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

Case Study

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

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.

• Revenue Operations

• Sales

• Marketing

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

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• 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.

Cortado Group *Results*

• 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.

Cortado Group *Solution* *Strategies*

• Defined ICP and Personas
• Prioritized 33k+ Accounts
• Built a RevOps Backbone
• Created a Campaign & ROI Model
• Designed the GTM Foundation

• Clarified ideal K-12, government, and brokerage buyers and how they purchase.
• Scored and tiered 10,154 K-12, 22,343 government, and 1,501 brokerage prospects to focus on highest-value targets.
• Standardized lifecycle (MCL→Customer), lead scoring, SLAs, and KPIs to tie marketing to pipeline and revenue.
• Designed a $100k demand-gen playbook with clear volume, conversion, and value-creation assumptions.
• Defined the future-state marketing org, operating cadence, martech/tracking standards, and brand architecture, including selecting the branding partner.

• list

• 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

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.