The Problem

Old School Sales

1. Busy, non-technical buyers

Campminder sells software to time-strapped, non-technical camp owners and directors. As you might expect, this audience can include the 'outdoorsy' type—with limited context around technology products. As a result, buyers prefer experiencing the product firsthand before engaging with sales for the next steps.

"Marketing this product has been challenging since everyone uses different terminology. But once prospects see it in action, it just clicks."

2. Twenty+ years worth of products

With more than two decades of experience, Campminder is a well-established brand in the camping industry. The team has built and acquired a substantial range of products over the past 22 years. However, it’s challenging to convey the breadth of Campminder’s functionality within a reasonable span of time.

3. Lengthyyy sales processes

The camp industry has long relied on lengthy sales processes involving an initial discovery call (15+ min), followed by a live demo (1+ Hr), followed by a Q&A session (1+ hr). This draw-out experience can be tedious and time-consuming for buyers and sellers alike, especially in the context of the average deal sizes.

“In the beginning, I was wearing all the hats—founder, PM, sales, and everything in between! I had to figure out a way to cut down on our sales time because I just didn’t have the bandwidth to demo the product all day myself”

The Solution

How Storylane Helps

As the previous section highlights, the camp world is relatively behind in terms of GTM and technology. Here’s how Melany, who is originally a founder from a tech background, deploys Storylane to improve the buying (and selling) experience for Gazebo (which is an add-on to Campminder’s larger camp software platform).

1. Buyer Enablement - Inbound Workflow

To rehash: the majority of Campminder’s leads are inbound. Their typical flow involves:

1. Sign-up
2. Discovery call
3. Product demo
4. Q&A session 

Rather than buyers and sellers having to endure four (FOUR!) taxing sales calls, Melany streamlines this flow by sharing a relevant interactive demo as pre-call material. For one, this provides prospects with valuable context around features and use cases. In turn, this dramatically reduces the time spent on discovery, product demos, and Q&A. Here’s an example of an email Melany might send to a new lead:

By the time prospects speak to sales, they have a taste of how Campminder can help their business. Now, it’s just a matter of figuring out the nitty-gritty details over a call. A win-win for everyone involved!

Prospects see the product. We skip over the discovery, and jump straight into a high-intent demo. Time saved for buyers and sellers. Skip over all the back and forth!

2. Sales Enablement - Outreach & Leave Behinds

Penetrating a new market

Campminder is breaking into a new market: outdoor education. As part of this, Melany and the rest of the sales team execute email campaigns with embedded Storylane demos. This helps educate (and eventually convert) a new set of audiences about Campminder. 

I’ve seen a lot of feedback from leads saying “I love this, no one else is doing this. I want to schedule something

Furthermore, Melany taps into the analytics to measure engagement, completion rates, and time spent. This helps the team prioritize which accounts to double down on for further follow-ups.

The ability to see engagement, visibility, and tracking for our interactive demos is valuable

Leave behinds for self-paced demos

It’s challenging to fit several products into a single sales call without overwhelming prospects. It’s not uncommon for specific features or use cases to be missed during the course of a live demo. To solve this, Melany shares feature-specific Storylane demos with prospects after a sales call. These demos are based on what prospects care about most or features that have been missed out. 

The Results

Cutting Sales Time By Two Thirds

1. Sales velocity

Storylane’s impact on sales velocity has been significant. Melany reports that deals that otherwise took up to 6 weeks, are now closed in as little as 2 weeks with Storylane. This can be attributed to multiple factors: The nature of the product (Gazebo vs Campminder), revised, shorter readings, but also: interactive demos!

“When I found Storylane, I said “great, I can get my product in front of people very quickly”

2. Cross-sell opportunities

Another serendipitous benefit of Storylane has been its impact on cross-selling opportunities. Prospects who are initially interested in Campminder, explore Gazebo’s interactive demo and eventually end up purchasing both! Goes to show how expansive revenue can really be (with the right efforts and tools 😉)

Storylane feels like part of our larger sales process. I don’t exactly “sell” to prospects — I let them see the product for themselves and discuss how to make a deal work from there”

Going forward, Campminder expects to leverage Storylane in further ways. For one, the camp software industry is very protected. Businesses are careful about where they show their product, to minimize competitive intelligence. Melany hopes to change this by opening up interactive demos and product walkthroughs on the website and beyond.

There are also plans to implement Demo Hub as an accessible way to showcase multiple products and features in a centralized repository for prospects. Finally, the team hopes to leverage Storylane’s Hubspot integration to automate intent-based email campaigns to prospects. This would entail automatically sending a personalized demo based on what products and features a prospect is most interested in.