The Work

Enlighten engaged David as an advisor to assess the company’s readiness for the US market. He met with customers, reviewed the product and service offerings, as well as the website, and helped the leadership team plan a market exploration project. The CEO, who was one of three co-founders of Enlighten, re-located to the US and partnered with both David, as Chief Revenue Officer, and Alice, as VP of Marketing, to launch the US business. This was a highly-entrepreneurial hands-on collaboration among the three of us to figure out and launch the US business with initial funding only from Australian revenue.

Starting up in the US: Top Questions and Focus Areas

Working closely with the CEO, Alice and David embarked on a go-to-market program to build a foundation for success of the new start-up. We started with four key focus areas centered around these key questions:

• Do we have product-market fit?
  First, we needed to test out whether the value proposition was the same in the North American market. Did companies here have the same pains and need the same solutions? Where did we need to adapt?

• What channels will work best?
  Before coming to the US, the Enlighten team thought their best route to market would be through channel sales partners. We explored this but also alternative approaches including direct sales.

• Which market segments are first?
  In Australia, there was little to no segment positioning. It was a horizontal “operations management” solution. We knew in North America we would need differentiated segment-specific messaging and needed to prioritize

• How can we establish trust?
  We were a tiny Australian firm with no US references, so finding ways to establish trust and credibility was a top priority. We tackled this in 3 ways: relationships, customer stories and thought leadership

Early Goals

The business and marketing plans for US growth needed to support revenue momentum, so we identified these key goals:

1. Win “beach-head” accounts

2. Land and expand in Accounts

3. Land and Expand in Market Segments

Key Marketing Initiatives

To be successful in the US market, even at the early “beach-head” account stage, we knew we needed top-notch communications to build awareness and win trust. Key content marketing initiatives included:

• New website: Shift messaging and focus to Outcomes & Value (ROI)

• Customer Stories: Tell our story through the lens of customer success

• Thought Leadership: Build trust by sharing insight: articles, presentations, analyst outreach and speaking

Gaining Initial Beach-Head Accounts

Our first US account was DST Systems in Kansas City. We gained introduction through personal networking, gained a champion and were “all hands on deck” to make the initial trial department successful. After that, we expanded through many more departments at DST in Kansas City, then to other locations (in the US and India) and to sister companies as well. This client was not only highly successful but also became an enthusiastic reference for us, even hosting many, many other potential customers for on-site visits. In fact, this became a highly-repeatable part of our selling process.

Expanding and Scaling

At the same time as we were expanding our footprint in DST, we also were expanding our US-based organization to both support clients and expand sales. This is when growth really started to take off and we focused on:

• Building a Scalable, repeatable selling process

• Ensuring customer success

• Segment marketing: Top-five market segments with tailored messaging and use cases