In 2020, Resurgens Technology Partners, a prominent private equity firm, triggered the final piece of merging together three leading business continuity and resilience companies. With each of their company’s strengths combined, they could offer a powerful all-in-one platform for their customers that had never before been seen in this historically fractured industry. They charged ahead with high hopes.
Despite the promise of uniting under a new single brand, Castellan, and armed with a flagship solution that would change the game for their customers, their salespeople floundered to land deals. The global COVID pandemic played a role, but a disconnect in the go-to-market strategy uncovered by the CEO and CMO offered a compelling path forward.
There is nothing quite like an acquisition to open up a gaping opportunity to cross-sell and up-sell to current accounts. In fact, increasing the lifetime value of current buyers becomes even more critical when we find ourselves in a tight and uncertain market, such as where we are now. Your organization already has vested trust and value-exchange with current customers. How will you capitalize on sustainably growing that for win-win outcomes?
For Castellan, each of the original three companies had solid reputations with existing accounts. In order to sell these contented customers on the new and better solution, we refocused their team’s efforts on alignment and targeted value selling.
BRING YOUR ENTIRE ORGANIZATION IN ON THE EFFORT
A cross-functional team — your revenue operations, marketing, sales, customer experience professionals and even solution management teams — has a stake in the organization’s strategy and their ability to see it through. As such, everyone must be aligned not only around the same objectives but also singing the same value messaging song.
For Castellan, this meant an overhaul of disparate selling tools and processes to introduce and align global selling professionals around current buyer opportunities. We started with the ideal client profile. We helped guide salespeople to target and cross-sell to the newly acquired market segments that they were previously not successful or comfortable with engaging. And we equipped them with value selling tools that packaged the cross-sale offerings in effective plays. And we activated them through more than 15 revenue enablement sessions.
PRIORITIZE CUSTOMER LIFETIME SUCCESS FOR SUSTAINBLE REWARDS
Soon after Castellan salespeople entered the market with not just a new solution — but the focus, tools and skills to back it up — they began to win. They in fact became a leader in the resilience management arena. And just over a year later, the company was acquired by Riskonnect at a premium price.
Even if your organization’s goal is not acquisition, the Castellan story holds a lesson for all B2B organizations on the value of current customers. In a culture where we are always looking for more or the next big thing, it is worthwhile to rather consider how you can deepen what is and what more you can serve your current buyers with.
Read the entire Castellan client value story here, and reach out to our revenue experts to discuss your growth strategy.
*Note, a version of this article first appeared in Top Sales Magazine.