Situation
Tim sat back in his chair. He was only a few weeks in as the new CRO for Let’s Grow, but already feeling the pressure. He had taken on the task of leading a 25-person GTM team across Sales, Marketing, and Customer Success. His Netherlands-based SaaS business unit was part of a larger conglomerate that helped EMEA companies in the agriculture industry with production, cultivation, and property operations.
The conglomerate was excited about the promise of a recurring revenue, software business but didn’t necessarily have the experience or structure in place to take it to the next level. Tim knew he had a big job ahead of him. Step 1: figure out what’s going on and where they could optimize first.
Pain
Tim’s team had tried to piece things together. They’d started building reports in Power BI, hoping to stitch together insights from their CRM (Zoho) and their industry-specific ERP (4PS). But the data was fragmented, incomplete, and unreliable. Leadership kept asking critical questions about revenue, churn, and growth strategies—and Tim couldn’t come up with reliable answers.
He soon learned that the company had shifted its GTM strategy several times in recent years, so there was no reliable way to compare year-over-year performance. He also uncovered issues with data about churn. It was a black box—they knew it was happening but had no idea why.
The CFO (who also oversaw the parent company’s finances) couldn’t rely on their numbers to steer the business, or tell leadership what to expect in the forecast.
The Sales team was chasing every lead with a pulse, rather than building a scalable, repeatable revenue engine.
Tim recognized the signs. He saw traditional siloes. People were filling in the void where a clear vision and strategy should be with their own ideas of what worked. No one was talking to each other or orchestrating the entire go-to-market and optimizing processes.
As the Chief Revenue Officer (CRO), Tim needed clarity. The parent company was watching closely, expecting results. If Let’s Grow could successfully transition to recurring revenue, it could set a precedent for the entire group. If not… Well, failure wasn’t an option.
Impact
Tim knew he needed a proven, recurring revenue-specific set of frameworks and methodology his team could anchor on to build their revenue factory. And he needed a standardized set of data and software tools for monitoring the GTM and knowing where to focus their attention.
He started off getting some consulting help to do a deeper GTM diagnostic and get recommendations for bringing structure to the chaos. Together they mapped out where data was failing and where processes needed to be refined. They focused on a few big, concrete changes Tim could use to rally leadership and the broader team.
One of the initiatives included creating and rolling out playbooks so that Sales, Marketing, and CS had a clear process, were speaking the same language, and working toward the same mission.
They then went about cleaning up and unifying data across Zoho and 4PS, creating a single source of truth. Tim called in the revenue planning experts at Una Software (WbD Certified Partner), whose platform comes with the bowtie data model built in, to turn scattered insights into a clear, easy-to-interpret view of the entire customer journey. Now, rather than scrambling for answers, Tim and his team have a unified Una dashboard that they use to make strategic decisions based on real, reliable data.
To say they saw results would be an understatement. Annual Contract Value (ACV) skyrocketed by 450%. They hit more than double the revenue target for the year by applying focus and effort to the process. Churn was reduced by 60%, simply by identifying and addressing the right triggers. Forecasting improved dramatically—gone are the zombie pipeline deals stuck in Zoho for 60-90 days.
And the best part? They’re not just leaving their competitors behind. They’re setting the standard for how SaaS should be done in their industry.
