BEFORE WALNUT:
‘The cost of maintaining and delivering demos made it impossible for us to scale’
SailPoint saw that they were struggling to scale their demos.
When the Solution Engineering (SE) team evaluated the issue, they found that the high cost of maintaining and delivering demos that showcased their sophisticated solution and supported all their third-party integrations, the fact that their SE team had limited resources, and the huge demand from prospects had created an inefficient buying process.
But it wasn’t just about improving their own efficiency. SailPoint understood that they needed to change their approach to demoing to fit the evolving needs of modern buyers to ensure they were consistently delivering value.
“Given our team is made up of 150 SEs and the product has over 200 integrations and counting, it made it expensive to demo for each individual prospect. And the cost of maintaining and delivering demos made it impossible for us to scale and support the demand in the market.”
AFTER WALNUT:
‘With Walnut, we have the ability to better address buyers’ needs and make sure we convey value to customers in a way that works for them. And this has helped us improve our overall process and the buying experience across the entire funnel’
When SailPoint started using Walnut, the SEs no longer needed to spend more than an hour preparing demo environments before delivering a single demo, because they could easily maintain all of their demos and showcase SailPoint’s many use cases. This saves the team a significant amount of time and resources, which has enabled them to focus on meeting their customers’ needs rather than on technical maintenance and making adjustments to demos.
“Once we started using Walnut, our team was confident that we’re all going to present the value of our product in a way that works for our customers. And this has helped us improve the buying experience across the entire funnel.”
BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE:
‘We’re seeing Walnut being used in so many different ways’
While the team at SailPoint is seeing tremendous value from using Walnut to demo integrations to customers, the biggest impact has been all the different ways the organization has been able to utilize the platform. It has been leveraged throughout the entire sales funnel across many different touchpoints in the buyer’s journey.
“While we recognize the value of Walnut for demoing integrations, the biggest game-changer is how the entire organization has been able to leverage the platform.”
HERE’S THE FULL STORY:
According to Ian Gritter, who leads the Solution Engineering Strategy at SailPoint, they originally came to Walnut because they were having a hard time scaling their demo process throughout the organization.
The big question was, why?
‘We needed a way to reduce the cost of maintaining and delivering demos, while also quickly proving clear ROI’
When the SE team looked into the issue, they realized that the cause was related to the high cost of maintaining and delivering demos that demonstrated the value of their sophisticated solution and supported all their third-party integrations.
Before each demo, the SE needed to go in and test everything, to make sure nothing fundamental had been changed in their shared third-party demo environments. And after, the SE was expected to return and clean up any changes they had made.
And when you multiply this by more than 200 integrations, over 150 SEs that demo, and growing demand from prospects, the demo process became very expensive.
Not only was this unsustainable, but Ian also notes that this made it challenging to be agile and fit changing GTM processes.
The outcome of all this was not only an inefficient demo and buying process, but also the need for manual processes that were expensive for the business.
But the issue went much further than that.
‘The way customers buy has changed. So we needed to shift the way that we work, and that means we had to think about providing other ways for us to clearly articulate our value’
SailPoint understood the way people buy has changed, and that they couldn’t support these changing expectations with their old demo model.
The team knew that their target audience is typically very educated by the time they come to SailPoint. That means the GTM and demoing process had to shift to match the evolving needs of their customers.
To do this, they had to think about how to convey their solution’s value in ways that work for their buyers.
‘We knew that we needed to make a change’
With an inefficient demonstration process, inability to convey value to prospects in a way that works for buyers, and SEs that were stretched thin, the team knew they needed to make a change in order to ensure that they could consistently showcase value.
‘Now, we’re able to show value to customers across all touchpoints as well as be as consistent as possible to make sure that we’re telling a complete story’
Right off the bat, the SailPoint team noticed a major improvement in their ability to convey value.
By automating the demo process, no matter who presents the demo, SailPoint now has a way to ensure the business value of their product is being communicated clearly and consistently.
Plus, the fact that anyone can simply send over an interactive demo without needing to schedule a live call has made their buyer enablement much faster. And this in turn has had a meaningful impact on the team’s ability to fit the buying process to the changing needs of their customers.
‘With Walnut, we can just trust that everything is going to work the way that it should’
In addition to being able to convey the value that the solution brings, part of Walnut’s value for SailPoint is the peace of mind that the platform has given their team.
Besides no longer needing to pay for costly third-party integration instances for their demos, the SailPoint team was also able to save tons of time.
Instead of spending up to an hour before and after demos to check that everything worked and that no changes had been made, they could just trust that demos would go smoothly with Walnut.
And this reduction in demo prep time and clean-up time led to a major improvement in the team’s overall efficiency.
‘We’re seeing Walnut being used in so many different ways’
SailPoint was able to use Walnut for more than just sales demos. In fact, multiple teams throughout the organization were able to leverage Walnut demos for several use cases, including:
1. Trade shows—SailPoint started using interactive demos during industry trade shows and at their annual customer conference to give prospects and customers a more realistic product experience without requiring live instances of every integrated system. This helped them increase brand and product awareness.
2. On-call demos—SailPoint uses Walnut to demo the more than 200 integrations they offer to show how the solution actually works and provide a tailored experience for buyers based on their unique needs.
3. Embedding a Walnut demo on the website— Using Walnut helped the team boost their direct marketing efforts to increase lead quality with high product intent by showing their product earlier in the buyer journey.
4. Feature announcement— SailPoint uses Walnut to drive buzz about new features or releases and drive product and brand awareness.
5. Internal training—With Walnut, the team realized that they can send their SE team guided demos to reduce ramp up time and deliver asynchronous training.
6. Buyer enablement— SailPoint uses Walnut to continue selling even when they’re not there. Solution Engineers send prospects interactive demos that can be viewed at any time. This allows them to provide their champions with high-quality product content that can help them better promote SailPoint within their own companies.
‘Knowing that our demos are always going to work and tell that consistent story has made all the difference’
For Ian, the biggest game-changers would have to be the confidence that the sales team now has when demoing and the drastic improvement in overall efficiency.
Knowing that anyone can share a demo, without worrying about changing anything or telling the right product story has freed up the team to focus on what really matters: meeting their customers’ needs.
‘If I had to sum up how I feel about Walnut in 3 words, it’d be these: I love it’
