How the VP of Growth at HG Insights Turned Product Gaps into Sales Wins

As the B2B sales environment shifts rapidly, with AI disruption, longer sales cycles and leaner budgets. Sales leaders are under pressure to do more with less. For James Tudway, VP of Sales at HG Insights, the answer lies in one word: focus.

In this episode of the SaaS Sales Performance Podcast, James dives into how HG Insights navigated a critical turning point in their growth journey by redefining their ICP, simplifying their go-to-market motion, and aligning their revenue teams around clear, measurable priorities.

🚀 Key Takeaways from the Conversation:

1. Focus Drives Execution

HG Insights had a wide addressable market, serving 20+ use cases across multiple Personas. It worked—until it didn’t.

“Our ability to solve so many problems for so many Personas made it harder to sell, and harder to buy.”

The shift? Narrowing down to the right ICP segments, aligning the whole funnel (SDR, marketing, AEs) to those use cases, and tying comp plans to success within those lanes.

2. Don’t Just Look at Your Past ICP—Look at Future Opportunity

HG initially doubled down on the enterprise segment, but realised that past success didn’t equal future potential.

“We had high retention and big logos in enterprise, but much of the market was already saturated—or not mature enough to buy again.”

Instead, they used their own data to identify under-penetrated mid-market segments with high conversion potential—and it’s already paying off.

3. Data is Only Valuable If It’s Actionable

James notes that most companies don’t lack data—they lack insight.

“Everyone talks about being data-driven. But if you're not solving a real problem, more data won’t help.”

They built cross-functional workflows across Sales, Product, and RevOps to identify key bottlenecks—then tackled them with ruthless prioritisation.

4. Structure Your Teams Around Focus

The modern rep can’t do it all. HG split reps into:

• New business hunters with focused verticals
• Renewal/expansion roles with deep product knowledge
• Segment-specific pods targeting similar maturity-level customers

This shift improved rep productivity and simplified buyer journeys.

5. The Profile of a Successful Rep is Evolving

Sellers today need to be:

• Consultative
• Data-fluent
• AI-literate
• Able to translate between technical buyers (like CIOs) and GTM stakeholders

HG has invested heavily in seller development—and sees it as both a performance and retention strategy.

6. CIOs Are Emerging as Key Buyers

As more businesses aim to build internal data fabrics and AI agents, the CIO is becoming a critical stakeholder in go-to-market data conversations.

“The future seller must be able to speak to a Chief Data Officer one moment and a CMO the next.”

7. Executive Alignment is Crucial

HG’s transformation wasn’t owned by Sales alone. CEO, Product, Ops, and RevOps were all involved in weekly working sessions to re-segment the market and model future territory potential based on data, not gut feel.

🔁 Final Thought

The era of gut-based growth is over. As James puts it:

“When you’re winning, you don’t learn. It’s only when growth slows that you uncover the bottlenecks.”

By getting laser-focused on the right market, personas, and problems—and aligning their teams and tools around that—HG Insights is building a more predictable, repeatable path to revenue.