Consensus improved their close rates and cut proposal creation time in half

The Challenge

Consensus’ proposal creation process was disjointed, time consuming and caused bottlenecks for their sales team, resulting in extended sales cycles and diminished brand impact. They often pulled together multiple forms of collateral for customers that would get lost in translation, leaving decision makers without the full context of Consensus’ value.

The Solution

Within one quarter of using the HubSpot and PandaDoc integration to create and send proposals, Consensus improved their close rate and cut proposal time-to-create by over 50%. Their new branded proposals created in PandaDoc are also being viewed at a much higher rate, with 84% of proposals getting viewed by prospects.

Tackling bottlenecks & inconsistencies

Consensus is the leading demo automation software that tackles the problematic, time-consuming sales proposal processes that are all too common in software sales. Combining video, product interaction and automation, they make buying easier than before, driving wins 30% faster and often doubling close rates.

Taylor Jeffrey, Sales Manager at Consensus, recognized that their sales proposal process was  negatively impacting their sales cycles and brand image. Rex Galbraith, Chief Revenue Officer at Consensus, also raised concerns about maintaining brand consistency across their proposals. It was important to create a unified experience for prospects to uphold the company’s image and ensure that communications were both professional and cohesive.

Their process pre-PandaDoc looked something like this:

• Sales team builds the initial proposal. 
• Sales leadership reviews the proposal to ensure the pricing was accurate. 
• The sales rep puts together additional collateral, like case studies and use-cases to email to the prospect.
• Sales team uploads the proposal for signature through DocuSign.
• Sales rep emails the prospect with PDFs and decks.

Due to the volume of proposals being sent, sales leadership often trusted the sales team to make sure there were no mistakes.

“We have really great hires [at Consensus], but it’s not scalable to just hope for the best. I trust them to write good proposals and to send the right things, but as a sales leader, I have to verify that everything is accurate.”

The time the sales team spent consolidating collateral like case studies and use-cases was also negatively impacting the sales cycle. This delay wasn’t just a logistical issue but also a strategic concern, as it made it hard to move quickly with prospects, and stakeholders never got the full picture of Consensus’ value.

“One of the worst things that happens in sales is you meet with your champion and then you send over a proposal and they send it to a CFO or CRO that’s never heard of you before. They’re just seeing a cost without the context or value behind it.”

Realizing these challenges were critical roadblocks to their growth, Consensus sought a robust solution to overhaul their proposal creation process.

Accelerating the Deal Cycle 

Consensus relies on HubSpot as their CRM platform, with their sales reps routinely using it to advance deals through the pipeline. It was important that proposals could be created natively in HubSpot to truly accelerate their deal cycle and give time back to reps.

Jacob Landi, Sales and Rev Ops Manager led the implementation of PandaDoc. Now sales reps can quickly generate visually appealing, accurate, and consistent proposals in just minutes, right from HubSpot. PandaDoc’s content library feature made it easy for reps to add case studies and use-cases directly into their proposals to ensure all stakeholders understand the value of Consensus.

“Right from the deal page in HubSpot, reps can click the PandaDoc extension and launch a new document. They can clone them from there. They can send them from there. That’s critical because that’s where sales reps are living. They need to be able to take action from HubSpot versus having a third party tool to login and interact with” —Taylor Jeffery, Sales Manager at Consensus

A Sales Room for every deal

Consensus’ Deal Room vendor was shifting directions and they needed an alternative. Since Consensus was already using PandaDoc to streamline their proposal workflows, they have expanded their use to Digital Sales Rooms and are working to adopt the new feature internally, working from one platform for the deal lifecycle with less disruption to their existing workflows.

With Digital Sales Rooms, they can now create digital environments to engage with multiple stakeholders simultaneously, ensuring that every party has access to relevant sales materials and next steps in a secure online space.

“We basically stopped looking at other competitors and are building out what we’ve had in the past inside of the PandaDoc rooms feature.”

Improved close rates, cut proposal creation time in half

After implementing PandaDoc, Consensus saw massive improvements within just one full quarter: a significant improvement in win rates, a 50% reduction in proposal creation time, and an 84% proposal view rate (indicating higher engagement).

Using PandaDoc’s template features and content library, Consensus can now better control the narrative of their value when key stakeholders are brought into the deal cycle, closing more deals and maintaining brand consistency across each proposal they send. 

PandaDoc helps Consensus seal the deal

PandaDoc helped Consensus improve their sales proposal processes, remove bottlenecks and accelerate proposal delivery to their prospects, resulting in win rate improvements and higher engagement for every proposal they send. Now, Consensus’ brand and value is at the forefront of each touchpoint with its prospects. 

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