Tedious demo processes, slow-responding reps, and a painful process overall — we have all experienced this when trying to buy software. Which is exactly what the #WeAreProspects movement intended to end.
A year after the video blew up LinkedIn with its portrayal of the complicated SaaS buying experience, the tech CEO behind the online movement says the company is still grappling with the exposure it received, which helped it shape a new landscape in tech.
Watch on Vimeo: Introducing #WeAreProspects: A Movement by Walnut
“It took us some time to realize that a scrappy video we made has just transformed how B2B sales is perceived in the eyes of the public,” says Yoav Vilner, CEO & Founder of the buzzy B2B sales startup Walnut.io.
(Walnut CEO, Yoav Vilner)
In August 2022, Walnut put out a video, which showed what it would be like if buying a shirt was like buying software. In the short scene, a woman attempts to try a shirt on before buying it, only for the clerk to insist she go through a ridiculously long and complex “discovery” process before never letting her try it on.
“We were already a funded company with a big vision at the time, but we wrote the script together internally,” says Vilner. “To save resources, I was an extra on the video, as were some of our employees. Our VP of Marketing was the video’s ‘shirt engineer.’ We filmed it in a small store close to home. We went back to the office, uploaded it to LinkedIn, and left it there, hoping to get just a tiny bit of engagement.”
The video immediately went viral, with millions of organic views and shares across LinkedIn, and caught the eyes of other SaaS sales companies, like HubSpot, SimilarWeb, and Vidyard — who joined the movement as well and vouched to join the battle for a better buying process.
“We came to work the next day and our minds were blown,” says Vilner. “There was an infinite amount of LinkedIn notifications, millions of organic views overall, thousands of engagements, hundreds of shares – most coming from tech executives, sales professionals, Fortune 500 companies, and VC investors. It then got great coverage in the media, and then people started comparing our #WeAreProspects movement to the famous early 2000’s #EndOfSoftware movement by brilliant Marc Benioff — which was insane and humbling of course.”
The movement came on the heels of many studies, some of them found that SaaS sales processes took an average of 83 days to complete, 75% of B2B buyers wanted a rep-free buying experience, and 77% of B2B buyers described their last purchase as very complex or difficult.
Walnut’s solution aims to help these issues by allowing go-to-market teams to create, deliver, and track interactive demos with the help of a no-code platform, aiming to provide prospects with better demos and an improved sales process overall.
Despite the movement’s success though, Vilner says that there is still so much more work to do.
“While we see more and more companies transforming their buying experience to meet buyers’ needs as a result of our movement, this outcome is only just the tip of the iceberg,” Vilner explains. “We intend to continue this effort until SaaS companies understand that buyer needs are constantly evolving and that buying SaaS shouldn’t suck.”
Walnut went on to release an anticipated second episode, called #WeAreProspect: episode 2. It surprisingly went almost as viral as the first one.
With this movement, Walnut aims to unite SaaS sales technology companies working to simplify the current sales process. Additionally, the company seeks to address the key challenges faced by individual prospects and companies in an era dominated by technological advancements.
As the SaaS industry continues to expand rapidly, the campaign sets its sights on simplifying the often labyrinthine sales process, allowing businesses to harness the power of technology without unnecessary complexity.
