5 Go-to-Market Lessons from Val’s Journey to Redefine Enterprise Software
Converting enterprise customers isn’t just about features and functionality anymore. In a recent episode of Category Visionaries, Val CEO Andy Berman revealed how his experience in direct-to-consumer marketing revolutionized his approach to building and selling enterprise software. Here are the key lessons from Val’s journey that every B2B founder should know.
- Simplicity Wins Over Sophistication
The biggest mistake B2B companies make is overcomplicating their message. Drawing from his DTC experience, Andy discovered that “lofty, futuristic type messaging never converted.” Instead, success came from “Simplistic getting the user to the AHA instantly, that’s what converts people.”
This insight shaped Val’s entire go-to-market approach. Rather than leading with complex technical capabilities, they focused on the immediate value proposition: never taking meeting notes again. As Andy explains, “I think there’s a massive AHA moment for people when they just land on our website and see the video.”
- Product Experience Drives Bottom-Up Adoption
In today’s enterprise software landscape, individual users have unprecedented power. “People have the ability to choose their own tools today,” Andy notes. This shift means that successful B2B products must prioritize user experience alongside enterprise capabilities.
The impact of this approach is evident in Val’s growth: “Our user base has, I think, tripled over the last 40 days.” This rapid adoption comes from focusing on the end-user experience first, knowing that organizational buy-in will follow.
- Test and Iterate on Messaging Relentlessly
Rather than settling on a single message, Val treats marketing as an ongoing experiment. “You have to take a hypothesis on it and then you have to start driving traffic to your website and seeing the conversion rate and constantly iterate on it and see if you can improve it,” Andy explains.
This scientific approach to messaging ensures that every word on their website contributes to conversion. The goal isn’t just to sound good – it’s to drive actual user adoption.
- Find Early Adopters Through Strategic Partnerships
Instead of trying to build awareness from scratch, Val leveraged existing networks of potential users. “What we’ve done is we’ve partnered with a lot of great channel partners on their startup programs, whether it’s Twilio or techstars and you name it,” Andy shares. “We’re trying to find early adopters where they are.”
This approach allowed them to tap into communities of tech-forward companies already looking for innovative solutions, significantly reducing customer acquisition costs.
- Embrace the Prosumerization of Enterprise
The line between consumer and enterprise software is blurring. As Andy puts it, “Enterprise buyers, they care about design now, they care about the messaging. And marketers have to adopt tactics from the consumer world. Everyone wants an enterprise tool that looks like it was designed by Apple, not that it looks like it was designed 25 years ago by IBM.”
This shift requires B2B companies to maintain both consumer-grade experiences and enterprise-grade capabilities. “Today users have the power to install any web app, pretty much any app, and is your data in those applications,” Andy notes. The winning products will be those that can satisfy both individual users and IT departments.
These lessons from Val’s journey highlight a fundamental truth about modern B2B software: the traditional enterprise playbook is being rewritten. Success requires combining the best of consumer marketing – clear messaging, instant value proposition, and beautiful design – with the security, compliance, and scalability that enterprises demand.
For founders building enterprise products today, the path to success lies in embracing this hybrid approach. It’s not enough to just build powerful features – you need to package them in a way that resonates immediately with individual users while still meeting enterprise requirements. As Andy shows, lessons from the consumer world might be exactly what your B2B company needs to break through.
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