Taking on Salesforce with a new design philosophy for B2B SaaS sales

The impact

I served as designer and consultant to MetaCX, a Bay Area SaaS startup that had recently closed a $14 million Series A, brought in at the direction of their new head of product (previously a head of UX Research at Facebook) to bring a fresh, unbiased, outside perspective to their product and company.

Reimagined the SaaS sales process around shared success

How might we design a shared space for buyers and suppliers to transparently collaborate and align needs with capabilities? As the sole designer on this project, my work included participating in a design sprint, facilitating a series of user interviews, and working with MetaCX’s design team to complete a looks-like Visiontype. It also included work not detailed here due to sensitivity: facilitating key stakeholder interviews, creating strategic Northstar goals, and completing a product development roadmap with their leadership team.

Role and responsibilities

• Design lead
• UX strategy
• Business analyst
• Concept development
• User interviews
• Visiontype creation
• Executive Northstar workshop facilitator

Team Makeup: This project was divided into several stages. The first stage was a multi-week, remote design sprint that was hosted by a designer from Design Map. The rest of the group included the 4-person MetaCX team and me.

Process & Tools: We used Google’s standard design sprint process and Miro to collaborate during the sprint.

Bet on a buyer-supplier “bridge,” not another CRM feature

Rather than add another feature to a traditional CRM, MetaCX’s core innovation was a CRM that intimately links sales to customer success teams end-to-end, reducing the information silos common in enterprise sales that often lead to poor buyer outcomes. The centerpiece of that bet was a buyer-supplier “bridge”: a dynamic space where the buyer could track their ROI over time, increasing transparency and communication between both parties.

Client Homepage: Transparency between buyer and seller and “shared success” is a core tenant of the product experience.

Business Model Discovery: exploring how the buyer-supplier bridge could translate into a viable business model for MetaCX.

Creating a visiontype

After completing the design sprint and generating design concepts for a 5-year outlook, our team set out to design a Visiontype, or future-oriented prototype. To tell a compelling story, we created two fictional companies working together to form a business relationship. The following Figma prototypes show my key ideas, early sketches, and wireframes.

Final concept prototypes: Paradigm 1, Needs & Capabilities Chatbot; Paradigm 2, Circular Kanban; Paradigm 3, Reimagined Customer “Bridge.”

Northstar direction and product roadmap (not shown)

After working directly with the design team to create a Visiontype, the project entered a new stage. Along with Anthroware’s CEO and Creative Director, I worked with MetaCX’s leadership team to craft a compelling strategic Northstar direction and product development roadmap. This involved key stakeholder interviews and several workshop sessions to facilitate team alignment.

Would want to see whether the bridge shipped

This engagement ended at the Visiontype and Northstar roadmap stage, the point where a consulting project like this typically hands off. I don’t know whether the buyer-supplier bridge concept survived contact with MetaCX’s engineering constraints and roadmap priorities after our team moved on, and I’d build in a longer-term check-in next time to learn how a Northstar direction actually holds up once a client owns it.