Driving Rapid Account Expansion: How Persona-Based ABM Playbooks Goosed Parsable’s SQL Pipeline

Engagement Highlights

• Developed a value playbook to connect persona-based use cases to an enterprise-wide platform value proposition
• Increased expansion pipeline by $1M in 90 days, a 50% improvement
• Accelerated time-to-productivity for 2 new Account Directors who were able to close first deals in 9 to 12 months vs a 2 year historical standard
• Established repeatable process for faster account expansion with playbooks linking specific manufacturing use cases in order to better leverage internal reference selling

Challenge

Parsable is a rapidly growing provider of digital workflow applications for manufacturing plants. The company’s Connected Worker platform offers real-time guidance on mobile devices, allowing work instructions to fit right into the day-to-day work of employees on manufacturing production lines. The Connected Worker platform can replace thousands of paper-based work instructions that typically sit on a shelf in six-inch binders. Ultimately, it helps manufacturers improve safety, productivity and quality, with use cases across many manufacturing areas. While Parsable’s market spans industry sectors, they have achieved particular success in the food and beverage market with customers like Coca-Cola, Heineken and Grupo Bimbo, as well as in the energy sector with customers like Shell, Hallibuton and ChampionX. 

With strong proof points across the spectrum of manufacturing functions, Parsable nevertheless found account expansion to be a slow process. After selling into one area of a plant, expanding to another area was like starting the sales process all over again. Introducing a new use case involved a new buying process with a different line manager as well as an economic buyer who was typically a VP of Operations, VP of Supply Chain or a VP of Digital Transformation. The Parsable team needed a new approach to help them expand accounts faster.

Solution

Winalytics worked with the Parsable team to build out a platform value proposition, focused around 6 to 8 key personas. The strategy was to shift the conversation from a focus on single use cases, to a broader conversation that linked multiple use cases to set up positioning in the context of broader platform value. 

The key was focusing first on specific use cases for each buyer persona. For each one, Winalytics identified a value that would get the persona’s attention, improve their process, and help their day to day work. The next step was to build out an expansion playbook to help the team leverage success with internal referencing. The playbooks included specific outreach sequences, by value, and by buyer persona, that would make the case for going from one manufacturing use case to another. From Production to Quality Assurance, for example, or from Quality Assurance to Supply Chain, or from Supply Chain to Maintenance.

Once the expansion playbooks were built, Winalytics worked with the team on using the playbooks. Coaching focused both on gaining new logos with the specific persona-based value propositions, as well as on expanding accounts by linking one use case to the next with internal referencing. By highlighting Parsable’s enterprise value along with a targeted use case value in every buyer journey, the team could avoid being viewed as a point solution and more naturally evolve the relationship into a conversation with decision makers in an adjacent manufacturing functions.

Results

Within the first 90 days of working with Winalytics, the Parsable team was able to increase their expansion pipeline by about $1M, a 50% improvement. Jonathan Bowman, Head of Global Account Management at Parsable, credits the new persona-based expansion playbooks. Additionally, two newly-hired Account Directors who were included in the coaching program, were able to ramp up productivity much faster than expected. Historically, new Account Directors took up to two years to bring in their first Parsable deal. One of the new hires was able to close a first deal in four months, while the other closed a first deal in five months. Expansion playbooks are now a key part of a repeatable sales strategy accelerating Parsable’s growth.