From Feature Lists to Enterprise Sales: How Azumuta Evolved Their Messaging to Win C-Suite Buyers

From Feature Lists to Enterprise Sales: How Azumuta Evolved Their Messaging to Win C-Suite Buyers

Technical founders often fall into a familiar trap: describing their product with the same precision they used to build it. In a recent episode of Category Visionaries, Azumuta founder Batist Leman revealed how breaking free from this pattern unlocked their enterprise growth.

The Engineer’s Dilemma

“We are quite technical team,” Batist admitted. “I’m an engineer myself and then the first people that joined were developers.” This technical DNA shaped their initial go-to-market approach: “We like to talk about features. That’s a classic, it’s not necessarily a mistake, but that’s a classic property of a startup.”

This feature-first messaging worked well enough with technical buyers. As Batist explained, “If you talk about features, then you can reach like your key users, your team leaders, operators, engineers. Perhaps you can get to the operation manager in factories.” But there was a ceiling: “It’s less relevant for the C-level types.”

The Enterprise Imperative

The limitations of technical messaging became clear as Azumuta grew. “Of course, if you grow as a company, you want to sell more enterprise deals, you have to reach that C-level,” Batist noted. This realization forced a fundamental shift in how they communicated their value.

Instead of leading with features, they began addressing strategic business challenges: “Now we are shifting our messaging from those features, more like about the bigger picture items,” Batist explained. The new messaging tackled executive-level concerns head-on:

• “How do you get your quality under control, the quality of your workforce?”
• “How can you defend against an aging workforce?”
• “How do you manage to capture all the tacit knowledge that’s available in your operators?”
• “The world is more volatile than ever, so there are demand spikes and so is your company and your factory ready to scale up if the demand spikes?”
• “Will your competitor move faster than you and will take the market?”

Finding Their Sweet Spot

This evolution in messaging required a deeper understanding of their ideal customer profile. Azumuta discovered they created the most value for “discrete manufacturing… companies that are building complex products that takes a long time to make.”

More specifically, Batist noted they excel “when it costs a lot, when someone makes a mistake… because there is a danger for recalls, for example, or customer complaint is expensive.” This precise understanding of their value enabled more focused executive messaging.

The Marketing Team Evolution

The messaging transformation wasn’t just about new language – it required new talent. “In the beginning we hired… not the most expensive people. And so that was a mistake. There were junior people, just graduated, didn’t have a lot of experience. And so it was really hard.”

The breakthrough came with experienced marketing hires: “We had some great hires from HubSpot… those people are coming from HubSpot, a lot of experience in marketing, and that really changed the game completely. Since then you can clearly see it in our metrics.”

The Results of Strategic Messaging

The impact was measurable: “From that point on, you really see like a dent in our graphs.” But perhaps more importantly, it positioned Azumuta to tackle larger strategic challenges in manufacturing.

As Batist explained their evolved vision: “We think that there will always be humans in manufacturing. Even if there are lots of robots, there will always be humans doing the oversight, helping the robots… They can’t be forgotten, end up in misery. If your knowledge is in the people’s heads and they leave your company, then all the knowledge gets lost and you have to start over.”

This transformation – from feature lists to strategic vision – hasn’t just changed how Azumuta sells. It’s fundamentally shifted how they think about their role in the manufacturing industry’s future.