How Hexagon PPM rebuilt its GTM strategy on real data

Overview

Hexagon PPM is the project and asset management division of Hexagon, a global leader in sensor, software, and autonomous solutions. With 25,000+ employees and a mandate to help clients turn complex information into smart digital assets, Hexagon PPM's own sales org needed the same kind of clarity it sold to customers - a clear picture of what was actually happening, rather than what people thought was happening.

The goal was market expansion. But expanding into new markets without visibility into how GTM teams had engaged with buyers historically meant building strategy on guesswork. Backstory became the backbone of Hexagon PPM's GTM tech stack, giving them the data to plan, coach, and execute with confidence.

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Before Backstory

• No visibility into GTM activities across accounts and opportunities
• Sales coaching driven by instinct - no engagement data to ground conversations
• Pipeline full of stale, unhealthy deals - some years old, hundreds of hours logged with no progress
• 80,000+ contacts missing from CRM - account handoffs happened with no context
• No way to distinguish how top performers spent their time versus everyone else

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GTM activity capture and contact data

Surfacing 746,000 activities and 80,000 contacts the CRM didn't know existed

Hexagon PPM's CRM didn't reflect what was actually happening in the field. Contacts were missing. Activity data was sparse. When accounts changed hands, incoming reps inherited a hollow record - no history of who was engaged, at what level, or how recently.

Backstory automatically captured 746,000 sales activities and matched them to the right accounts and opportunities. It also ingested 80,000 new contacts into CRM with accurate account role and affiliation data. Account handoffs became context-rich. Reps could see the full engagement history of any account from day one.

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AFTER BACKSTORY

• 746,000 sales activities captured and matched to the correct records in Salesforce
• 80,000 new contacts added to CRM with accurate role and account affiliation
• Account handoffs equipped with full engagement history - no more starting from scratch
• Historical engagement data available to inform GTM strategy and market expansion planning

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Pipeline health and deal visibility

Finding the deals that deserved attention - and cutting the ones that didn't

Hexagon PPM's pipeline had a hygiene problem. Deals that had been sitting at stage 0-2 for years were still taking up space and rep attention. Without a way to measure deal health objectively, these deals persisted - costing time and distorting forecasting.

Backstory gave Hexagon PPM a full pipeline health assessment, making unhealthy opportunities visible and giving reps the data to make faster disqualification decisions. Reps cut losing deals earlier, spent more time on winnable ones, and managers gained a cleaner view of what was actually in the pipeline.

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AFTER BACKSTORY

• Full pipeline health visibility - unhealthy deals surfaced and addressed proactively
• Reps disqualifying stalled deals at stages 0-2 rather than carrying them late into the cycle
• 30% increase in meetings with existing customers
• 25% increase in net new business meetings - 9,000 new business meetings generated

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Sales coaching and manager development

Shifting managers from closing deals to developing the reps who close them

Backstory didn't just reveal what reps were doing - it revealed what managers were doing. The data showed that frontline managers were frequently jumping into deals directly rather than coaching reps through them. Time that should have gone to developing sellers was going to individual deal execution instead.

With engagement data in hand, the VP of Sales Operations could have specific, evidence-based conversations with managers about their roles. Coaching became grounded in actual activity patterns rather than anecdote.

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AFTER BACKSTORY

• Managers shifted from deal execution to coaching - clearer role definition backed by data
• Coaching conversations grounded in engagement data, not anecdote
• New reps onboarded faster - activity data and contact history available from day one

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What Hexagon PPM achieved

Hexagon PPM set out to expand into new markets. They couldn't do that without first understanding how their sales org was actually operating - where time was going, which deals had real momentum, and what behaviors separated effective reps from ineffective ones. Backstory gave them that picture.

30% more meetings with existing customers, 25% more net new business meetings, 746,000 activities captured, 80,000 new contacts in CRM. The more durable outcome is structural - Hexagon PPM now has a GTM strategy built on real engagement data, a coaching culture that uses that data, and a pipeline that reflects reality rather than hope.

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