Rational

Industry:
Software development tools

Geographies:
Worldwide

Challenges:
  • Grew too quickly
  • Developed reputation as technologically stodgy
  • Difficulty conveying value propositions
  • Need to enter new marketplace

Solutions:
  • Messaging strategy
  • Website and ecommunication technologies
  • Online community

Results:
  • 70% increase in total revenue
  • 121% increase in average order size
  • 175% increase in website visits
  • 21% decrease in total marketing costs
  • 22% decrease in sales cycle time
  • 15,000 community members

David’s focus on solutions rather than products help to propel Rational from a good company to a great company.

— colleague at Rational Software

Success Stories > Getting the message

Getting the message: an Aximum success story

The Company

Rational Software was the world’s leading software development tools company, focusing its products on development architecture and project methodologies. Its target market was developers, software architects, project managers, and everyone else involved in the software development process. Target industries included automotive, aerospace, and medical/biotechnology fields. (Rational was purchased by IBM in 2003.)

The Company’s Needs

As Senior Product Marketing Manager at Rational, I focused my efforts on the company’s two flagship products: Rose and DevelopmentStudio. Rational had grown very quickly in the three years prior to my arrival, and the company found itself in danger of collapsing under its own weight due to the costs of acquiring other organizations. It needed a way to effectively communicate its product offerings to the right people at the right time, and to guide both customers and prospects on complementary products and services. In addition, it needed to capitalize on its desire to become the industry leader for Java development.

The company needed me to:

  1. Unify and clarify the overall messaging strategy
  2. Rehabilitate the company’s reputation and perception with customers as forward-thinking and solutions-focused
  3. Reach out to the Java development audience and capture business in this new marketplace

Unify and clarify message with a Core Messaging strategy

The acquisition strategy for Rational was focused on creating a true turnkey solution for all customers in the software development process, and put the company in a great position to dominate the marketplace. However, this strategy had not been clearly communicated internally or externally. As a result, sales and marketing processes continued to be product-based, rather than solution-based, and most revenue was generated from single product purchases. In addition, the company’s customer-facing employees were conveying a disjointed, inconsistent message to their customers and prospects. A new approach was needed, one that would unify and clarify Rational’s message to its audience.

My goal was to make Rational an even stronger industry leader by creating a compelling, simplified messaging process. I developed a Core Messaging strategy for all of the company’s products and services, providing a more systematic, centralized approach. The benefits to this approach:

  1. Gets everyone in the company saying the same thing, and puts them literally on the same page. This is especially useful for companies that have remote sales teams.
  2. Enables the sales teams, along with all customer-facing employees, to focus more on customer interactions and sales techniques, and less on individual development of the message to convey.
  3. Enables organizations to separate higher-level messaging, which is more value-focused and more stable over time, from lower-level messaging, which will change as new product versions and features are introduced.
  4. Becomes the blueprint for all communication media: websites, collateral, PR, sales tools, customer letters, presentations, webinars, etc.

Re-establish company reputation as forward-thinking, solutions-focused, and proactive

Website. The company website was in dire need of modernization, so I used the Core Messaging platform as the basis for a new and improved website. Along with new messaging, I also incorporated a Solutions Wizard to guide customers through needs-based questions. This enabled the customers to choose the right products and services based on their needs, further strengthening the bond between need and solution.

Email. I also implemented email campaigns for both customers and prospects, providing quick and easy answers to some of the more common questions and concerns about our products. These emails were accompanied by "calls to action," such as downloading a whitepaper, attending a webinar, and contacting a salesperson. The campaigns tied in with Rational’s internal customer database, which meant a salesperson could customize their interactions with customers and prospects based on their needs and where they were in the sales cycle. This led to more personalized communication between the salespeople and their customers, increasing customer satisfaction and win/loss ratio, and reducing the sales cycle time.

Post-sale support. I also helped to develop a program that focused on post-sale customer support. I determined that current and former customers were eight times more likely than prospects to purchase again, so it made sense to devote resources to maintain these relationships after the sale. In addition to creating a communication strategy and executing on that plan, I incorporated the understanding of the Lifetime Customer Value (LCV) metric. The LCV was intended to measure the costs of acquiring a customer, and the economic value they provide the company. It helped to develop a proactive approach to customer acquisition and retention at Rational, which greatly reduced sales costs and helped the sales teams focus on interactions that would yield the highest results.

Reach out to the Java development marketplace and capture business

At the time, Rational estimated that the revenue potential for Java-specific development tools could be worth over $100 million in new business. As Rational built new products to support the Java platform, we recognized the need to capture the mindshare of this audience in order to achieve sales success. I was looking for a way to mimic the collaborative environment that Rational products embody, and to provide a value-added experience that would compel a prospect to purchase. I worked with other marketing team members on creating an online community that was specifically tailored to the Java audience. It was loosely affiliated with Rational so that community members didn’t feel they were being "marketed," and the user experience included very engaging and now-standard components like membership, collaboration amongst members, affiliates, event calendars, surveys, document sharing, code sharing, etc. Within the first 18 months, there were over 15,000 community members.

Results

  • 49% increase in favorable market perception
  • 38% increase in Lifetime Customer Value (LCV) within 20 months
  • New solution-based messaging created a 121% increase in average order size
  • 83% increase in cross-product revenue, and 70% increase in total revenue in 24 months
  • 51% increase in customer confidence that Rational has the technology, support, and solutions to fit their needs for the foreseeable future
  • 21% decrease in total marketing expenditures
  • 15,000 community members within 18 months
  • 2,900% increase in Java-specific revenue within 18 months
  • 22% decrease in average sales cycle time
  • 44% increase in win/loss ratio
  • 175% increase in corporate website visits
  • 73% of all new website visitors used Solutions Wizard as a decision-making tool

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