The Challenge:
A leading North American manufacturer of paper, packaging, and pulp faced a turning point after acquiring its largest customer in one product segment. With more than 60 facilities across the continent, the company’s acquisition was a strategic move to vertically integrate and strengthen its leadership in a highly commoditized and price-pressured market. Yet despite this move, the company struggled to realize the full strategic benefits of the deal, particularly considering market saturation.
The Strategy:
To address this, the company partnered with Jabian to reimagine its go-to-market strategy for the newly integrated business. Jabian embedded a strategic marketing expert alongside the client’s internal team, to lead a comprehensive effort focused on three core objectives: segmenting the market, defining a competitive strategy, and realigning sales execution.
The engagement began with a robust market segment sizing initiative. Jabian helped the client determine the most meaningful sizing method, whether revenue, volume, or square footage, and built a bottom-up model using primary and secondary research across three key customer segments.
Next, Jabian turned to strategy development, conducting numerous interviews with customers and proxies to understand their needs and perceptions of the competitive landscape. This work surfaced clear insights about unmet needs and differentiation opportunities. Jabian then translated those findings into distinct, segment-specific value propositions based on competitor SWOT analyses and voice-of-customer input.
Finally, to ensure these strategic insights could be activated, Jabian mapped the company’s existing sales “go-to-market motion.” Through a series of interviews and workshops, the team documented the current sales workflows, identified pain points, and recommended enhancements to the sales operating model.
The Outcome:
These insights led to significant organizational improvements. The client tailored marketing collateral and reorganized its sales structure to better align with customer needs. It also redefined account management by rebalancing outside sales, inside sales, and customer service roles. Most notably, it streamlined three previously disconnected customer service operating models into one cohesive, scalable approach.
By reengineering the go-to-market strategy from insight to execution, Jabian helped the client unlock new value from its acquisition and position itself more competitively in a challenging marketplace.