Determine whether a new product family was viable for the enterprise market and develop a go-to-market plan to win customers.
As an ISV, the company had developed several successful products sold almost entirely through the parent company’s global channel partners. It also had two direct enterprise customers, but those relationships had been won by the founder without sales involvement. The parent company needed to determine whether the ISV could sell its products to enterprise accounts to justify continued development investment or whether resources should be redirected to other product lines.
The ISV relied on the founder to sell the product. He was effective at pitching the vision, and prospects responded positively, but he could not present a practical execution plan because the full product line was still years from completion. Development spending continued, yet customer interest had not converted into MOUs, contracts, or purchases of the currently available product.
How We Worked Together
Over three months, we met with every enterprise account available through the ISV and its parent company. We interviewed senior executives and department leaders across design, manufacturing, and quality to validate the customer problem, assess product-market fit, and determine how well the proposed solution addressed enterprise needs. The work culminated in a comprehensive marketing plan.
Our research made it clear that the current sales partner channel was not well positioned to sell the ISV products. These partners sold inspection systems to quality departments, and the systems already included software that performed many of the same functions. Selling the ISV products created a negative impact for the partner channel, so partners sold them only when there were no hardware sales or when they needed to address issues with a previously sold inspection system. We refocused the sales channel selling efforts to metrology consultants who specialized in advanced metrology and typically worked on larger and complex sales opportunities. Beyond the partner channel, we developed a direct sales effort in three industries: aerospace and defense, heavy equipment, and medical devices.
Given the long sales cycle, our first move was to get consultants on board. Their subject matter expertise helped position the ISV products more effectively and could reduce sales cycle time to 120 days or less. Metrology consultants are often called in during a crisis, which positioned them to sell additional products to their customers later. We developed new presentation content that focused on customer pain points and spoke to engineers with greater clarity. The presentations were used by both the direct sales team and the consultants. The direct sales effort focused on specific account opportunities in selected industries. The number of prospects increased significantly, progressed through the sales pipeline.
What Changed
After validating the mrket and adding the new sales channel the organazation enjoy a 40% increase in sales in the first full year after implemntation.
Bring the consultant expertise channel meant we had a clean path to the customer problems that our products were a great fit. Thus our sales cycle time was greatly reduced.
After revise the markting content it became easier for the customers to understand how the product solve their problems. We better udnerstandinc ame more inquires that drove sales opportinites.
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