Case study

Retirement and Benefits Provider beat PE expectations with a 3x MOIC and 9x EBITDA multiple

Categories

Revenue OperationsSalesMarketing

Solutions provided

Interim CMO

Buyer Intelligence & Account Seg

RevOps design & KPI framework

Marketing assessment & roadmap

Demand gen & campaign strategy

Marketing org design & hiring plan

Brand strategy & RevOps leadership

The key insight

Rebuilding a data-driven GTM and RevOps engine helped management outperform PE expectations, delivering 3x MOIC vs ~2x target and a 9x EBITDA exit multiple vs 8x goal.

Results at a glance

MOIC at exit

EBITDA multiple

Take an assessment

A national retirement and benefits platform serving public-sector and corporate employers, had rapidly acquired firms and invested heavily in sales and enablement ahead of a planned PE exit, but its marketing and RevOps engine lagged the scale and sophistication of the rest of the business.

The challenge

The challenge was to turn a fragmented, under-instrumented marketing footprint into a unified, accountable growth engine ahead of exit.

Fragmented brand & buyers: 20+ brands, inconsistent logos, and no clear ICP or personas across K-12, government, and brokerage.

Unmeasured demand gen: "Spray and pray" campaigns with weak CTAs, little tracking, and no consistent lead-to-revenue lifecycle.

Limited accountability: Few shared KPIs or reports, even as PE owners expected marketing to drive ~⅓ of new business.

The Cortado Group solution

Defined ICP and Personas

Clarified ideal K-12, government, and brokerage buyers and how they purchase.

Prioritized 33k+ Accounts

Scored and tiered 10,154 K-12, 22,343 government, and 1,501 brokerage prospects to focus on highest-value targets.

Built a RevOps Backbone

Standardized lifecycle (MCL→Customer), lead scoring, SLAs, and KPIs to tie marketing to pipeline and revenue.

Created a Campaign & ROI Model

Designed a $100k demand-gen playbook with clear volume, conversion, and value-creation assumptions.

Designed the GTM Foundation

Defined the future-state marketing org, operating cadence, martech/tracking standards, and brand architecture, including selecting the branding partner.

Results

MOIC at exit

EBITDA multiple

Beat PE expectations: Supported a 3x MOIC: vs ~2x target and a 9x EBITDA multiple vs 8x goal at exit.

Focused growth roadmap: Gave leadership a prioritized,: buyer-led view into 33k+ ICP-aligned accounts across K-12, government, and brokerage.

Marketing as a self-funding engine: Modeled 10–15x gross marketing ROI and 4.0–5.7x net ROI: on a single $100k campaign.

Scalable GTM & brand platform: Left the retirement and benefits provider: with a repeatable GTM operating model and unified brand framework to support the rebrand and future acquisitions.