$700K to $20M in Two Years: Building the Commercial Function for a Bio-Tech SaaS Startup
Problem
A start-up software as a service (SaaS) company serving the clinical trial management needs of biopharmaceutical companies needed support in developing and executing their global growth goals. They developed a dramatic innovation to Randomization and Trial Supply Management (RTSM) software by using natural language processing to significantly reduce study start-up time. Initial commercialization efforts were hampered by the highly conservative buying behavior of the biopharma industry. They needed help in building a global commercial strategy, marketing function and global business development team.
Approach
Excelerate was asked to lead the global commercial function and to grow the company from idea and prototype to global player in the RTSM space against entrenched incumbents like Oracle, Almac, and many others. To enable growth, Excelerate focused on executing in the following areas:
Product Optimization
•Develop annual customer advisory group meetings in key global regions to gather customer (and prospect) input on the development roadmap and prioritize high-value features
•Stand up a demonstration engineering team to build custom demonstrations (tailored to each specific clinical trial design) for capability presentations and bid defense meetings
•Create feature based, fixed fee pricing models to solve a customer pain point of time and materials pricing
Marketing Strategy
•Develop the “top of the funnel” through a marketing organization with a challenger brand voice and a focus on value-added content instead of simple sales language
•Create a SEO-enabled website and content strategy marketing platform along with a conference strategy for lead generation and account “nurturing” email campaigns
•Understand the competitive landscape, isolate key differentiators and develop collateral to emphasize differentiators across capabilities decks, RFI response materials and proposal templates
Organizational Design & Accountability
•Create a global sales organization that is structured and mapped against major pharmaceutical hubs in US, Europe and APAC
•Enable a mixed target strategy of large pharma (very slow lead times with high potential once closed) along with small/mid-sized pharma (shorter lead times with smaller study pipelines)
•Develop a commission plan to enable high rewards, but also create a teaming environment where all salespeople are rewarded when global goals are met
Results
With Excelerate’s leadership in building and leading the global commercial function, this SaaS company grew from $700k in annual bookings (2 customers) to $20M in annual bookings (40 customers) in two years and is forecasted to grow to $35M in annual bookings (70+ customers) in the following year. The company is now considered a global leader in the RTSM space and is now a preferred provider for 20% of the top large pharma companies by annual revenue.