Inside Crosschq’s Pivot from Digital to Human: Why This B2B Founder is Betting Big on In-Person Events
Twenty-four people. That’s all who showed up to Crosschq’s last webinar. For a company building enterprise hiring intelligence software, this tepid response to traditional digital marketing signaled the need for change. In a recent episode of Category Visionaries, founder Mike Fitzsimmons shared how this realization led to a complete reinvention of their go-to-market strategy.
The Death of Digital-First Marketing
“I will tell you that I don’t even know what year to put this in brackets, but called the 2016 17-18 B2B SaaS demand gen playbook that everybody kind of runs, you know, scrap it. I just like completely throw it out,” Mike explains. This wasn’t just about poor webinar attendance – the entire digital marketing landscape had shifted dramatically.
Customer acquisition costs were “going through the roof,” making traditional digital channels increasingly ineffective for enterprise sales. The COVID-era comfort of relying on inbound leads and Zoom demos was no longer sufficient.
The New Playbook: Intimate Events
Instead of chasing diminishing returns from digital channels, Crosschq has embraced a radically different approach. “We’re doing road shows now, literally, as we have new product releases going market to market, live roadshows with select small, intimate buying groups,” Mike shares.
A recent event in San Francisco illustrates their new strategy. Twelve carefully selected attendees gathered at the Battery, including:
- Three existing customers
- Three prospects
- Two leading industry analysts
- Several ecosystem partners
The focus isn’t on hard selling but on facilitating genuine conversations. As Mike puts it, “You’re talking shop, everybody’s in the space and you know, comparing notes and it’s really that simple.”
Scaling the Unscalable
What started as local Bay Area experiments is now expanding nationally. “We’re doing Boston, New York, Miami, Atlanta. We’re kind of stretching our legs a little bit this year,” Mike reveals. These events happen every six weeks, creating a steady rhythm of meaningful interactions.
This approach extends to their trade show strategy as well. Rather than investing in expensive booth space, they focus on hosting high-end dinners around conferences. As Mike explains, “Don’t need to go wide, don’t need to have our name on the lanyard, but make sure that we’re connecting in a human way with people.”
The ROI of Human Connection
While this high-touch approach might seem less scalable than digital marketing, the results speak for themselves. “The feedback is just consistently really positive on these things,” Mike notes. These events create opportunities to “earn your right to then go and have additional one-one conversations and go deeper.”
The strategy also aligns with broader market trends. During COVID, webinars were “a great channel,” but now “people are just fatigued with a lot of that.” In contrast, when prospects receive invitations to small, intimate events, the response is enthusiastic.
Lessons for B2B Founders
Crosschq’s pivot offers valuable lessons for B2B founders:
- Don’t cling to outdated playbooks when the market changes
- Sometimes the best way to scale is to do things that don’t scale
- Create environments for genuine conversation rather than pure selling
- Mix customers, prospects, and industry experts for richer discussions
For enterprise B2B companies, the future might look more like the past – but with a modern twist. As digital channels become more expensive and less effective, creating meaningful in-person connections could be the key to standing out in an increasingly noisy market.
The early results from Crosschq’s experiment suggest they’re onto something. As Mike puts it, “Early read is… it’s a winning play.”