Can you describe a situation where the go-to-market strategy had to be adjusted due to unforeseen external factors like COVID or economic downturns? How did you manage the uncertainties and mitigate the risks?

The north star I try to stay grounded in through uncontrollable external factors: stay human & customer centric. This will help you make faster, more focused decisions that land with customers vs feeling opportunistic or tone deaf in uncertain times.

At Dropbox, we launched a deep integration with Zoom in February 2020 to drive MM/ENT Dropbox usage. When COVID hit in March, we saw an uptick in integration adoption as Zoom became a household name and foundational SaaS tool. We listened to the market and quickly shifted our positioning from enhancing collaboration to powering remote work (a novel JTBD at the time!). This customer centricity enabled Dropbox to be the first company in the market to talk about distributed teams and async work, and because of this, helped us gain credibility addressing a new customer need well beyond our Zoom partnership.

To help operationalize this new GTM strategy, we secured additional EPD resourcing to ensure the product could support an unprecedented uptick in adoption. We also shifted sales enablement from selling a collaboration tool to selling a new way of working - which is where staying human comes in. We built deep empathy with business leaders recognizing they were unsure how to maintain business momentum with teams unprepared to work from home indefinitely, and refined our pitch accordingly.

Not all GTM shifts as a result of uncontrollable factors have been as successful, of course, but remaining customer centric allowed us to make quick decisions to rewire our GTM strategy. It was also one of the most rewarding career experiences as we became a source of support & reassurance for customers as they navigated this new way of working.