A pre-IPO cybersecurity company had outgrown its founder-led sales motion. We redesigned the go-to-market: clearer segmentation, a rebuilt lead-to-opportunity flow, and defined stage criteria. The result was a repeatable motion and a forecast the board could actually rely on heading into a raise.
Context
The company sold security software into mid-market and enterprise, and had grown impressively on the strength of a founder-led sales motion and strong product. With an IPO on the horizon, the scrutiny on predictable, defensible revenue was about to increase sharply.
The Problem
What got them here would not get them public. The motion lived in a few people's heads, and the pipeline could not be forecast with the confidence the board and future public markets would demand:
- No clear segmentation, so mid-market and enterprise deals ran through the same undifferentiated process.
- Opportunity stages were subjective, so two reps could rate the same deal completely differently.
- Lead-to-opportunity handoffs were inconsistent, and good leads stalled between marketing and sales.
- Forecasts were a gut call, not a defensible number, which is untenable pre-IPO.
What We Did
We turned the tribal knowledge into a designed, documented motion:
- Segmented the go-to-market. Defined distinct mid-market and enterprise motions with their own criteria, plays, and expected cycles.
- Rebuilt the funnel stages. Wrote objective, exit-criteria-based definitions for every opportunity stage so a deal only advances when it has actually earned it.
- Fixed the handoffs. Standardized the lead-to-opportunity flow with clear ownership and routing so nothing stalls between teams.
- Made the forecast defensible. Tied forecasting to the new stage criteria and historical conversion, so the number is built from evidence, not optimism.
The Result
The company went from a founder-led motion to a repeatable, segmented go-to-market that new reps could run and the board could forecast against. Deals moved through stages that meant the same thing to everyone, handoffs stopped leaking, and the forecast became a defensible number built from evidence. Heading into the raise, the revenue engine looked like one that could scale in public markets. See how we approach this end to end in the GTM engineering guide.
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