From Recession Decline to Successful Exit

The Situation

This pioneer in online talent assessments had built a successful business through a network of 2,000 distributors. The product was solid. The channel was extensive. But the company had hit a plateau.

Then the 2008 mortgage crisis hit.

Organizations stopped hiring. Assessment companies dependent on hiring were getting hammered. The business started shrinking.

I joined as their first CMO during one of the worst economic collapses in modern history. The owners—in their late 50s and early 60s—wanted to sell, but the highest offer on the table wasn't close to their exit goals.

The challenge: create enough growth and enterprise value to achieve a successful exit despite the worst hiring market in decades.

The Approach

Voice of customer research revealed the opportunity hiding in plain sight: customers were already using assessments for much more than hiring—onboarding, leadership development, team building, performance management, succession planning. The product had broader utility than the positioning suggested.

We didn't need to change the product. We needed to change how we talked about it.

We built two parallel growth engines:

Channel Enablement. The 2,000 distributors had never received marketing support. We gave them content, sales tools, training, and best practices. Made them better marketers and sellers, not just recipients of leads.

Enterprise Direct. Large organizations wanted to work directly with the company but didn't know they could. We built thought leadership through an HBR-quality publication, established the firm as authoritative voice in talent assessment, and created direct enterprise sales capability.

We were digital marketing pioneers—among the first 100 customers of a major marketing automation platform—combining world-class content with cutting-edge distribution technology.

The Impact

More than doubled the exit valuation despite the worst hiring market in decades.

Reversed the declining trajectory. Achieved sustained growth during crisis conditions. Built a marketing function from zero that transformed how the company went to market.

Successful exit to a major publisher at more than 2x the best previous offer.

The Lesson

Market position and channel strategy matter more than product features.

This firm succeeded not by changing what they did, but by changing how buyers understood what they could do with it—and giving 2,000 distributors the tools to communicate that value effectively.

Crisis forces innovation. The 2008 collapse forced diversification beyond hiring use cases. Without the crisis, we might never have made the changes that doubled the valuation.