Revisiting 2023 Trends: The Rise of Digital Sales Room Software

In December 2022, G2 predicted that digital sales room software would expand its use cases from the later stages of the sales cycles to throughout the entire selling cycle. This prediction was due to the increasing focus on buyer enablement in the B2B SaaS market.

One year later, let’s reflect on this prediction and look into G2 data to see where the digital sales room market is today. 

Businesses have realized that buyers’ needs have evolved over time and that they are more knowledgeable and self-sufficient than ever before.

Historically, organizations have sought to control the buying process—multiple meetings to qualify a prospect, gatekeeping information until the prospect is fully qualified, etc. Now, businesses have realized the importance of having a buyer-friendly journey and enabling prospects with information and resources to aid their purchasing experience.

Through this focus on the buyer, there’s been a growth in digital sales room software, which provides prospects with a central location to gather, disseminate, and evaluate product information.

Empowering the buyer through buyer enablement

This trend of focusing on the buyer’s needs and aiding their journey, often referred to as buyer enablement, is gaining popularity. 

Digital sales rooms enable buyers to access materials on their own time, disseminate information internally to build interest, and communicate with the seller when they desire. 

Vendors can track engagement within the digital sales room to stay abreast of interests and activity with the prospect to better determine the viability of a deal progressing. 

These solutions empower the buyers to educate themselves with ease, rather than requiring constant calls with sales teams to learn basic information and the potential value of a tool. 

This focus has evidently gained steam with the SaaS market, given the increasing number of digital sales room solutions on the market. As shown below, there’s been tremendous growth in this software category since our original prediction was published in December 2022. 

Growing utilization of digital sales room software

G2 reviews also depict the growing adoption of digital sales room software, as the volume of reviews for these products has increased significantly since our original prediction, as shown below.

This growth in reviews shows that not only is there an increasing number of products, but users are increasingly adopting these products to enhance the buyer experience. 

Digital sales room software for the entire sales cycle

As noted in our prediction for 2022, digital sales rooms were initially created to focus on late-stage selling activities—editing and sending proposals. Since then, the use case has expanded to focus on the majority of the sales cycle. 

There’s been a rising trend of traditional sales enablement solutions expanding their offering to include digital sales rooms. 

Digital sales room solutions are now used early in the sales process—to engage the prospect at their convenience, allow the buyer to champion internally with ease, and provide self-service functionality. 

With buyers seeking more self-service options and desiring to learn and explore the product on their own, we will likely continue to see digital sales rooms expand in use cases. One of the trends that may continue to rise is infusing personalized demos in digital sales rooms through demo automation solutions so prospects can engage with the product.

As sellers are experiencing longer sales cycles, digital sales rooms allow sellers to track prospects' engagement and uncover new stakeholders, helping better understand, tailor, and time outreach based on the buyer’s needs and activity levels.

The growth of digital sales rooms, particularly for use in earlier stages of the sales cycle, was exhibited when Mindtickle acquired Enable Us in May 2023.

Edited by Jigmee Bhutia