Product demonstrations have been a core part of the sales process ever since Bill Gates went live on TV to tell the story of Windows '98 back in 1998. While product demonstrations have evolved since then, the sales process remains equally as difficult for many industries.
Although the B2B SaaS industry is entrenched in technology and optimization, it's always been a sector that has struggled to streamline the sales process. Despite the huge market behind B2B SaaS, it has an overly complex sales process and poor conversion rates. Walnut is actively changing that fact.
Walnut is a data-driven demo platform that makes building personalized product demonstrations for new leads easier than ever. With Walnut, teams can clone their SaaS platform, creating fully-functional demos that can be customized directly to the intended customer.
Walnut has seen impressive uptake and success in the B2B SaaS field and has just announced Walnut 3.0. Tech Times recently had the opportunity to discuss Walnut with Yoav Vilner, Walnut's CEO. We explored the trajectory of Walnut, its ongoing efforts to streamline B2B sales, and the launch of Walnut 3.0.
Hi Yoav, thank you for doing this interview with us. Could you tell us more about yourself and your journey with Walnut so far?
I serve as the CEO of Walnut, the pioneering platform for interactive product demos. We've been fortunate to carve out a landscape in the highly competitive SaaS industry, collaborating with hundreds of the world's leading sales teams to enhance their demo experiences. Before Walnut, I founded several tech companies, mentored startups in top-tier accelerators, and contributed as a guest author to globally recognized magazines.
Walnut has made a name for itself by helping to streamline the B2B SaaS sales process. Can you tell us more about what problems you noticed in B2B SaaS and how Walnut set out to solve them?
Absolutely. What we noticed in the B2B SaaS industry was that sales demos were horrible. Before Walnut, demos were often rigid, unable to be customized for each unique customer's needs and business processes. This resulted in potential customers not fully understanding the value and capabilities of the product, and salespeople losing a dramatic percentage of their prospective deals.
One of the early visions of Walnut was to simplify SaaS sales. You've stated in the past that "SaaS sales suck," due to the traditional process having too many moving parts. What part do Walnut's demos have in simplifying the process and streamlining sales?
At Walnut, we set out to redefine this experience. We built an interactive, customizable demo platform that allows sales teams to tailor their product demonstrations to each customer's specific needs. This means they can show relevant features and workflows, using the customer's own data, in real-time or in an a-sync matter. The results have been astounding - customers better understand the products and their value, and sales cycles have been significantly shortened. We also plug into CRMs and sync the entire sales funnel alongside the demos, in addition to providing unique insights and analytics.
Walnut has recently announced Walnut 3.0, which will introduce a new phase of Walnut. What sets Walnut 3.0 apart; what changes can we users expect to see?
According to some of our customers, Walnut 3.0 is our "even cooler, more mature" brand, both in our online presence and within our product. Our new capabilities match those of the largest companies, from interactivity and the automatic updating of screens and features, to automatically linking internal demo pages to each other, and more.
On the brand side, while our previous brand won awards and became viral among the sales community, we've taken a huge leap forward and introduced a more mature presence and narrative that communicates our vision.
Speaking of new features, Walnut has recently announced that the simplified demo creation process that Walnut 3.0 brings will make creating demos easier than ever. Why has streamlining sales from the seller's perspective been so important for Walnut?
Streamlining the sales process from the seller's perspective has always been a cornerstone of our mission at Walnut. The more effortless the demo creation process is for the seller, the more they can focus on what they do best - understanding the customer's needs, building relationships, and articulating the value of their product.
Moreover, by empowering sales teams to create and control their demos, we are democratizing the sales process. This allows sellers to be more agile, to react swiftly to customer feedback, and to constantly refine their demo to ensure it's hitting the right notes. This is pivotal in today's fast-paced, customer-centric sales environment.
Last year, 2022, was a huge year for Walnut. What can we expect to see in 2023?
Last year was indeed a breakthrough year for us, in which we also announced a 6X increase in revenues that was very unlikely to such a dramatic market downturn.
We have exciting plans for 2023. Our core focus will continue to be on innovating and refining our platform based on user feedback and evolving market needs. Our #WeAreProspects movement is about to take off in ways unimaginable, and overall we have a lot of surprises for our clients this year!
