ClearSlide

ClearSlide is a specialized video and email sales platform which facilitates communication for sales teams. I've just used the free trial but based on my experience using pitch decks to give sales presentations online and emailing or calling to follow up with prospects until you close the deal this platform is aligned with the preferred modern industry standard and means of sales meetings for mid-size to larger businesses. There is an overall Home page with your account latest activity at a glance which I like. The dashboard and user interface are clean and streamlined for easy use. The investment and learning curve when onboarding larger teams into ClearSlide would be relatively low based on the intuitive nature of the setup. I've installed the Google Chrome extension and it works seamlessly. You can move between presentations very easily so the time between meetings can be perhaps less than a minute because it's set up so well. It's extremely easy to setup meetings using this system and I could see how sales reps would love using it with so many tools available to use in one dashboard for the modernized sales rep it would greatly enhance workflow and help to maximize productivity. Another cool feature is the ability to share the presentation with the prospect from right inside the ClearSlide account and then utilize the reporting functionality to view the analytics with regards to how the prospect interacted with it after the meeting. There's incredibly powerful insight available such as which pages were read and for how long so you can get a better idea of their needs and be better prepared to follow up.

I've read that the screen sharing used to be instant using Java code and you could click a button and flip screens but this is no longer the case as Java would have serious issues if meeting attendees hadn't updated their internet browser or Java in a while. But that would work great if everything was up to date. Now you must install the Google Chrome plugin and begin a pitch from it and it's not quite instant but it's reasonable. In the interest of maximizing sales though that three or four seconds it may take to initiate screens is time you would rather not let your prospect be able to disengage from the sales meeting for any length of time, even if it's just three or four seconds. It's too bad there couldn't be more efficient balance somehow or that Java simply isn't not nearly secure enough to use in the first place. The calling feature could be greatly enhanced. Some prospects prefer a phone call to follow up their pitch for example. And you would still have to use a third party system to do this. I understand the formatting is not retained well in various formats when importing pitch decks into ClearSlide. I have yet to experience this myself but that would be a huge flaw and such a waste of time. I hope it isn't true. There aren't any pre-made pitch deck templates available that I can see available. While most companies would have these prepared it would help companies new to online selling if there were multiple examples in a few different industries for the purpose of educating ClearSlide prospects about ways this form of selling can be utilize with their software. And it only integrates with SalesForce CRM software. This is severely limited in my opinion as there are many other CRM's available which are better than SalesForce.

I've just begun using the platform but by accounts it's very reliable and there are relatively few technical issue for sales meeting participants. It would be a dream tool for the sales team I was a part of in the early part of 2014. We were using at least five different softwares to create exactly what ClearSlide does in one. Our sales pipeline was Pipedrive, Gmail Apps for Business for our branded email, GoToMeeting for pitches, Skype for calling to follow up and TautApp for analytics and tracking. It was a bit overwhelming as I recall on my first day with expectations to have it learned by the end of it. But that wouldn't be an issue using ClearSlide and our sales team productivity would have increased using it.