$1.2M in net-new qualified pipeline in 2.5 months

What Is Aqua Cloud?

Aqua Cloud is a test management platform used by software teams to plan, execute, and track testing across the development lifecycle. Its strongest differentiators — robust data privacy controls, regulatory compliance capabilities, and deep integrations with enterprise toolchains — made it uniquely valuable to teams operating in highly regulated industries. But for years, that positioning was invisible in how the product was marketed and sold.

The Challenge

Aqua Cloud's revenue had flatlined for three consecutive years, and the response was to throw effort at everything without a clear thesis for what would work.

The team had attempted a pivot to product-led growth, burning engineering and design resources on a motion that didn't match their buyer or deal structure. Meanwhile, the sales team was chasing anyone with a budget — no ICP definition, no use-case focus, no way to prioritize.

Three related products targeting the same market were being marketed and sold completely independently, leaving cross-sell and upsell revenue on the table. Worst of all, the founders and the sales team couldn't explain why their best clients had chosen them — which meant they couldn't predictably replicate those wins.

The Solution — Clear GTM Strategy and an Efficient Growth Engine

Investigating the Root Causes

I started by mining existing data: sales call recordings, support conversations, and customer success tickets. These surfaced a set of initial hypotheses that I then pressure-tested through focused customer interviews.

The pattern was clear. There was a fundamental mismatch between who was getting the most value from Aqua Cloud and how the product was being positioned. The top 20% of clients — the ones with the highest retention, expansion revenue, and satisfaction — shared a very specific profile: regulated enterprises looking for a test management solution with strong data privacy capabilities and specific integrations. The GTM motion was targeting none of this.

Defining High-Fit ICPs and Core Use Cases

From the research, I built a unified source of truth — a set of artifacts that mapped each ICP to its use cases, connecting the benefits the top 20% were buying for, the differentiators that made them pick Aqua Cloud over alternatives, and the channels through which these buyers typically acquired similar software. This became the strategic foundation that every downstream decision was built on.

Crafting the New Positioning and Messaging

With clear ICPs defined, I rebuilt the positioning from scratch — narrowing the focus to the specific segments and use cases where Aqua Cloud had a defensible right to win. I developed narratives around the jobs these buyers needed done, the unique capabilities that made Aqua Cloud the best fit, and the buyer journeys that led them to a decision.

This messaging framework became the single source of truth across sales, product, and customer success — aligning every team around the same customer reality instead of each group operating off its own assumptions.

Designing an Account-Based Marketing Motion

Analysis of the website traffic revealed something surprising: despite modest overall volume, high-fit, high-ACV visitors from target accounts were already landing on the site — reading multiple pages, then bouncing without converting.

To capture this traffic, I designed an ABM engine that identified visiting companies and scored them against our ICP criteria. High-priority matches triggered two parallel workflows:

• Live conversion flows — floating chat prompts and instant demo offers surfaced while the visitor was still on-site.
• High-touch outbound campaigns — for visitors who didn't convert immediately, a dedicated sales sequence targeted the right decision-makers at the identified account.

This motion surfaced 50+ high-profile accounts per month and gave sales a qualified, high-intent pipeline they'd never had access to before.

Website Redesign

Using the new positioning and messaging, I created and redesigned more than 10 pages to serve a dual purpose: convert website visitors and function as sales enablement assets throughout the deal cycle. New pages were built around specific ICPs and the concerns that mattered most in their buying process — regulatory compliance, integration depth, and data privacy — rather than generic feature lists.

Onboarding and Product Dashboard Redesign

The failed PLG experiment was scrapped in favor of a sales-led strategy, but the early product experience still mattered. Poor onboarding had killed several deals in the past — prospects would sign up for a trial and churn before ever reaching value.

Through usability interviews, I identified the highest-friction points in the dashboard and workspace setup flow, then redesigned them to reduce time-to-value. The goal was pragmatic: not a self-serve growth loop, but an onboarding experience that removed friction from sales-assisted deals.

GTM Strategy for the Product Suite

Aqua Cloud didn't exist in isolation — two adjacent products targeted the same market but were marketed and sold as if they were unrelated. This siloed approach left significant revenue on the table.

Using the market insights and new positioning, I redesigned the customer journey across all three products to work as a coordinated system — with cross-sell paths, shared messaging, and a unified buyer experience that converted users of one product into paying customers of the suite.

Sales Scripts and Marketing Collateral

The new messaging was adapted for frontline use. I co-created multi-touch outbound workflows for BDRs and sales managers alongside updated scripts — giving the team specific language for each ICP segment and a repeatable structure for converting leads into pipeline.

“Thanks to Mike's work, we had impressive positive changes in how we go to market and how our funnel works.”

Kirill ChabanovCMO & COO at aqua cloud

The Results — $1.2M of Net-New Pipeline

The engagement brought clarity to who Aqua Cloud should be selling to and how — redirecting the GTM motion away from individual test managers and toward regulated SMBs and enterprises where the product had a defensible competitive advantage.

• $1.2M in net-new qualified pipeline generated within 2.5 months
• 50+ high-fit accounts identified per month through the new ABM engine
• 30% uplift in sign-up-to-homepage conversion from the redesigned onboarding
• 10+ new website pages built as both conversion and sales enablement assets
• Redesigned onboarding with a high-converting dashboard and homepage experience
• Cross-team alignment — sales, customer success, and product operating from the same ICP definitions and messaging for the first time