How Surfe cut 10 days off their sales cycle with Claap

It’s the struggle of every hungry business. You know your product can change the way people live, work, and succeed, and you know once you’ve got people’s attention you can demonstrate exactly how. The hardest part is just getting people to listen.

Sales teams work hard. It’s not uncommon to spend a whole day reaching out to hundreds of leads, and close your laptop at the end of the day with an empty inbox. With tech companies shortening their tech stack more and more, it’s harder to get your foot in the door and show off exactly how much of a difference your product can make.

Surfe is a sales productivity platform that connects your CRM to LinkedIn to streamline your pipelines and communication tracking. These guys know a thing or two about sales. And like many other businesses, Surfe wanted a more efficient, more personal way to communicate with their leads and customers. They found that in Claap, a tool that allows them to create asynchronous videos that make leads feel like they’re going above and beyond while respecting their time. For Surfe’s Account Executives Guillaume De Nacquard and Alejandro Salinas, “it’s been night and day.”

The problem: Impersonal, cookie-cutter lead generation

Before Claap, Surfe was locked in the same struggle that plagues so many companies: the struggle for genuine, meaningful engagement that turns leads into lifelong customers. Sales and tech teams alike can easily find themselves trapped in lengthy email chains, misunderstandings, and overall inefficiencies.

"Whenever I was interacting with the clients or prospects or anyone, and I was trying to explain how to use the software that we are selling, I had to write a whole a bunch of text. A lot of back and forth by email, a lot of misunderstandings.” - Guillaume De Nacquard

On top of this, the tension between sales and product had a tendency to flare up (as it does in most companies). Trying to accommodate the various requests of different leads means inundating developers and product managers with requests. Without visual support to keep things moving efficiently, Guillaume and Alejandro found their requests were being kept at the bottom of the list.

"I hated writing tickets for the tech team because it's such a manual process, you know? Communicating to the rest of the team about bugs and tech issues about the client's situations that needed fixing and about product ideas was a task in itself." - Guillaume De Nacquard

The solution: Replace emails and messages with claaps

Enter Claap. Using a simple yet powerful video creation workspace, Surfe found a way to revolutionize its communication approach. Claap became more than just another software in their toolkit - it was a transformative solution.

"I use it to talk with my prospects and customers and it's been night and day for me. I've managed to shorten my sales cycle because I replace 30 minute meetings with prospects with three five minute videos." - Alejandro Salinas

Rather than reaching out with an email, asking for availability, waiting for the meeting, and then following up again with the information, Alejandro just creates a few short claaps explaining exactly which features would appeal to each lead. Now the first steps don’t need to take weeks or months. Alejandro’s pitch cycle is available 24/7—whenever suits his clients.

Diverse use cases: Demos, pitch decks, and feature requests

What Surfe found most intriguing was the versatility of Claap. From demos to pitch decks, communicating bugs to proposing product ideas, Claap enabled Surfe to convey messages more effectively.

Video helps you re-create the feeling of in-person interactions better than emails, which means better response rates.

“It doesn't matter if it's over LinkedIn or email, even cold call, I'll ask like, "Hey, can you just show me a bit like how you work or can you just tell me a bit more about your company?" I don't send a pitch, I don't send a deck, I send a Claap video that I record in 2 minutes and I have much better conversion rates with that.” - Alejandro Salinas

Guillaume found that incorporating Claap into his feature requests and bug tickets for the tech team resulted in faster problem-solving. And it wasn't just about speed, it was also about improving relationships between teams.

"I've noticed that the tickets in which I include Claap, I can track whenever the ticket is opened. For me, it's much better feedback than the people replying to me on the ticket. So I've actually got information about which ticket is prioritised at the moment just by knowing who watches my claap. It’s is a way to bridge that gap, make it a bit more of a face-to-face understanding that it's not just a ticket, there's a human behind it as well." - Guillaume De Nacquard

The result: Shorter sales cycles, tons of responses, and more customers

By integrating Claap into their sales process, Surfe witnessed tremendous benefits - accelerated sales cycles, more customer engagement, and an increased conversion rate.

"I've managed to shorten my sales cycle because I replace 30-minute meetings with prospects with three five-minute videos. I've literally seen ten days just fall off of that process and allow me to go quicker. " - Alejandro Salinas

Using Claap, they’re able to explain complex topics with ease and makes minimize any of the friction in their sales outreach flow. In fact, Guillaume found that when he replaced his regular outreach with Claap, he would get a huge boost in response rates.

“Every time I was doing that I had like 40% conversion rates rather than compared to like 3, 4, or 5% with normal approaches.” - Guillaume De Nacquard

The difference: Going above and beyond for your clients

The power of personal connection was not lost on Surfe. Using Claap, the team found they could build stronger relationships with their prospects and customers.

They saw that by creating personalized videos, they weren't just improving their efficiency - they were also demonstrating their commitment to their clients.

Now Guillaume and Alejandro send out personalized pitch decks that take just a few minutes to record, but leave leads feeling like they’re going above and beyond, creating a tailored pitch deck just for them.

“When I, instead of dedicating 30 minutes to this person, dedicate 15 minutes to filming videos where I mentioned their names, mentioned the information from their company, and send it. They see me as the guy that's going the extra mile and the best salesperson they're talking to.” - Alejandro Salinas

Even low conversion techniques turned into new options in their bag of tricks to get prospect to engage. Alejandro found that trying to get 15 minutes of someone’s time from cold outreach really wasn’t getting much traction. So instead, he throws one final Hail Mary to give prospects all the information they need in a claap.

"I say I'm going to send you a two minute video summarizing the things that I think we can help you with. If you don't think it's helpful, I promise my prospecting actions stop here and we'll simply stay in touch. He loved it. He said, "Oh, wow, he's respecting my time and he's going straight to a point." I was super salesy and super pushy, like super direct. But he liked it because he said, okay, 2 minutes. If there's value in it, I'll give you a meeting.”

It’s not just about saving time for Surfe’s sales team. Claap actually puts you in people’s good books for keeping things short and informative.

The Surfe recipe for conversion success

By creating a more personal connection, Surfe found the secret recipe for conversion. They found that sending a personalized Claap video instead of a template pitch deck resulted in much higher conversion rates.

To replicate it yourself, here’s Surfe’s recipe for conversion success.

• Save your time and your prospects: Reaching out, finding a time in both your calendar’s, waiting for the day to come, a 30-minute conversation, it doesn’t have ot be such a long-winded process. Turn your 10-step selling strategy into a claap that your prospects can watch and reply to any time they want
• Personalize your sales outreach: Dropping your template into your CRM and rapidly firing out cold emails isn’t how to impress possible customers. A 2-minute claap takes 2-minutes to record. No editing, no messing around. Show your face and prove you’re the best salesperson they’re talking to.
• Make yourself available 24/7: Don’t worry, we know sales people already work hard enough. In fact, Claap helps you save yourself time while still being available to your prospects any time. Your claaps live in your workspace and can be viewed and commented on any time. They can even send video replies to keep things familiar as you form real bonds with your new customers.
• Request smarter, not harder: Your eloquently written bug ticket or feature request never gets received quite as well as you’d hope it would. Big blocks of text are impersonal, exhausting, and sometimes even boring. Surfe’s sales team find their requests get reviewed much faster when they use video instead. Receive a wave of virtual high fives from your tech team by using Claap instead.