Case study
Building an outbound function from zero at an enterprise cybersecurity company
meetings booked
pipeline generated
The situation
A mature cybersecurity company with a large installed base and a strong renewal motion. Growth had flattened, and the board wanted new logos. There was no sales development function, and nobody internally had built one.
The problem
A Director of Sales Development takes two quarters to approve and five months to fill. Without a program, hiring reps just means eight people guessing at territory, message, and target — and burning a year finding out.
What we built
Six segments defined by where the product actually won, not by where revenue happened to sit. A distinct message and cadence for each. A ramp plan so new reps had a defined first ninety days. Coaching rhythm and pipeline standards so performance was visible weekly instead of at quarter end. Then we ran it — eight reps, coached individually, measured against one number.
Why it transfers
Every one of those meetings came from a cold start — no marketing-sourced leads, no existing demand to harvest. The sequencing is what made it work: segments before messaging, messaging before cadence, cadence before headcount. Most companies run that order backwards and spend their first year learning why it doesn't hold.
Before
- No sales development function and no program to hand a rep
- New logos sourced by AEs between renewals, inconsistently
- Targeting based on where revenue already sat
- No shared definition of a qualified meeting
- Pipeline visible at quarter end, not weekly
After
- Eight reps running one documented program
- Six segments with their own message and cadence
- A defined first ninety days for every new hire
- Weekly coaching rhythm and pipeline standards
- 465 meetings and $32M in pipeline from a cold start
How the six segments were drawn
Not by vertical or by revenue band, which is how most territory maps get built. Segments were drawn around the conditions that made the product the obvious answer — compliance pressure, a recent breach or audit, a platform migration, a security team too small for the estate it covered, a renewal from a competing vendor, and a regulated industry entering a new market. Each one implies a different opening line, which is why each got its own message.
The eighteen months
Months 1–2
Segment definition, message testing, and infrastructure. No reps hired yet.
Months 3–5
First reps hired against a written ramp plan and a program that already existed.
Months 6–11
Cadence tightened on reply data. Coaching rhythm and pipeline standards set.
Months 12–18
Scaled to eight reps. Program documented so it ran without the person who built it.
What we would do differently
We would automate the research and enrichment layer in month one instead of month nine. Reps spent hours a week assembling context that a data layer should have written to the record on its own. We would also test the messaging on fewer segments first — six at once meant slower reads on which ones deserved the headcount.
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