At a glance
B2B SaaS scale-up. CHF 3.2M ARR, 80+ employees.
Challenge: growth fell from 63% to 12%, even after replacing the sales team twice.
Approach: a 15-month transformation (first results within 6 months) across offering, pricing, and go-to-market.
Results: ARR grew 51% to CHF 4.8M in a year, the burn multiple dropped from 4.1 to 1.7, and revenue per employee rose 94%.
As in sports, you win by executing as one unit, from goaltending to offense.
The board meeting nobody wanted
The CEO looked at the Q3 numbers. Growth rate: 12%. Six months earlier, it had been 63%. The burn multiple sat at 4.1, and investors were asking questions.
They had tried everything. Lead generation agencies. Sales enablement programmes. They had replaced members of the sales team twice. Nothing stopped the decline.
One sales rep finally said it plainly:
It has become very hard to sell these offering packages.
Fast growth, then friction
During the pandemic, everything worked. HR teams needed to manage candidate contracts remotely. Law firms wanted to finalise reports. Procurement teams processed documents faster. The company rode the shift to remote work, with growth rates of 80% in some quarters.
Then the economy shifted. Interest rates rose, tech budgets tightened, and remote became the new normal. The company’s pivot attempts consumed months of internal focus but did not deliver change. Product-market fit, once strong, began to erode quietly. Win rates dropped. Sales cycles lengthened. The pipeline filled with deals that never closed.
The real problem wasn’t sales execution
When we ran the product-market fit diagnosis, the gaps became clear within weeks.
Pricing was too low for the value delivered. Customers would have paid more. The company was not asking.
The offering was too rigid. Competitors offered flexible monthly plans while this company locked customers into annual contracts. When a team did not need the solution for a few months, they still paid full price.
Self-service did not exist. Small teams wanted the product on an ad hoc basis. Every deal, even below CHF 1’000, required a sales call. Reps spent time on low-value deals while high-value accounts waited.
Priorities were unclear. Sales chased any deal. Product built whatever customers asked for, without knowing which segments mattered most. So many segments had worked in the past that nobody agreed on which to prioritise now.
Delivery was misaligned. Customer touchpoints, handovers, and responsibilities were unclear, and teams worked around disconnected processes.
The diagnosis showed gaps across target personas, segments, pricing, and business model. This was not a sales problem. It was a product-market fit problem.
The work: three Leadership Plays over 15 months
The teams worked with our system and facilitation to identify root causes and set OKRs aligned across functions. Then they moved through PMF diagnosis, offering redesign, market positioning, and back to customer-centricity.
The diagnosis phase took a few weeks. Redesigning the packaging and pricing took three months. The transition took six months before results began to show.
What changed:
Pricing and packaging were redesigned. New plans matched what each persona actually needed, and higher prices reflected real value. Average contract value rose from CHF 6’500 to over CHF 9’000.
Product-led growth launched. Self-service went live for smaller customers, who could start, pause, and resume monthly plans as needed. No sales calls for low-value deals. Sales focused on accounts worth CHF 15’000 and above.
Customer experience was mapped by segment. Touchpoints were redesigned across tiers, handovers between teams were clarified, and responsibilities were aligned. Processes that had grown organically were rebuilt intentionally.
Segmentation sharpened. Features were matched to specific personas. No more one-size-fits-all.
Self-service with product-led growth became our fastest-growing product line, with the best margins. Chief Product Officer
The sales team felt the difference quickly: the new product, service, and pricing plans matched customer demand far better, and they were closing higher-value deals. The team executed everything themselves and built internal capability, rather than depending on consultants.
This wasn’t easy
The transition required significant change across the organisation. Product plans changed. Pricing changed. Sales motions changed. Customer success and service workflows changed.
Some team members resisted, and some were upset. Raising prices for existing customers felt risky. Moving small accounts to self-service meant losing commission on those deals. A few talented people left because not everyone wanted to work differently than they had for years. That was hard.
The migration challenge
Existing customers had to move to the new structure, and you cannot flip a switch on pricing and packaging overnight. Old plans had to be decommissioned for operational efficiency, but customer migration was complex, and some customers would pay more than before.
Pushback came, so communication was critical. The team prepared for every eventuality and every difficult conversation. They explained the value, showed customers what they gained, and offered transition options. The technical migration was complex too, so the team brought in a specialist to configure the new sales-led and customer-success-led motions in their CRM.
The turning point
Six months in, the new financial results arrived. The hard decisions had been the right ones.
The results, year over year:
What made the difference
Not fixing sales. Not replacing people. Not running more lead generation campaigns.
The difference came from looking at the entire system: who you serve, what they need, how you package value, what you charge, and how they buy.
When product-market fit slips, execution fixes will not save you. You have to diagnose why the fit weakened and rebuild it systematically. That is harder than hiring a sales trainer. It is also what actually works.