A regulatory assessment that became a revenue line
This is one of my favourite stories from my career. Banks had one worried question, and answering it properly turned into a business of its own.
The situation
I was leading product marketing at an enterprise AI company with a strong fraud-prevention product, but it wasn't getting traction with banks. Then the regulator introduced new counter-fraud rules, and suddenly every bank had the same worry: are we ready?
What we did
Instead of leading with our product, we built a regulatory readiness assessment. It showed each bank how its current controls measured up against the new rules, and where the gaps were.
- We offered it as a service in its own right, so the first conversation was about the bank's risk, not our features.
- Every assessment taught us something about what banks really needed, and we fed that straight back into our positioning, packaging and pricing.
- We trained the sales team to open with the assessment rather than a demo.
Within the first three quarters, six enterprise clients signed on, building a new revenue line worth low single-digit millions in ARR.
In regulated markets, buyers trust the people who help them understand their own problem. Solve that first, and your product becomes the natural next step.