Go-to-Market Transformation Boosts a Software Company’s Sales

We helped a private equity firm take a recently acquired software company to new heights by improving virtually every facet of the acquisition’s go-to-market strategy. SoftwareCo* had a strong market position and was growing, but its offerings were integrated and complex, highly localized, and designed to meet the needs of multiple stakeholders in highly fragmented markets. Add to this the fact that SoftwareCo provided a strong level of service and support that its buyers don’t always appreciate, and the result was a marketing function hampered by several pain points, including:

• Vague decision-making authority
• Tendency to be reactive as daily fire drills detract from forward-thinking strategy
• Decentralized marketing with weak communication and no central guidance
• Key gaps in processes, systems, and tools

Identifying those pain points enabled us to work with the company to develop a future-state vision for its product marketing function. We designed a new organizational structure that would, among other benefits, provide coordination and consistency via a centralized product marketing management (PMM) lead; improve buyer/customer persona orientation; and increase responsiveness to local needs.

We further enhanced local responsiveness by establishing proactive, repeatable processes, dedicating a portion of PMM time to local needs, and introducing a temporary “air traffic controller” role tasked with triaging incoming marketing requests and forwarding them to the most relevant team members.

A focus on teamwork and granularity

We also worked with the company to enhance top-of-funnel capabilities based on the potential impact on priority customer personas (determining, for example, which roles would be most influenced by marketing activities such as thought leadership or research/data) and proposed a new Marketing Operations team that would drive consistency and efficiency across the entire marketing function.

In addition to designing this future state for Marketing 2.0, we also helped SoftwareCo develop a much more granular and effective customer segmentation strategy that directs resources to the most promising current and prospective customers, enables the company to demonstrate more love for critical reference customers, and supports smaller customers with a new self-service tool. A new service model oriented toward future opportunities, powered by a variety of digital tools, will also help the company focus more on growth than retention.

The transformation of the marketing function won’t happen overnight. Our roadmap proposes a multiyear approach that yields benefits quickly while minimizing growing pains as these new marketing roles and capabilities are scaled across the organization. This growth orientation will put the company on solid footing to achieve the Rule of 40 that most software companies strive for but few attain.