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In May 2024, Canva embarked on a migration from the classroom to the office. Leveraging its reputation as an easy-to-use graphic design platform, the company released its enterprise version, Canva Enterprise, locking down clients like Docusign, FedEx, and Keller Williams.
Bow-tie occasion
Canva’s “bow-tie framework,” according to Rob Giglio, chief customer officer, helps its product and marketing teams stay “functionally super aligned.”
“Our product team is in the same discussions around: Where are customers stuck? How is trial going? What features are getting used?” Giglio said. “Our marketing team is engaged at three different main phases: One is building awareness; two is demand gen; and three is product usage. The marketing team is stitched through this whole thing, and then my organization, whether they’re in sales and they’re in customer success, are stitched in too.”
For Jessica Chiew, global head of revenue strategy and operations, using this framework was essential while building a GTM team transitioning from product-led growth (PLG) to sales-led growth (SLG).
“How does PLG tie in with SLG to make sure it’s a really unified and not disjointed experience?” Chiew said. “That was something we relied on and was the key artifact for how we went about building the sales team.”
Through this framework, Canva said it can track when to activate marketing, product, and customer success teams to acquire clients and ensure good customer service. Externally, it helps Canva maintain its branding and shows clients that it can serve corporate as well as consumer needs.
“There’s no big, chunky handoffs, we manage the customer journey together,” Giglio told Revenue Brew. “If you’re really just obsessing on the customer journey, you put technology first to solve problems, people second to solve problems, and you end up with the lightest exposure of expense.”
“We never want to lose sight of what’s gotten us to where we are and those 235 million people that we’re serving every month and empowering,” Chiew added.
How marketing supports an enterprise transition
Canva has long made efforts to be the information design product of choice for teachers and students, with a customer base of over 100 million. The already accumulated audience paid dividends when Emma Robinson, Canva’s B2B customer marketing lead, was devising Canva Enterprise’s marketing plan.
“[Gen Z and millennials] used it in schools and in education, and they bring it into organizations,” Robinson said. “Some people that have had this generational use of Canva will go into an organization, and then they’ll really spark that interest. They’ll go to their managers and say, ‘I’ve used Canva before. I can do this with Canva in like, five seconds.’”
That consumer data surrounding younger professionals allows the enterprise team to build a marketing-led sales motion, which uncovers leads through users who bring Canva from the classroom into the workplace with them.
“People aren’t contacting sales reps anymore in B2B; they’re exploring and researching right up until the point where they really buy,” Robinson said. “That disrupts the old B2B model, where you create awareness, and you bring them through the funnel. The funnel is now very, very short, and Gen Z…know where to go.”
However, even with great marketing, a talented enterprise sales team—something Canva has been building from the ground up—still needs to make the sale.
Building enterprise sales from scratch
One challenge Canva faced in its enterprise transition was not having a dedicated sales team in place. Giglio, however, saw this as an advantage. A new start allowed him to create a “lightweight” sales team, in terms of personnel and technology.
“We’re going to try not to have a lot of layers; we’re going to try to have purpose-built go-to-market technology,” Giglio said. “When you look at other enterprise sales teams that are doing the kind of volume that we’re doing and touching as many customers as we are, they are bloated is what I would say. We try to find the right tool for the right purpose, and that’s it.”