Top Presales Software for 2022
Sales technology has been around for decades, but presales software has been left virtually untouched一until now.
Over the past few years, presales technology has exploded onto the tech scene.
Leaders began to realize the time and energy presales teams were pouring into long RFP questionnaires, customized demos, and other sales-focused content.
Since then, presales software has become increasingly popular. In the past year, G2 and Gartner both established new categories specifically for presales software.
But with all the hype around presales software, it’s tough to know exactly what it is, how it can improve sales outcomes, and which software is ideal for your organization.
In this piece, we’ll define presales software, clarify why it’s important, and round up some of the best presales tools on the market today.
What is presales software?
Presales software enables solution consultants, demo engineers, and solution architects to manage their workload and better highlight their software’s functionality in a way that captivates and engages prospects.
In other words, presales software makes presales professionals’ lives easier.
Presales teams are responsible for helping prospects envision what their lives could look like after purchasing a product. Typically, this involves sharing proof of concepts or presenting demos to show off the product’s value.
Every potential customer may have different wants and needs, meaning presales teams have to customize POCs and demos to fit those requirements and possibly answer lengthy RFPs. Completing these tasks for multiple prospects a day or week takes significant time and effort.
Even if presales design the perfect POC or demo, bugs may crop up at the most inopportune time, jeopardizing the sale.
So presales software is designed to reduce the legwork and potential errors from presales activities, helping streamline the process, deliver exceptional presentations, and/or increase presales productivity.
Top presales software on the market
Since the category of presales software is growing, it’s important to understand the different types of software and who the leaders are. Below, we explain how each product enhances presales teams’ effectiveness.
Demodesk
Demodesk acts as a live meeting room where presales teams and prospects can engage collaboratively, turning a one-sided demo into an engaging conversation.
Presales teams can prepopulate talk tracks for specific use cases, upload battle cards, and store other content on the Demodesk platform.
So when a question about competitors or a particular topic comes up in conversation, presales have all the correct information at their fingertips.
Demodesk is explicitly created for prospect-facing teams, giving presales teams the data they need in real-time, allowing them to set up virtual displays, and automating non-selling tasks like scheduling and CRM data entry.
Notable Features
- Supports German, English, French, Italian, and Spanish
- Scheduling automation and meeting distribution
- Sales handoff automation
- Branded virtual sales rooms built for product and content interaction
- Preloaded content from the cloud
- Integrations with Salesforce, Hubspot, Chorus, Gong, and Guru
Consensus
Consensus specializes in delivering personalized, self-service demos. Presales teams create demos from prerecorded videos, slides, and other documents and store them on the Consensus platform.
When prospects select topics of interest, they are directed to a demo that showcases relevant product features and benefits.
As a prospect watches the demo, Consensus tracks their reactions, noting which demos are more or less popular.
Consensus’s Salesforce integration helps presales teams send, track, and report on demo views and shares. Because Consensus links are sharable within an organization, presales teams can uncover new stakeholders they may not have realized could become champions of the product.
Notable Features
- Stakeholder intelligence
- On-demand demos categorized by topic
- Shareable demo links
- Support for over 12 languages
- Integrations with Salesforce, Gmail, Outlook 365, Outreach, Marketo, Pardot, Eloqua, and Zapier
Navattic
Navattic enables presales teams to create controlled, consistent, overview demos that any member of a sales team can lead or share from their first interaction with a prospect.
With a built-in no-code editor, SEs can design gold-standard paired-down demo that show the product’s most important functionality. Replacing static sale decks or screenshots so prospects can see the actual product on the first call.
Navattic users start by capturing the parts of the product front-end they want users to see, then connect each screen using native global linking, and finally, mass edit text and images to their liking.
Presales teams can use Navattic’s mass editing to design demos for specific accounts or verticals, guiding prospects straight to aha moments from the first demo.
Sharable demos can also be used to speed up the sales cycle. Teams can send demo walkthroughs before the first call to see what features prospects care most about to reduce lengthy discovery.
Or send a guided walkthrough of the exact demo environment as a follow up instead of a lengthy demo recording.
Notable Features
- Captures page-level details like HTML and CSS code
- No-code editor
- Automated screen linking
- Sharable demos for pre or post-demo outreach
- Integrations with Google Analytics, Hubspot, Salesforce and Zapier to trigger high intent signals in the CRM
Vivun
Vivun is a presales workspace built on top of Salesforce that enables team members to develop templates, share strategies, and measures their success all backed by the power of AI and machine learning.
Using Vivun, presales team leads can pinpoint where team members spend the most time and what activities generate the best outcomes.
With that information in mind, managers can produce step-by-step processes to standardize and maximize the results from buyer evaluations, discovery, mutual accountability plans, and demos.
In the platform, users can configure task automation to eliminate low-value, repetitive tasks and alert product teams of consistent feedback.
Notable Features
- An AI-powered “Hero Score” for each deal “Calendar Intelligence” to give visibility into presales team activity and drive resource planning
- A Product Gap Library to capture and measure feature requests
- Collaboration via the Vivun Eval module
- Centralized library of reusable artifacts, documentation, and resources
- Integrations with Jira, ZenDesk, Azure DevOps, and GitHub
CloudShare
CloudShare facilitates virtual software experiences that drive customer acquisition and retention. Using Cloudshare, sales engineers can spin up customized virtual environments so that prospects can get an idea of how the real product works.
Because CloudShare is a virtual environment, presales teams dictate what prospects can see or do on the platform, limiting the chances of errors or bugs appearing.
Within CloudShare, presales teams can create demo templates, make adjustments, and then determine which ones perform best.
With integrations to most CRMs, presales teams can use CloudShare to send demo environment invites, track prospect activity, and send tailored follow-ups.
Notable Features
- Back-end reporting to optimize the prospect experience
- Create demo templates
- Extend or cancel demos
- Insititute policies for inactivity, deletion, and suspension
- Manage demo invites, usage, and resource
- Supports AWS, Azure, and GCP
Hub
Hub is a unified presales productivity platform that serves as a single source of record and execution. Hub offers presales ICs a centralized place to store notes, organize tasks, and assess outcomes related to discovery calls, demos, POC/POV presentations, and identified product gaps.
Since the foundation for many of these activities is the same, Hub allows presales teams to design “playbooks” to automate and standardize portions of their workflow. Playbooks ensure that presales teams deliver the right messaging to the right prospects at the right time.
On the backend, presales leadership can monitor people, processes, and product attributes to get and keep presales teams on track.
While Hub can be connected to CRMs like Salesforce and Hubspot, it’s not dependent on those integrations, which gives admins more flexibility with the presales process.
Notable Features
- Create predefined structures and processes via “playbooks”
- Product inventory management with a “common objections” section
- Direct integration with Jira to track product issues or enhancements
- Reporting on activities and outcomes
- Integrations with Salesforce, Hubspot, Slack, Teams, Microsoft and Google calendars, and cloud storage tools
Avnio
Avnio is a Salesforce-native RFP automation solution. Avnio’s workflows automate the RFP lifecycle end-to-end, from document ingestion to bid qualification, to response management, to data and analytics.
With built-in machine learning and NLP, Avnio intelligently matches up the data in a company’s knowledge library with RFP questions to drastically reduce manual work for presales teams.
This is especially helpful if a prospect asks a question while a presales team member is on the phone or in the field.
The Avnio Assistant, a conversational AI-powered bot, can instantly query the RFP response library from any channel or device to quickly and accurately answer prospects’ questions.
Outside of RFP automation, Avnio also streamlines collaboration, integrating with messaging apps like Slack and Teams.
Notable Features
- AI-powered auto-response to RFP questions with a “confidence score”
- Integrated Bid/No Bid scoring of RFx requests
- Question translation (supports over 90 languages)
- Configurable reporting and analysis within Salesforce
- Content and library management
- Integrations with Salesforce, Slack, Teams, Jira, Google and MS calendars, and cloud storage tools
Flowla
Flowla allows you to create personalized deal rooms to bring everything and everyone involved in the sales process on the same page. It is designed to streamline the way businesses engage with potential customers at the pre-purchase phase, throughout the whole sales process, as well as during the customer onboarding.
With Flowla, you can create dynamic step-by-step flows, making each buyer journey tailored to the prospect's needs. It also makes collaboration a breeze as all of your team and key stakeholders can work together in real-time.
In addition to that, you can track prospect engagement at each step of the flow and get actionable insights to fine-tune your approach.
Flowla seamlessly integrates with other must-have tools, from interactive demo and appointment booking tools to e-signature software, ensuring a smooth buyer experience throughout the entire sales cycle.
Notable features:
- Content management for your sales collateral
- Mutual action plans to avoid stalled deals
- Analytics to keep track of how people engage with your flows
- AI capabilities for effortless flow generation
- Integrations with HubSpot, Salesforce, Slack, Loom, Calendly, DocuSign, and more
Check out these posts to learn more about how to use presales software to develop the ideal presales strategy to capture一and hold一the attention your prospects: