From a cheaper tracking tool to the operating layer for mid-size forwarders
The product was winning on price and losing on everything else. Interviews showed the customers who stayed were using it to run operations, not to track containers. We rebuilt the story around them.
- Client
- Series A freight-visibility software company
- Sector
- Logistics software
- Location
- Karachi & Jebel Ali
- Year
- 2025
- Duration
- 10 weeks
- Scope
- Win/loss research, Positioning, Sales narrative
i. The situation
The company had grown to roughly forty customers on the strength of a cheaper, faster-to-deploy alternative to global visibility platforms. Sales were still coming in, but deal sizes were shrinking and the team was being pulled into procurement-led price comparisons it could not win.
Leadership believed the answer was a feature push. The sales team believed it was a discount policy. Neither group had looked closely at which customers were renewing, expanding and referring, or why they did.
ii. What we did
- 01
Listened to the deals, not the deck
Thirty-eight interviews across current customers, churned accounts and lost prospects, plus a structured review of sixty closed deals from the previous eighteen months.
- 02
Found the customer the product was actually for
Mid-size freight forwarders with 20 to 150 staff were renewing at nearly twice the rate of any other segment. They used the product as their daily operating view, not as a tracking add-on.
- 03
Moved the category
We stopped competing as “visibility software” and positioned the platform as the operating layer for forwarders who had outgrown spreadsheets but would never buy an enterprise suite.
- 04
Rebuilt what sales says and shows
A new narrative, a first-call deck, three reference stories and a qualification checklist that routed low-fit enterprise leads away from the sales team early.
iii. What changed
- +31%
- Median first-year contract valueTwo quarters after launch, versus the two before.
- −3 wks
- Average sales cycle for qualified forwarders
- 1 in 4
- Inbound leads now disqualified in the first callThis was deliberate, because it is where the time savings came from.
iv. In retrospect
The most valuable finding was not a new message. It was permission to say no to a whole class of buyer the team had been chasing out of habit.