How CallRail Enables Sellers to Showcase Product Value with Efficient, Verticalized Live Demo Environments

The Challenge: Neglected Demo Environment Impacts GTM Performance

As a marketing analytics company serving several verticals, CallRail needed a way to effectively showcase the value of their platform to prospective customers. However, their live demo environment was falling short of expectations due to resource constraints and other underlying issues. 

Unreliable, Inconsistent Demo Experiences Lose Trust of Sales Team

CallRail's internal demo environment was maintained by their Engineering, Product and Design (EPD) team. For the EPD team, maintaining the demo environment was not their primary focus—they needed to dedicate their time to delivering new products and innovations. As a result, the demo environment became unreliable and was prone to issues and downtime — which was not at all reflective of CallRail’s actual product experience.

"Because it wasn’t a focal point, it wasn’t maintained well. The data was not customized, we had no vertical-specific information, the team didn’t trust the demo environment to work consistently and we constantly had challenges,” said Amanda Christel, Director of Revenue Project Management and Training at CallRail.

Generic Staging Data

The data in the demo environment was not tailored to the specific needs of different customer segments, which was a huge missed opportunity in their go-to-market strategy. Without vertical-specific information, the demos lacked the personalization needed to make a strong impact.

Poor Experience for Buyers & Sellers

When launching new features, there was often a lag in getting those new features into the demo environment. This meant sellers had to hop between staging and testing environments that had the new features to show the full product. This process was cumbersome and inefficient and negatively impacted the buyer experience.

"Not only did this create a hurdle for sellers, but also made the product feel complex and didn’t give a seamless experience to prospects and customers." 

In an attempt to solve these challenges, the Go-To-Market team tried to create their own demo environment, but quickly realized that approach was unsustainable due to the excessive time and effort required. They even attempted a solution using another demo automation platform, which proved too rigid for the needs of their customer-facing teams.

In summary, CallRail needed a solution that would provide their customer-facing teams with effective live demos that could highlight the platform's value and significantly reduce - if not eliminate - their reliance on engineering resources.

"We were having a difficult time showcasing our platform properly to our potential clients — and TestBox helped us fix this issue." 

The Solution: Increase GTM Effectiveness and Efficiency with Vertical Demo Environments

Turning to TestBox to transform its demo environments, CallRail now has 5 vertical-specific demos that enable their customer-facing teams to tell more powerful product stories. By integrating with CallRail’s product and using its own API to push data into the demo environment, TestBox enabled the CallRail team with realistic, vertical-specific demo environments that require little to no ongoing maintenance — massively reducing the Go-To-Market team's reliance on the EPD team.

"We ultimately chose TestBox because of the unique way the TestBox workflow is built. TestBox uses our own product and our own open API to push our dataset in, which essentially means minimal (if any) upkeep on our end." 

Realistic Vertical-Specific Demos

TestBox provides a demo environment that shows real-time data, making the platform appear more realistic and relatable to clients. The demo environments are consistently updated with the latest features and changes, ensuring that customers see the most current version of the product. This customization with vertical-specific data enhances the relevance and impact of CallRail’s demonstrations.

"The ability to demo our product to customers with data in their same vertical helps them see themselves using our product and makes for a great customer experience.”

More Powerful Product Stories

With TestBox, CallRail can now showcase the true value and story of how their product can help solve pain points for their customers in a single, cohesive location. Custom and vertical-specific data help to tell a more compelling story. The improvements in demo environments make it easier for customers to visualize the impact of CallRail’s solutions, leading to a better overall customer experience.

"It’s incredibly powerful to be able to show prospects what we can do for them and demonstrate the true value of our products rather than just telling them.”

Reduced Maintenance and Resource Allocation

Since implementing TestBox, CallRail has saved approximately 20 hours per month in engineering time, previously spent maintaining and troubleshooting the demo environment. This has allowed the EPD team to focus on other critical projects. TestBox has also minimized the resources required to maintain and update demo environments, allowing CallRail to focus on selling their products. Additionally, Amanda no longer gets pinged when something goes wrong with the demo environment.

"Since TestBox implementation about a year ago, I essentially have not had to worry about our demo environment at all."

Confidence in What Sales Is Showing

TestBox has provided CallRail with a demo environment that their team is confident using. The consistency of the environments mean that Go-To-Market leadership is assured that sellers are equipped with powerful product stories for every buyer. 

“Showcasing the data we capture and provide to our clients is critical in selling the value of our product. TestBox has given me confidence that our sellers can now provide an exceptional buyer experience and effectively demonstrate our product's power — all while reducing our reliance on technical engineering resources, making our team more strategic and efficient.” - Marius Smyth, CRO CallRail

Results

• More Powerful Product Stories: Enabled the sales team to tell more compelling product stories with customized, vertical-specific data, demonstrating the true value of CallRail’s product.
• Reduced Reliance on Engineering Resources: Reduced approximately 20 hours per month in engineering time previously spent on maintaining and fixing demo environment ‍
• Increased GTM Efficiency: With confidence that the demo environments work, GTM leaders can focus on strategic priorities and no longer have to respond to demo-related issues.