Case Study: Smartly.io boosts demo close rates and accelerates hiring with Close CRM's Product Demo book

Why this $15M revenue startup trains all their Account Managers with Close’s Product Demo book

Smartly.io, a fast-growing Facebook ad optimization startup that reached $15.2M in revenue in 2016 and expanded rapidly across Europe, Asia and North America, faced a key sales and hiring challenge: their product demos were long, feature-heavy hour‑long trainings that failed to qualify prospects or close deals. As headcount and market complexity grew, demo close rates fell and many promising candidates flunked the live-demo stage of the recruitment process, wasting time for both sides.

The team adopted Steli’s Product Demos That Sell as mandatory training—changing demos to short, discovery-driven, value-focused presentations with strong closes—and began giving the book to candidates and new hires. Demo close rates jumped dramatically, the recruiting funnel became far more efficient (they even ordered 60 copies to distribute), and new hires onboarded faster and performed better, enabling scalable hiring and continued growth.

Smartly.io

Claudio Santori

Business Development