7 Critical Go-to-Market Lessons from Aclaimant’s Evolution in Risk Management Software

Cold-calling from the Yellow Pages to serving 10,000 organizations is quite the journey. In a recent episode of Category Visionaries, David Wald, Co-Founder and President of Aclaimant, shared how their go-to-market strategy evolved from scrappy beginnings to sophisticated market leadership. Here are the key lessons from their decade-long journey in the risk management software space.

1. Sales First, Then Product Refinement Early-stage founders often obsess over product perfection before going to market. However, David emphasizes a different priority: “Early companies are all go to market. Product is helpful, and the product can help there. But in my opinion, you got to find a way to actually move the product, especially in this environment. If you don’t have sales, you’re dead unless you’re an AI company and you managed to convince people otherwise.”
2. Speak the Industry Language or Risk Immediate Failure In regulated industries, credibility starts with vocabulary. David learned this lesson the hard way: “We live in a world that is highly regulated, that is full of expert practitioners who know their stuff… You’d use the word claims or work comp and you get a sideways lesson… these are people who are managing risk, and the first thing they see with you is, oh, my God, this is risky. This guy doesn’t even know the words that I’m saying.”
3. Find Market Expansion Through External Triggers Rather than forcing growth, Aclaimant recognized how external factors were expanding their market. As David explains: “The past five years alone. Pick your poison. COVID, supply chain, severe weather, political instability, you name it, rising amounts of people working, remote wages going up. All these things make it a lot more difficult and potentially risky to run businesses.” This affected not just enterprise companies but also “your 100 person almond farmer or your 75 person construction firm.”
4. Evolution from Manual to Data-Driven Targeting The company’s targeting strategy evolved dramatically. David shares: “Right now we run a very data driven inbound referral and channel strategy on our go to market that’s very driven using targeting and tech tools.” This sophisticated approach replaced their early days of manual outreach, demonstrating how go-to-market strategies should mature with the company.
5. Build Thought Leadership Through Problem-Solving Instead of traditional marketing, Aclaimant focused on helping customers solve real problems. David defines their approach: “It’s really about helping people to think about. All right, what are my biggest burning questions of this company and risk management? It can be simple things like understanding how laws are changing and how that’s going to affect my ability to do my job, understanding what other companies are doing.”
6. Focus on Customer Choice Over Pressure In B2B software, especially in risk management, the traditional approach is often fear-based selling. Aclaimant took a different route. As David puts it: “You can’t beat people into being safer. You really have to have them understand that they have a choice and they can choose to better.” This empowerment-focused approach helped them build stronger relationships with their target market.
7. Democratize Enterprise-Grade Solutions Perhaps the most significant lesson is how Aclaimant identified and executed on democratizing enterprise software for the middle market. Their vision, as David shares, is to “catalyze the next 100,000 companies that want to get into RMIS.” This approach of taking complex enterprise software and making it accessible to smaller organizations has become a powerful growth driver.

These lessons from Aclaimant’s journey show how a B2B software company can evolve from basic outbound sales to a sophisticated, multi-channel growth strategy while maintaining focus on customer empowerment and market expansion. Their experience proves that successful go-to-market strategies aren’t just about adopting new tools – they’re about deeply understanding your market and evolving alongside it.