Customer Show + Tell: How Checkr Accelerated Sales Cycles with PLG Tactics

In our Customer Show + Tell series, we highlight real stories and lessons from Navattic customers using interactive demos to drive pipeline, shorten sales cycles, and improve buyer experience. The following Show + Tell is based on a PLGTM 2025 presentation by Sydney Sundell from Checkr, a background check platform serving over 100,000 customers.

With over 100,000 customers and processing 35 million background checks annually, Checkr maintained both product-led and sales-led go-to-market motions. This dual approach manifested as "a sign-up and a talk to sales button" on their website.

While their "Talk to Sales" option was important for many prospects seeking reassurance with a regulated product, it created a lengthy sales cycle:

• Initial inbound request
• Introductory call with an account executive
• Live specialized demo
• Follow-up communications
• Deal closing

As Sundell noted, "Twenty days, not that crazy, especially for a company that sells BDCs. But our AEs were building up a queue, with a very specific goal of helping them deal with demo time overall."

The team evaluated several PLG tactics to support their sales motion:

• Direct sign-up: Team worried that users who clearly didn't want to talk to sales weren't ready to get involved in our product on their own.
• Recorded video walkthroughs: These didn't really drive urgency and there was a perception that the videos were more high-level, not really getting the true details of the product.
• Self-guided demos: There was a previous perception that our live demos could speak better to more complicated use cases. Our product looked too complicated for someone who's going to be spending tens of thousands of dollars to evaluate on their own.
• In-product guidance: This required account creation first.
• Promo codes: They lacked the nuance that sales-led customers need. Maybe they want a discount on one particular use case.

After careful analysis, Checkr focused on challenging the assumption that their product was too complex for self-guided demos.

Working with field engineers and AEs, Checkr discovered that more often than not, they were actually giving the same demos over and over, with a nice industry wrapper or maybe the company logo, but the use cases were very consistent.

They identified four key tasks covered in demos in their product:

1. Ordering a background check
2. Setting up rulesets for reviewing results
3. Understanding the candidate experience
4. Reviewing background check results

As Sydney observed: “It really boiled down to a very simple path of use cases that were pretty applicable to most customer end segments."

Checkr established clear guidelines for implementation:

• Set a specific goal: The clear goal for us was set from the onset, when my sales manager came to me and said, 'shorten time to close, whatever it takes, we will try it.'
• Created guardrails: We needed to ensure that our AEs wouldn't overemphasize demos and instead avoid use cases where a live touch and a personalized approach were truly necessary.
• Recruited power users: Working with some of the power users ahead of time, letting them actually advocate with us on behalf of the team, I really can't overstate the importance of that.
• Collaborated with field engineers: Making sure they know it's easier to work with them, not against them.
• Coordinated with marketing: Make sure that you have really clear expectations about what you actually want to track.

The rollout was straightforward: “What we started with was telling the AEs, 'Hey, just send them before the live demo, via this campaign.' And shockingly enough, they did it."

The impact was immediate and significant:

• Reduced the sales cycle from 22 to 14 days.
• Shifted focus on value building rather than product functionality.
• Better allocation of resources to high-spend, more complicated and complex use cases... rather than repetitive, simple demos.

Prospects responded positively: "Our prospects were coming back to us time and time again, saying, 'Hey, this actually answered all of my questions. I have a few more commercial-related questions, but I get a feel for the product. We don't need to spend two hours together on a call."

For teams looking to implement similar strategies:

• Blur the lines between PLG and sales-led growth: Don't be afraid to blur the line between PLG and SLG... make sure that you start to bring that perspective to your company so that you can think about how to work together and kind of meld the two motions rather than thinking of them as discrete.
• Be realistic: Don't assume that you can cross the segment with every PLG tactic... make sure that you're realistic and also very intentional with the PLG tactics that you try for your go-to-market.
• Challenge assumptions: Don't be afraid to challenge your own beliefs about your product and process.
• Plan your tracking: Set up your tracking early. When we first launched this project, we got a lot of ideas about how we might track it as 'soft-level influence,' but didn't sit down with our ops team and see how they could actually make that happen from a data infrastructure perspective.

By thoughtfully integrating PLG tactics into their sales motion, Checkr created a more efficient process that benefited both prospects and sales teams, proving that even regulated industries can leverage product-led strategies to accelerate growth.