Situation

‍Magnolia, a global digital experience platform (DXP) provider, serves large enterprise clients such as Deutsche Bahn, Aldi Nord, and Sanofi. With an average annual contract value exceeding $100,000, they operate in complex enterprise sales cycles. Sebastian, recently appointed Chief Revenue Officer after 13 years with the company, faced challenges with an outdated go-to-market stack—relying heavily on Salesforce, Marketo, and other traditional tools that were rigid and costly.

Magnolia therefore needed to modernize its approach to pipeline generation, trust-building, and positioning to support growth in a competitive enterprise market, especially against dominant players like Adobe.

Pain

• Inflexible Tech Stack: Legacy systems like Salesforce, Marketo & 6sense were too clunky, costly, and not aligned with Magnolia’s speedboat positioning to modernize pipeline generation.
• Lack of bespoke enterprise approach from agencies so far: Previous agencies applied generic SaaS playbooks not tailored to Magnolia’s enterprise sales needs, resulting in underwhelming outcomes.
• Pipeline Generation Process: The traditional demand generation methods (e.g., cold emails) failed to build the necessary trust in a high-stakes, relationship-driven sales environment.
• Positioning and Awareness Gap: Difficulty in clearly & cost-efficiently positioning & distributing Magnolia’s value proposition against much larger, more established players like Adobe

Impact

• Strategic Positioning: Magnolia developed a clear, differentiated narrative emphasizing agility and customer-centricity in the DXP space.
• Improved Engagement: Social media campaigns and thought leadership posts resulted in notable engagement, including connecting with Forrester’s Chief Analyst for DXP (Magnolia’s software category).
• Tool Optimization Potential: Identified significant savings (mid-five figures annually) through streamlined tech stack recommendations.
• Trust-Based GTM Strategy: SalesPlaybook’s non-generic, trust-building approach aligned tightly with enterprise buyer expectations, leading to better-qualified leads and more efficient sales motions.

Critical Event

‍Magnolia was approaching critical decisions on Salesforce licensing and overall GTM stack renewal. This urgency, coupled with the desire to modernize their revenue operations and scale enterprise engagement, catalyzed the decision to invest in a more tailored and strategic agency partnership.

Decision Criteria

• Enterprise Sales Expertise: Needed an agency that understood 6- to 7-figure enterprise deal GTM
• Customization & Relevance: Required a partner who could deeply tailor messaging and campaigns rather than using cookie-cutter SaaS playbooks.
• Execution Reliability: Valued an approach where commitments were followed by tangible outcomes—“no bullshit,” as Sebastian phrased it.
• Cost Efficiency: Looked for strategic partners who could help optimize the GTM stack both functionally and financially.

Decision Process

‍After seeing Manuel Hartmann speak and recognizing his understanding of enterprise sales and trust-based lead generation, Sebastian engaged SalesPlaybook first through a speaking engagement at Magnolia’s sales kickoff. Positive early impressions led to a full partnership, with trust, candid feedback, and collaborative learning as core pillars of the relationship.

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