Case Studies
˖ Case 1
Business development acceleration and expansion to California for a NY based company in the packaging industry
Situation
This is a global high-end packaging company with offices in New York that considering to expand to the West Coast market for a number of years but feared the market was too small and crowded, thus was hesitant.Approach
First step: size the market
We began with a broader market which is already well researched (here, the US packaging market) and broke it down into several elements in order to approach the core target market. In this case, the Core target market was the Californian share of this broad market and high-end segment in the state.
It turned out that the market was actually quite sizable because it encompasses the high-end industries the company already addressed (luxury, cosmetics, apparel, accessories, etc.) as well as the tech industry which also uses elaborate packaging.
Next step: assess the competitive landscape
The market was very crowded but filled with numerous small players with no manufacturing capabilities. In this context, the East Coast packaging company had a comparative and competitive advantage because they had a factory in China, allowing them to differentiate from other players.
The last step: talk to the end users to make sure that there was a product/ market fit and to supplement the data gathered from pre-existing market reports. It’s an important step of Kinesis Partners’ methodology that knows how to incentivize interviewee’s time (share information, contacts, etc.).
The topic guides for those interviews cover 3 areas:
Market topics (qualitative and quantitative trends, market size data, key selling products/ brands, evolution, etc.)
Competition topics (mains players, positioning, trends, etc.)
Client topics (key success factors in the market, products characteristics, feedback on main players, etc.).
About 15 qualified interviews specifically targeting the core market are usually needed.
Outcome
The first West Coast customer was signed only 2 months after starting to work together. It’s been now 2 years that our client has a West Coast office with a small team which generates substantial revenues. The manager of the US activities travels there on a regular basis and draws synergies from this West Coast presence with current accounts that value their increased reach.˖ Case 2
US market entry and new service offering design for a European based SaaS company
Situation
This Workflow Solutions SaaS company was committed to expanding to the US, this market being key for their growth strategy. Their challenge was that their solution, as it stood, necessitated a lot of organizational changes to the communication teams they were targeting. They were stuck trying to start a conversation with big accounts.Approach
The objective was to come up with a lighter service offering to initiate a relationship with prospects. Once trust is established, they would be able to roll out their solution. The context was clear and next it was the time to turn the idea into reality.
The approach Kinesis Partners followed integrated several workshops with all the related departments (leadership, product, marketing, customer success and finance) and can be illustrated by this dialogue that took place over the course of a few weeks:
A: The communication teams.
Q: Apart from facilitating collaboration within teams, what else can be done for them? What industry trends can we use?
A: Prevalence of fake news.
Q: For corporate communication teams, making their news reliable is key and this creates an opportunity! How does it translate into a new solution? What tech trends can be used right now?
A: Blockchain! There is there an opportunity to make the entire process trackable, accountable and transparent.
Q: Now, which communication teams specifically need this solution the most?
A: Financial services! The new vertical is complete.
Outcome
- Dialogue led to the following pitch to the new service offering being developed: “You have doubts about a news release? With this solution, companies certify their corporate information on the blockchain and invite to check its authenticity on their platform."
Since then, they’ve secured as clients some of the biggest names in banking and asset management groups and have hired a business development manager dedicated to this new service line.
˖ Case 3
Vertical market expansion and marketing funnel creation for a Marketing Automation company
Situation
This is a NY based Marketing Automation software company that wanted to expand to a new vertical but didn’t know where to start.
Approach
Together we began by making the objective clear internally and allocated resources for it by creating a dedicated taskforce (for a certain portion of their time) – a startup within a startup. This led to making an estimate of the time and resources needed to dedicate to this expansion plan and finding an internal lead to partner with Kinesis Partners and help navigate politics and allocate resources.
The new vertical was actually found by one of the sales reps that was part of the dedicated team in one of the workshops Kinesis Partners facilitated. By giving him the frame to present his idea and love of sports, we succeeded in motivating others on the team.
Kinesis Partners started to look for ways to work with sports clubs and was able to quickly identify that their sales & ticketing departments were in fact poorly automated.
Kinesis Partners then designed a new marketing funnel for this new prospect category. This implied creating new content, use cases and articles describing specifically how to automate email sequences and templates for ticketing departments and how it permitted to streamline the relationships with customers.
Outcome
Today, sports clubs are one of this company’s top 3 verticals in revenues generated. More importantly, the process they went through to identify and address this new vertical was extremely valuable for their journey. It allowed them to restructure internally and build the tools, processes and capabilities necessary to later expand to other verticals, geographical areas and land bigger accounts.˖ Case 4
Product / market fit assessment, business development acceleration, expansion to a new geography and target client size for an Advertising Technology company
Situation
This Adtech company had been approaching large media groups in New York for some time but was not getting the results they were hoping for. They wanted to know what was not working to make the necessary changes.
Approach
In order to get further information on the faults in their current approach, Kinesis Partners decided to test new customer profiles in new geographies. We started with companies in the tristate area (30 miles away from NYC) and smaller in size, which required to adjust the sales and marketing materials.
Step 1: We created new customized sequences to automate the approach. For that matter we needed to identify a common problem in the space, to get current customers’ references and quotes in this space and to design ad hoc collaterals describing the approach to solve the problem (2-pagers, use cases, sales deck, etc.).
Step 2: Once we had the right marketing automation in place, we were able to start measuring and tracking the results of the approach (open rates, reply rates, account engagement, number of opportunities, new pipeline generated, revenue closed, renewal rates, etc.)
Step 3: Analyzing the campaigns metrics data allowed us to understand that this company was getting more traction with these smaller sized media groups. By comparing the stats of this approach to the one in NYC over the course of a few weeks, we were able to decide to invest more time in these new prospects.
Outcome
These smaller-sized media companies in the tristate area became their biggest market for a while. More importantly, they had found their ICP (Ideal Client Profile) and were able to replicate this approach with similar sized companies in other less crowded markets.˖ Case 5
Expansion to new distribution channels and adjustment of product line for a Luxury CPG company
Situation
This company had a lot of challenges, including a 3-years growth stall, a decreasing presence in department stores and declining online revenues that no longer compensated the gap created by offline activities. They didn’t know what to do.Approach
- When we brought up the possibility of reinforcing their presence at regional independent stores, they didn’t believe it was going to be valuable, assuming that this distribution channel was going to be too small and too difficult to develop.
Providing market insight on independent specialty retailers made apparent the potential of this distribution channel that represents a significant share of the luxury segment. It required a region by region approach but the work to properly address them could be extremely rewarding.
The next challenge was related to the difficulties associated with prospecting these retailers. Every account required regular visits, care and attention - as a medium sized company they were wondering how to manage such a network, given their limited internal commercial resources.
Kinesis Partners was able to point in the direction of independent sales veterans who specialize in specific territories and industries. These agents are on the road 200 days a year to easily access these small specialty retailers. Their commission-based compensation model (usually 10% of generated revenues) make them a good fit for companies which do not have the resources to build a large internal business development team.
Outcome
This company had to rethink and reduce its product offering to expand its distribution channel in the US but the efforts paid off. Today, they have more than 10 independent agents with exclusive regional contracts covering the North East, the South East, the South and the West Coast independent retailers. This distribution channel accounts for nearly 30% of their US revenues.˖ Case 6
US market entry and new distribution model design for a Food supplement company
Situation
For the past 30 years, this company had been selling their products successfully and exclusively through retail outlets. Once they expanded their activities to the US, they could not maintain the same approach in this new market/geography. Retail channels were way too crowded in this category and it was too difficult to differentiate based solely on digital marketing. They needed to get creative and that is when we started to explore the partner/ prescriber model.
Approach
- Since the product was reliable, Kinesis Partners had substantive conversations with medical professionals. The choice of the most relevant prescribers (doctors, certified nurses, dieticians, etc.) became a key question.
We soon learned that patients trusted nutritionists the most with respect to digestive health. The real challenge then became bringing the nutritionists onboard and including them fully in the go-to-market strategy of the company.
The answer we found here was to go all in. The idea to have a multichannel approach and to balance risks did not permit to send a strong message to the nutritionists to make them feel as a key partner in the future. Instead, we proposed to put the nutritionists at the center of the strategy and to create a dedicated space on the e-commerce website to allow them to book products for their patients.