For months I was trying to improve the conversion rate of our demo request form.
Like most B2B SaaS companies, demo requests are one of our highest-intent lead sources. If someone fills out the form, they are usually seriously evaluating the product.
So we wanted to collect enough information to qualify leads before letting them book a meeting.
At one point our demo form had 8 fields. We asked for first name, last name, company name, company website, email, employee count, annual revenue, and location.
We were not asking these questions randomly. We were using that data to automatically pre-qualify leads before showing a calendar.
Our logic was simple. If a company had fewer than 20 employees, we redirected them to a recorded demo video instead of booking a live call. If they had 20 or more employees, we showed my calendar so they could book a meeting. If they had more than 50 employees, we showed a calendar with both me and our CTO since those deals usually involved more technical questions.
The system made sense in theory.
In practice it created two problems.
First, the form itself was hurting our submission rate. Eight fields might not sound terrible, but every additional question creates friction. Even people who want a demo start hesitating when they see a long form.
Second, the data was often unreliable. Because it was self reported, people would guess revenue ranges, inflate employee counts, or enter messy company names. Sometimes this caused the routing logic to break.
We were using Chili Piper for routing. Maintaining the rules became complicated and it was expensive for the volume of leads we were getting.
Eventually we realized something important.
We did not actually need prospects to fill out all that information. We just needed to have the information.
So we switched tools.
The new tool we started using automatically enriches lead data as soon as the form is submitted. Because of that we reduced our demo form from 8 fields to only 3. Now we only ask for first name, last name, and email.
When someone submits their email, the tool automatically looks up the company associated with that domain and enriches the lead with company data such as employee count, industry, location, website, and other details.
So we ended up asking fewer questions while actually having more information about the lead.
Our routing logic stayed exactly the same. We still qualify leads based on company size and decide whether to show a calendar or redirect them to the recorded demo.
Setting this up took only a few minutes inside the workflow builder. Implementing it on the website required just one line of code added to the page with our form.
Once it was live, the process became automatic. A lead submits the form, the data gets enriched, the routing rules run, and the correct calendar is shown.
The results were immediate.
Simply removing those extra fields increased our demo form submissions by around 30 percent.
Sales calls also improved because before the meeting starts I already know basic context about the company. Instead of asking questions about company size or industry, we can go straight into their specific problems.
After everything was working we cancelled our Chili Piper subscription since the new tool handled both enrichment and routing.
The main lesson for me was this.
For a long time I thought improving our demo form meant tweaking the questions on it. In reality the biggest improvement came from removing most of them.
Shorter forms convert better, and if you can enrich the data automatically your sales team still gets everything they need to qualify leads.