The Core Four: Proven Strategies that Drive B2B Breakout Success

The billion-dollar question is, who thrives while others fail? And why? 

I’ve spent my career building lasting foundations for dozens of B2B software and services companies as they enter new markets and growth stages. Whether startup, scale-up, lifestyle or industry leaders, the most successful follow four key strategies - The Core Four - to break out from competitors, ensure sustainable growth and weather downturns.

Image by Birgit from Pixabay

In my experience working with around three dozen promising startups, category leaders, unicorns, and "failure to thrive" companies, the “breakouts” do four key things differently. These are my convictions for B2B leaders.

1. They’re innate thought leaders

2. They sell higher

3. They nurture customer champions

4. They build and thrive in ecosystems

While these may seem obvious, execution is the challenge.

There are distinct differences in culture and priorities among B2B unicorns. (And they’re fundamentals.) And by culture, I mean company culture, not nationality. While naïve foreign-based companies can often be outsold and outmarketed by American vendors, this kind of universal value levels the playing field for everyone. And it's not about who has the most cash to burn. My take is that it takes far less cash to become more sustainable value creators when you follow these convictions.

Done right (with strategic commitment, investment and consistency), these priorities transform promising startups into breakout stars and category leaders -- and set the foundation for lasting success. But it's not only for go-go, global growth gorillas. Entrepreneurs committed to "lifestyle" businesses will ensure greater success with profits, retention and upsell. (Perhaps it's even more obvious there when the goal is value over volume, quality over quantity.) Let's look at each element with examples.

Companies who commit to specific strategic priorities break away from the pack.

Breakout companies commit to thought leadership. 

They are innate educators, with passion for the problem they solve and opportunities they create, understanding both cause and impact. They’re persistent — obsessively so — in finding and honing the solution. They have a clear vision for their customers’ better future state and their own role in the technology ecosystem.

Thought leaders can see how market buyer and tech trends converge to position themselves as the inevitable solution. (For SAP, it was about business process reengineering and globalization. For Qlik, it was about democratization of analytics and in-memory processing, enabling business intelligence for “everyone.” For Celonis, process discovery for business improvement.) It’s a leapfrog opportunity to attract innovators and early adopters, who want to catch the wave before others do.

Thought leadership is about evangelism and a commitment to engage in the market ecosystem in a broader and public way. It’s about a particular point of view — often a provocative one. (Consider Marc Benioff’s famous “end of software” statement.) Take a stand. This is more than content marketing (although that’s a solid by-product). It needs to be infused in and informed by product development and customer success; you can’t fake it with a single research campaign.

Breakout companies sell higher. 

This is one of the biggest challenges for technically oriented teams who suffer from feature speak. You must answer the question: What business problems do you solve?

International startups are especially prone to struggling here in the U.S., where buyers are often more sophisticated in their expectations for proof of value and sellers may be new to enterprise-scale environments. They don’t want to translate what you can do for them. Start with the result and then back up the how. (Stephen Covey’s “Begin with the end in mind” fits here.)

Because of their ability to see the bigger picture, breakouts are already having a strategic “conversation” in the market. They understand the challenges of their buyers and translate their solution set not only to specific needs but also to the broader business objectives of the organization. They speak business language, not product features.

Think of it as the difference between selling a Croque Madame to buyers who want an Egg McMuffin. The Croque Madame is made in a special pan, using organic (bien sur) eggs that come from the best local farm and a specific type of bread. On the other hand (literally), an Egg McMuffin is tasty, can be had for a dollar and eaten while driving. Arguably, both are satisfying hunger, but the former appeals to process, while the latter focuses on the result.

And this doesn't necessarily mean you have to - or should - target the CEO or C-suite. Just be sure to understand and communicate the ultimate value of what you sell - aligned with who's actually paying for it.

Breakout companies have a culture of customer success. 

This is absolutely the single difference I've seen time and again. Without customer commitment, there's no growth. Period. Punkt. Point.

The “land and expand” model depends on growth through customer experience. This means paying attention to value delivered. And for most innovative tech and younger companies, what you perceive as value going in isn’t always what the customer perceives, discovers and experiences in their environment. That means cultivating customer partnerships throughout the entire journey, from selling and signing to deployment to the new everyday living with your solution.

If you’re only focused on winning new/next deals, you miss the opportunity to grow within the account, to understand new use cases and to spot potential issues before they become problems.

Breakout companies engage with customer teams to capture initial expectations and experience, the soft and hard ROI and the lessons learned.

Celonis is a best-in-class example of this, and it's clearly paid off! The process mining pioneer and now digital transformation leader started as a German university project in 2011 and came to the US around 2016 with $27M in funding and a little more than 100 customers. (Disclosure: We proudly partnered with them to build their initial customer marketing and sales enablement programs.) By 2021, when it raised its $1B series D, it was reported to have an ARR of around $400M, 2500 deployments and hundreds of partners. Today it’s valued at $13B.

Sustainable growth comes from customer advocacy — and it’s often personal. Executive sponsorship can make — or reinvigorate — a customer’s career. Early adopters balance innovation and risk of failure when they buy from you. They expect to gain competitive advantage (sometimes at the expense of a seamless ride). This was an early lesson at SAP, when we surrounded and celebrated “lighthouse” customers, capturing every aspect of their experience and promoting them as individual champions inside their companies and across the ecosystem. (In fact, some are still “Facebook friends" today!)

How does internal commitment shift to a "customer movement?" By creating customer communities and broader ecosystems. Customers share experiences and expertise about the technology/solution in their real habitat — which includes the good, the bad and the ugly — to grow trust and mitigate risks for buyers. Providers need to create the spaces for knowledge sharing and encourage and reward openness and solution creativity. That includes promoting partners and elevating everyday users into recognized experts. Qlik was among the best at it in lighting the spark and today is a leader in building and maintaining communities.

A unnamed., passionate attendee at Qlik Qonnections (who became a client!) circa 2009

How can startups capitalize on this? Good sellers and customer success managers do one-on-one matchmaking to validate use cases. Intimate customer exchange workshops provide “safe spaces” where early innovators share the value, unexpected and lessons learned. Social networking (old school, in person - as in happy hours) builds relationships among customers without pushing an agenda. It’s not selling. Done well, that becomes the fait accompli. Virtually, Slack channels need to be fed and actively managed in order to spark effective connections and share information.

Brand building focuses on creating a movement, catching a wave and being an innovator. That brings its own validation. (Note that these customer exchanges don’t scale with the same objectives, so don’t abandon them in lieu of circus-like user conferences.)

For emerging tech vendors, your customers become true partners in co-creation. This is design thinking in action.

See how these elements all work together to reinforce each other?

Breakout companies understand and work ecosystems.

They study and understand the ecosystems that surround their customers — the influencers and management consultants, tech providers, platform vendors and others who tend to drive the solution agenda.

Mapping who’s who, what role each plays in the customers’ solution landscape and mindset, the value themes they promote and where they show up helps you find your place. Social media informs, direct engagement opens doors. (Your thought leadership is currency here, when you can complement and add value to theirs.)

Alliance relationships are a topic all their own (each of these convictions is a lifetime of learning!), so I'll just point out the mindset that doesn't work. "We have the software, so we have the solution." No. Nein. Non. You have a piece of it. Service providers often hold the keys. Bring them leads, show them how you bond them closer to their customers, explain the new revenue streams you can offer. They are the gatekeepers, door openers and trusted advisors to the tech teams, executive suite and user communities. You need to make it easy to do business, to promote and sell you. You enable them with the scripts and tools. Otherwise, forget it. They’ll move onto or stay with the partners they know and trust. This is a double sell - know that you first have to “sell to” in order to “sell through” - and you’ll reap the reward.

Do you have what it takes to be a breakout company? 

There’s an implicit assumption here, of course. You have a real solution that solves real problems, problems you are passionately qualified to address. That requires rigorous market research, objective competitive analysis, continuous improvement, etc.

If your product is crap, no amount of thoughtware will get you get there in the long run. The industry is littered with that.

Often, it’s in the DNA of leadership and the culture you create. It takes self-awareness, commitment to go beyond the basics and ultimately, persistent execution. It takes objectivity to connect dots, study the market and competitors and find your unique strengths. Most importantly, it takes integrity to be sure you can deliver on the promise you envision.

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Bonnie Ravina is the founder of Full Circle 360 Marketing, a B2B tech marketing firm dedicated to go-to-market strategies and programs that help companies position, grow, sell and scale since the 90s. She is also a former operating partner at Ring Capital, a Paris-based impact VC and delivers workshops and coaching to accelerators and startup teams. Bonnie is based in Philadelphia (USA).