A go-to-market strategy that landed the biggest deal in company history.

Third Wave Innovations had two businesses under one roof: a managed services provider for security and networking, and a technology platform, C4 Intelligence, that unified security operations, GRC, attack surface management, and network performance. Each was strong on its own. Together they were hard to explain, and growth depended on three decisions nobody had made yet: where to play, who to sell through, and how to talk about all of it as one company.

Patrick Hayes had been on the team with me at UncommonX. He brought me in as CMO to make those decisions with him, and for about two years that's what we did. Strategy first, marketing second. We picked the mid-market, where sales cycles move and the offer fits, over enterprise deals with sales cycles a company that size can't afford to wait on. And we made a deliberate bet on partners as the route to market: account mapping, joint messaging, and enablement so partner sales teams could sell Third Wave as well as they sold their own products.

Then the messaging transformation. We repositioned C4 Intelligence as unified risk management and rewrote the story for each buyer, then set the content and digital strategy to follow: a rebuilt website, a collateral library, and a social presence, all built by the team to one standard. Sales decks, partner decks, and enablement on both sides gave the field one version of the message. Underneath, we implemented the operations, migrating to Salesforce and Pardot, so pipeline could be measured from first touch to contract value. Speaking opportunities for Patrick, board and investor materials, and ongoing work with the sales team rounded it out.

The partner bet paid off through the largest deal in Third Wave's history: a multi-million-dollar customer that came through one of the partners we built the program around, and that customer is still active today.