From cofounder Chris Pisarski, here is everything how Crustdata learned going from $1M to $10M in 18 months:
1) new ICPs - we ran some experiments and found two new buyers (big ticket) - recruiting firms and founders of series A and B (GTM white glove).
we were originally powering the ISVs (think the AI SDRs and AI recruiters of the world) but found going straight to the buyers we could sell much more deals and at much higher ACVs
2) FDEs - we have a technical product. not having the knowledge to properly sell was slowing us down.
But true technical sellers are a rarity, our FDEs are deployed post-call and support customers, but they also join calls and help close deals with data pulls, analysis, installing Skills, etc.
It's similar to solutions engineer, but touching the prospect/customer during the whole process
3) self-serve - we launched self serve a few months ago - biggest contribution has been straight revenue, but hope to tighten the system so the funnel to AEs and big contracts moves the needle more than the actual revenue from direct sign ups
4) segmentation of sales - we started segmenting by size. our fastest, most efficient AE takes 'smaller/mid-sized' opps and other AEs that aren't enthused with the small tickets are able to go after bigger customers.
we did this relatively early, but still not early enough. this is huge.
5) white glove - GTM white glove is a revelation. the pull is insane. The learning is customers and the population are disenchated with AI and automation promises.
They haven't worked end to end - you still need a human to set up and run different steps - helped with models and good data (us).
We started offering GTM white glove to help people set up their entire gtm - and get inbound leads through post creation and outbound leads through targeting and massive email sends
We did all of the above while staying relatively small - more and more of my time goes into recruiting as we hit scale, my co-founder flew to Japan for a week just to close