Aditude’s Enterprise Sales Philosophy: Why They’re Written Into Customer Wills (Literally)
Some enterprise relationships run so deep that business partners become family. In a recent episode of Category Visionaries, Jared Siegal revealed that some publishers have literally written Aditude into their wills – perhaps the ultimate testament to relationship-driven enterprise sales.
The Weight of Responsibility
For Jared, every new client represents a profound responsibility: “Every time I hire an employee, that’s another family that I’m responsible for. Every time we sign a new client, that’s another giant set of families that we’re responsible for. I don’t take that lightly.”
This mindset shapes everything from product development to customer support. “I think that’s also why so many of our clients respect what we do,” Jared explained. “We don’t look at them as just like client. We look at them as part of our family. Right. Part of our business.”
Building Trust Through Technical Excellence
The foundation of these relationships starts with technical competence. “By the time we kind of converted from a hourly type of business model, mostly a SaaS business model, we had already built out a lot of tech,” Jared noted. Rather than rushing to monetize, they focused on proving value: “We’re offering our tech for free for upwards of maybe twelve months.”
The Community-First Approach
Even in public forums, the focus stays on adding value rather than selling. “I never actually pitch act,” Jared shared about his participation in industry Slack channels. “I will, in fact, sometimes go out of my way to answer questions that make it so they don’t need to use us.”
This approach creates powerful delayed returns: “I had a call today with a pretty large publisher. Oh, I remember all the questions you were helping me answer on slack a few months ago.”
Beyond Traditional Enterprise Events
Instead of conventional conference networking, Aditude is investing $200,000 in creating shared experiences. Their first major event brings “45 or so publishers… down to Disney World, three days at the hotel, tons of parks, golf, dinners at famous restaurants.”
The reasoning is simple: “What a better way to get to know everyone and understand what’s important to them than spending three days basically on vacation with them.”
The Integration Strategy
Over time, these relationships evolve into deep partnerships. “We become very ingrained with these clients day to day businesses and we become almost members of their team as well,” Jared explained. This isn’t just rhetoric – they’re written into some clients’ wills and maintain close relationships with their families.
The Business Impact
This relationship-first approach has created remarkable stability. “We’re really lucky to have a lot of those original clients and nearly all of them are still with us today,” Jared noted. In an industry where customer churn can be high, this retention is significant.
For enterprise publishers doing “hundreds of millions, if not billions of impressions a month,” this level of trust and integration is crucial. Their business literally depends on Aditude’s technology working consistently.
The Core Philosophy
The strategy comes down to a simple principle: “be the nice company in the space, right. Not a company that’s just out for yourself. Be a company that is trying to protect and fight for the publishers and make money that way.”
For B2B founders, particularly those targeting enterprise customers, Aditude’s approach offers a powerful reminder: technical excellence gets you in the door, but genuine care for client success creates relationships that last generations.
As Jared puts it, when you treat every client relationship as a responsibility to their entire team’s families, you create connections that go far beyond typical vendor relationships. Sometimes, they even end up in wills.