How we pivoted Vector without breaking the business (or ourselves)

Josh didn’t wake up one morning and decide to blow up Vector’s roadmap just for the plot.

He started seeing patterns that kept him up at night, and honestly, same. Customers were struggling, we had too many use cases, and our teams were stretched in every direction trying to make it all work.

So Josh pulled the emergency brake with an all-hands meeting in Boston. With five days’ notice. I packed a bag, kissed my kids goodbye, and mentally prepared for either a breakthrough or a breakdown (turns out… I may have ended up with a little bit of both).

At the meeting, the message was received loud and clear: we’re not doing everything for everyone anymore. We’re pivoting. No debate.

A pivot is messy, uncomfortable, and more than a bit terrifying. You’re basically admitting the story you’ve been telling isn’t quite right anymore (awkward, I know), then rebuilding it in real time while trying not to break the business. Kind of like fixing a car while driving it. Easy, right?

Here’s how we spotted the signs it was time, hit reset without combusting, and turned a “we might be just a little bit screwed” moment into a masterclass in focus.

What you’ll learn

• How to tell the difference between a pivot and shiny object syndrome
• How to run a “we’re changing everything” meeting without tanking morale
• How bringing a customer into the workshop made our messaging 10x sharper 
• How I used survey data to test the new story
• What it really takes to align product, marketing, and sales around a single message
• The three metrics I used to test whether the pivot worked

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TOP THREE TAKEAWAYS

Takeaway 1: Positioning only matters when it affects sales

April Dunford’s line, “No one gives a sh*t about positioning until it affects sales” was exactly where we were. 

Our pipeline was noisy and sales calls were full of prospects we were never built for. A marketer's dream, surely? It wasn’t that the product stopped working — it’s that too many people were trying to make it work for the wrong things.

So, we ran a survey of 80+ demand gen marketers and used that data to refine the message (and because I refuse to waste good content — the horror — we also turned it into a webinar and mini-report).

Meanwhile, our PMM powerhouse, Alex, tackled pricing and packaging — because, as April reminds us, positioning has to show up on the balance sheet. For far too long, we’d been living in that awkward middle ground: a little too pricey for small teams, too cheap for enterprise ones. 

And after many late nights, we did it — we rebuilt the entire model so the pricing finally matched the value.

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Takeaway 2: Prove your pivot

Companies love to say they’ve pivoted. But as a marketer, I need to know if the numbers are telling the same story. A pivot isn’t just a vibe check (bet you all thought of that Ross moment), it has to actually prove it’s working through what the data does next.

While Josh was busy resetting the compass, I was focused on measuring it. Because a pivot isn’t official until the numbers agree. Here’s how I tracked whether ours was actually working:

1. Homepage Demo Conversions

If your new positioning actually lands, you’ll see it in your conversions pretty fast. If we were telling the right story, more people would want in — simple as that.

Before the pivot, our homepage-to-demo conversion rate was hovering around 3.5%. Not tragic, not great. I wanted to see it inch up toward that sweet 6–7% range (insert 6-7 meme — yes, I’m down with the kids) that shows strong product-market clarity.

2. ICP Demos 

Next, we zoomed in on demo requests from our ICP — those growth-driven marketers who want to de-anonymize traffic and build ad audiences that convert. These are the users who actually win with Vector.

We set a 50% lift goal for demos from this group, because good positioning doesn’t make everyone curious. It makes the RIGHT people obsessed.

3. Sales-Use-Case Demos 

I also wanted FEWER demos from sales teams trying to use Vector for outbound or prospecting plays we knew we weren’t built for. Sorry, sales — it’s not you, it’s the use case.

This was because every time we said “account-based marketing,” people heard “sales tool.” And that confusion was costing us time, energy, and credibility.

This was our anti-vanity metric. Seeing those demo numbers drop was the good kind of ghosting, and proof that our message was finally landing with the right audience.

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Takeaway 3: Niche down or burn out

The biggest breakthrough came when we looked at who was actually winning with Vector.

Spoiler alert: they were all doing the exact same thing — using us to build contact-level ad audiences and see who they were already paying to reach. That was our aha-moment. We didn’t need to reinvent anything, we just needed to niche down.

So we dropped the sales-led distractions, doubled down on the marketers, and started telling one story about building ad audiences by name — and doing it better than anyone else. And guess what? It worked.

A pivot always feels dramatic in the moment, but it turns out the real story was simple: we just needed to pick a lane and floor it. The product got stronger, the story got clearer, and nobody cried… much. 

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Catch the full episode (and subscribe to This Meeting Could’ve Been a Podcast!) on YouTube or your favorite podcast platform.