CustomerTRAX founder Gordon Hilleque hired Kathryn Aragon to create product content to enable sales and reduce churn, but she did far more than that. The product content she produced:
- Practically eliminated churn
- Was responsible for 100% of enterprise sales
- Was responsible for 100% of customer upgrades
- Led to a successful exit after 14 months of working together
One Strategy Pulls Every Growth Lever
Many brands invest heavily in marketing, product, and sales enablement assets that are disconnected. Different teams with different priorities each focus on one piece of the puzzle: SEO, social media, customer marketing, product marketing, or sales.
Each has its own approach and messaging, which often results in conflicting messages about the brand, the product, and its value.
But what if one piece of content became your single source of truth, engaging customers, prospects, internal staff, and OEMs?
What if it was written in a way to generate leads, drive sales with new and existing customers, and improve retention rates — with no time-intensive repurposing?
And what if it could also be used to improve the product itself?
This content would impact every department, improving:
- Product creation, development, and testing
- Customer engagement and marketing
- New sales prospecting and marketing
- Implementation and support
- Overall team knowledge
It would get everyone — team members, customers, and prospects — to the “how” quicker. They would understand what the product could do, how other customers are using its features, and how they could achieve the outcomes they’re looking for more quickly.
In this case study, you’ll learn what this unique type of content is and how it was developed. You’ll also see how it was used by a brand that broke every rule — driving significant growth with no top-of-funnel marketing, no SEO or social media content, and no lead generation outside of their annual industry conference.
About CustomerTRAX
Handle is a CRM in the heavy equipment space that delivers intelligent, customizable customer relationship management that integrates the organization’s data to improve processes and increase profits.
- Founder: Gordon Hilleque
- Founded: 2002
- Product: CRM for John Deere dealers
- Acquired by Texada Software: October 19, 2023
In 2022, founder Gordon Hilleque called in Kathryn Aragon to help him create a new content creation process that supported the organization, prospects, and customers without having to recreate content for each bucket.
Our Goal: Fast, Efficient Growth
“My goal was to begin the content creation process at the time of the idea, capturing customer meetings to use real-life scenarios rather than drafting content specific to sales and marketing after a feature is built,” Gordon says.
Together, Gordon and Kathryn created a unique content format that essentially sells the product feature or module before it is developed.
Their goal was maximum efficiency — one article that provides value both internally and externally — and to achieve this goal, they developed a new content creation process.
This process captured conversations usually reserved for product development and used them to improve more than just marketing. It provided maximum efficiency, enabling one piece of content to work for every department and every use case within the organization.
- Gave salespeople an effective sales presentation they could use as-is or to develop pitches, helping them achieve higher close rates with fewer meetings.
- Answered customer questions and helped them master your most advanced features, increasing retention rates and upsells.
- Quickly differentiated Handle, so they were able to attract more qualified prospects, resulting in more demo requests.
- Informed developers, showing them potential use cases for new features and how they would interplay with existing features, enabling them to develop a better product with less oversight.
The Product Guide is part of Kathryn’s suite of SaaS growth solutions:
By creating sales collateral while the feature was still being ideated, Gordon and Kathryn were able to speed up product development, market new features in advance, and begin selling as soon as the feature went live.
The Results: Improved Sales, Retention, and CLTV
👉Boosting revenue to existing customers by 100% – Kathryn’s sales enablement content doubled revenue from additional sales to customers.
👉More enterprise sales in less time – 12 out of 12 deals won by one salesperson in one month — for more than half a million in ARR over three years.
👉Reducing sales meetings by 50% – Sales discussions became less about the product itself and more about how it could be tailored to the customer’s needs.
👉Increasing discussions around premium modules and features – From both prospective customers and existing users.
👉Increasing marketing and sales efficiency – The content was distributed by the champion to stakeholders in their organizations, so people came to the table more educated about the product, eliminating the need to continually repeat the same presentation to new stakeholders.
👉Collapsed time-to-revenue – Because prospects came to the table more educated, the prospect was able to get buy-in in less time, shortening the sales cycle
👉Improving product development – by giving developers and testers real use cases and test cases for product features.
Gordon Hilleque
The sales enablement piece is nothing like your usual how-to blog post. It’s designed to drive growth by improving retention, monetization, and acquisition — creating maximum efficiency for your revenue team.
Three Impressive Outcomes
There were three impressive by-products of the sales enablement content Kathryn developed for CustomerTRAX.
1. Reducing sales meetings by 50%
As Peter Drucker famously said, “The fewer meetings, the better.” By reducing unproductive sales meetings and getting to the close faster, you can drive more revenue more quickly. And with great customer onboarding and success content available behind the sale, you can improve retention and upsells, leading to higher customer lifetime value.
Gordon explains:
In most sales situations, you spend a lot of time trying to understand the prospect’s key needs and requirements. The process we’ve developed with Kathryn points us in a direction much, much quicker. This makes us more efficient on multiple levels:
- For prospect gatekeepers and champions – It shares the information and messaging they need to get buy-in without having to schedule another introduction meeting or trying to do it themselves and butchering the message.
- For sales reps – It delivers more product information in less time, with greater understanding, so people come to that table ready to talk about how the product can be configured for their organization.
- In discussions with clients – We can provide value faster and hopefully show them the value of our enterprise modules.
At the end of the day, we’re trying to charge for something to make money, and we’re doing that a lot faster with this approach. Kathryn’s content has been the primary driver to attract new prospects and reduce the number of presentations and sales meetings by 50%. It has cut the sales cycle in half, if not more.
2. Building a better product
While Kathryn and Gordon understood the value this content would deliver to his organization and customers, the impact on product development was an unexpected surprise.
Developers don’t typically understand why they are building something and may have very little knowledge of the business situation. This can have a significant impact on how they decide to build things. Testers can also struggle to replicate real-world scenarios to ensure the application achieves the expected result.
Through our process of crafting content during development, developers and testers understood what they were creating. They were able to build features that actually enhanced the product and added tangible value to the end user.
3. Better sales onboarding & enablement
After Gordon sold Handle, Kathryn was asked to develop sales enablement content for the new sales team. They were struggling to drive sales and needed to understand how to talk about the product’s enterprise feature, which sold for more than $50,000 in ARR.
Gordon and Kathryn realized they needed to produce something that not only drove sales but also educated the new revenue team, including salespeople, marketers, and customer success. To meet this challenge, they developed a comprehensive resource that could serve as the single source of truth for the enterprise module.
The Product Blueprint is a comprehensive guide for sales training, prospect education, demand generation, and pitches.
Texada salesperson, after reading the Blueprint for Handle’s enterprise solution
What KA Media Learned from Being Involved in All Aspects of a Product-Based Business
One sales enablement resource can drive significant revenue growth while providing value to users, team members, and the organization.
The Guide, which uses a highly persuasive format, can be used for customer marketing, complex sales, and customer support, making it one of the highest-value pieces of content for growth-oriented SaaS companies. It can stop revenue leaks below the funnel while boosting revenue from existing customers and condensing time-to-close on new accounts.
As Gordon says, “You have the opportunity to get to the sale faster.”
Gordon Hilleque
A single source of truth creates internal as well as external benefits. Whether you’re talking about the comprehensive Product Blueprint or the in-the-trenches sales enablement piece, the EDGE article, you’ll have one resource that works cross-functionally to keep everyone on the same page — communicating the same message about the product and its value.
- For Sales, it brings customers to the table ready to talk about how your product will help their organization, so you can effectively sell more with fewer sales meetings.
- For Marketing, it provides the story, value proposition, and key talking points for other marketing assets, including blog, social media, SEO content, webinars, and presentations.
- For Success, it improves adoption, mastery of core features, and customer marketing, so you’ll see more sales to existing customers.
- For Developers, it provides context to give users the capabilities they want and need with fewer meetings and less oversight.
For SaaS growth, efficiency matters. Most product-based companies understand the value of integrating Marketing, Sales, and Success — it keeps everyone focused on what matters: ensuring customer success. But they haven’t figured out an effective way to do that.
Each team can only see the issues that relate to their tasks, and each tries to solve those issues from their own perspective. This creates inefficiencies that can affect the entire organization:
- Misaligned goals and priorities
- Duplication of efforts
- Inconsistent and frustrating customer experiences
- Missed opportunities due to poor communication of insights and data
Kathryn’s Product-Led Marketing strategy makes it easier to get everyone on the same page, working toward the same goals and delivering the same messaging.
The EDGE article can enhance product development. When you include it with your technical documentation, it gives developers the context they need to understand the technical specifications you’ve given them. It explains how the feature will be sold and the outcomes users are looking for. This gives them the insights they need to create a better product.
These resources will enhance your existing marketing and sales efforts. This unique product-led strategy doesn’t need to replace your existing revenue strategies, but it will make them more effective — and you may be able to reduce customer acquisition costs (CAC) while increasing sales and customer upgrades.
Goal, Scope, and Impact
Gordon was looking for someone who could help him develop and refine the content process he was imagining. He also wanted them to work collaboratively with him and his team to drive growth for the organization.
With this in mind, Kathryn was initially asked to create content and hand it off to Marketing for production, but the team’s busy schedules made it difficult to review, publish, and distribute the content. They realized Kathryn could help them overcome some of the bottlenecks to content production if she took more of a management role.
As a result, the scope of the project grew. Kathryn worked directly with Gordon on a weekly basis and cross-functionally as needed to lead Handle’s product marketing content, including:
- Consultation and research
- Development of product content for sales and customer support
- Production of video, graphics, sales decks, and presentations
- Management of the website
- Production and execution of the product newsletter and social media
Kathryn and her team met with Gordon each week to discuss new projects, conduct interviews, and review content. Kathryn’s team:
- Produced the content
- Uploaded it to Handle’s website
- Distributed it on social media
- Produced a product newsletter
For onboarding and customer success, Kathryn worked with the Head of Operations to develop:
- A quick-start guide
- An Adminostrator’s guide
- A User’s guide
For the annual heavy equipment conference, Kathryn and her team worked with Gordon and Marketing to create:
- A slide deck for Gordon’s presentation
- Recordings of his presentation
- A gated resource for attendees
For prospects, the content explained:
- What the product does and how it does it
- How other organizations are leveraging the product features
- How it can help their own organization operate more effectively
Customers were able to:
- Master a complex product quickly and easily
- Get the full value of their investment
- Understand how to configure it for their unique needs
- Create efficiencies they weren’t able to achieve with other CRMs
- Learn more about premium modules
Gordon Hilleque
What’s Different About this Content?
“This is not just surface-level marketing content,” Gordon explains.
EDGE content conveys the WHY behind the product, marrying customer marketing, sales enablement, and customer success. The result is highly effective, persuasive content that improves product development, supports existing users, and drives revenue from new and existing customers.
The unique format essentially “sells” the feature. It tells the story of why the feature or module was developed, how it benefits users, and how to use it.
For users, it accelerates adoption and mastery while creating curiosity about premium modules that could transform their business operations.
For prospects, it answers questions about the product itself, so sales meetings can focus on how the tool will help their organization.
For developers, it explains how a new feature will integrate with existing features and how customers will use it.
For internal team members, it increases product knowledge and creates consistent messaging and talking points.
A Revolutionary Approach to SaaS Growth
To maximize SaaS growth and revenue, partner with Kathryn. Her counterintuitive approach to product marketing solves for revenue first by improving all three SaaS growth levers: acquisition, retention, and customer lifetime value.
