In 2013, Garin Hess, a Utah native and serial entrepreneur, founded Consensus with one goal in mind: to make it easier for software buyers to buy. He noticed that buying groups were growing and would continue to grow, and this complexity would make sales cycles longer and buyer's journeys harder. He noticed that above all, customers wanted to see demos and other content created by sales engineers (known as presales) as part of their decision making process. His theory was that giving buyers access to shareable demo content would shorten the sales cycle by automating the demo and discovery process without waiting for calendars to open up or placing additional strain on presales resources.
B2B buyers come to the sales arena for one reason: to make their lives easier. But, due to the complex nature of the sales process, buyers have a tough time making a decision. Particularly when buyers request what they want to see most: the product! It can take days or even weeks for a stakeholder to view a product and then longer to get their team on board with a solution, causing lag and dragging out an already uncomfortable process.
Consensus is intelligent demo automation. They give companies a way to send demos on demand, eliminating the need for repetitive, unproductive calls that hamper the buyer’s journey. Their intelligent demo automation solution strips away the back-and-forth email chains by empowering buyers to see the product on their own schedule and share the solution with their team.
Some of their Utah customers include Lucid, AdvancedMD, and Entrata. They have also worked with Adobe and Oracle, who have strong presences in Utah. They work closely with these companies to scale their presales operations and by giving their sales and BDR/SDR teams access to libraries of demo content they can send on demand. Once shared, demos are tracked to give sellers an understanding of stakeholder engagement, which leads to better live calls, where both buyers and sellers come to the table ready to talk specifics and move deals through the funnel faster.
In March 2023, Consensus announced our Series C funding from the formation of a new strategic partnership with Sumeru Equity Partners. This $110M investment will be used to continue to add to Consensus' product offering, improve optimize their operations, and expand their partnerships within the presales tech community.
Apart from pioneering the digital presales industry, Consensus founded DEMOFEST, the first all-presales virtual conference, in 2020. Since its inception, more than 12,000 presales and sales professionals have attended DEMOFEST sessions in both virtual and in-person forums. This year's virutal DEMOFEST will be May 23-25, 2023. Those interested can register at https://goconsensus.com/demofest/.
