Your Channel Partners: The platform isn't just for your internal team. It arms your channel partners with on-brand, compelling demo content. This ensures that your message stays consistent and powerful, no matter who's delivering it, keeping your partners on top of their game. 

Increased Leads capture: With Consensus demo, your interactive videos do more than just inform; they're a lead-generating powerhouse. By embedding lead generation CTAs, you can capture up to four times more leads than standard landing pages. That's a game-changer in any lead generation strategy.

Reduce Unqualified Demos & Increase Lead Quality: Interactive demos help ensure that only the right buyers engage with your product. By allowing prospects to explore the product on their own, they can self-qualify based on their needs and interest level. This means your sales team spends less time on unqualified leads and more time on high-potential opportunities. With personalized, on-demand demos, you can attract and engage the right audience, increasing lead quality and overall conversion rates.

Give Time Back to Your Presales Team: Consensus demo frees up your presales team by automating repetitive and unqualified demo tasks, like intro demos. This gives them more time for strategic, value-driven activities that drive results. By focusing on the most engaged buyers, your team can close deals faster and more effectively. It’s a win-win—your presales people get the work-life balance they deserve, while you boost your sales efficiency. 

Gain Insight on Stakeholder Preferences:  From buyer group analysis to individual demo performance, you can track insights across six levels with Consensus demo software, giving you a clear view of stakeholder engagement. These insights help you fine-tune your strategy, ensuring you hit the right notes with each account. Plus, you can quickly identify the most engaged prospects, allowing you to prioritize your efforts. With data-driven decisions, you can personalize your outreach and move deals forward faster, ensuring you're always one step ahead.

Which tools does Consensus Software integrate with?

The Consensus software offers a range of integrations to enhance its functionality, making it a more powerful asset in sales and marketing strategies. Here's a detailed look:

CRM Integrations:

• Salesforce: Consensus salesforce integration allows users to build opportunities, measure the sales funnel, and analyse data within the CRM environment.
• Microsoft Outlook: This integration enables users to quickly share demo links from their demo library via email.
• Gmail: Similar to Outlook, the Gmail integration allows for the efficient sharing of demo links directly from the user's email.

Sales Engagement Tools:

• Outreach: Users can share demo links within sequences or email templates in Outreach, streamlining the sales engagement process.
• Cadence: This integration allows for the insertion of demos into cadences, templates, and snippets, enhancing sales communication.

Marketing Automation:

• Eloqua: By integrating with Eloqua, Consensus pushes demo qualified leads and tracks performance, aiding in effective marketing automation.

Other Integrations:

• Zapier: The Zapier integration connects Consensus to over 6000+ apps, enabling extensive workflow automation possibilities.
• Paperpile: This unique integration allows users to discover literature in Consensus and import references directly to Paperpile.
• Unpaywall: Users can access open-access full-text PDFs through the Unpaywall integration, enhancing research and information gathering.

What are the top 5 alternatives to Consensus Demo?

While Consensus is unique in some terms of demo automation, there are several Consensus alternatives worth considering. Here are the top 5 alternatives, each with its unique features and capabilities:

1. Demoboost

Demoboost stands out with its focus on interactive, guided, and live demos, offering a more engaging and customizable experience compared to Consensus. Demoboost demos are clones of the product letting the viewer touch and feel rather than just see the product. Demoboost integrates seamlessly with most Sales and MerTech platforms, providing advanced analytics and insights. Demoboost supports internal and client collaboration. Last but not least, Demoboost offers demo building and perfecting services as part of their license making it a competitive Consensus alternative for businesses seeking an interactive and analytical approach to demo automation. Read more here: Consensus vs Demoboost.

2. Saleo

Saleo is a very different solution to Consensus. Saleo specialises in live demos while Consensus typically focuses on selling between the meetings. Saleo offers an overlay over the live environment, providing a more authentic and hands-on experience than Consensus's video-based approach. Saleo’s demos are not sharable and don’t provide analytics, which makes them a very different offering from Consensus. Saleo is a great alternative for businesses looking for a more live demo solution. Read more here: Saleo vs Consensus. 

3. Navattic

Navattic excels in providing interactive, non-linear product demos without the need for coding, contrasting with Consensus’s video demo format. This platform is particularly beneficial for marketing teams looking to create engaging, self-guided product tours, offering a more dynamic and user-driven demo experience. Read more here: Navattic vs Consensus.

4. Reprise

Reprise focuses on high customization for enterprise-level demo creation, targeting teams with advanced demo creation skills. This makes it a suitable alternative for larger organisations or teams that require detailed, customizable demos, as opposed to Consensus’s more standardised video demos. Read more here: Reprise vs Consensus.

5. Walnut

Walnut offers a codeless platform for creating interactive demos, emphasising ease of use and customization without the need for technical skills. This positions Walnut as an alternative for teams seeking a user-friendly platform to create and manage demos at scale, in contrast to Consensus’s focus on video-based demos. Read more here: Walnut vs Consensus.

Consensus Pricing

Consensus adopts a subscription-based SaaS (Software as a Service) pricing model. It offers a flexible pricing model tailored to the specific needs and scale of your organisation. Here's an overview of how their pricing is structured:

• Base Price: The base pricing for Consensus begins at $6,000 per year.
  Module price: Consensus has additional modules that cost around $12,000 per year.
• Role and License-Based: The final cost depends on the number of user roles and licences purchased. 
• Typical Sales Team: For a standard sales team, the annual pricing can go around $25,000.
• Large Enterprises: For enterprises requiring extensive usage and integrations, the cost can exceed $100,000 per year.