The context: Outbound at scale in a market where everyone already has a tool
Autodesk Fusion differentiates itself as a unified cloud platform integrating CAD, CAM, CAE, and data management. While traditional competitors typically silo design and manufacturing, Fusion bridges the gap, managing the entire lifecycle from initial concept to final production output.
The target sector, furniture and consumer product manufacturing, is characterized by high tool standardization. Most prospects are already entrenched in legacy ecosystems such as SolidWorks. The challenge was not to capture existing demand, but to create it. The outbound strategy focused on engaging companies that were not actively searching for new software and initiating strategic conversations with manufacturers unaware of the advantages of a unified, cloud-based environment.
There were 4 strategic constraints in this partnership:
- Absence of dedicated outbound infrastructure. Autodesk’s internal sales team was optimized for inbound lead capture and account management. Without a dedicated function for systematic cold outreach, the sheer volume of 8,000 unique accounts created a manual bottleneck preventing efficient lead processing.
- ICP misalignment. The initial 8,000-account master list lacked quality assurance and created significant ICP misalignment. It contained mostly distributors, retailers, and other entities falling outside the target profile.
- No competitive messaging framework. There was no existing playbook for proactive market disruption. The program required a foundational messaging architecture to position Fusion against entrenched competitors.
- Two distinct personas with different technical needs. Design leaders and engineering leaders both used Fusion, but for different parts of the workflow. Reaching them with identical messaging would have meant underperforming with both.
What clinched the partnership with Belkins? Two things.
“We wanted analytics and insights behind the things that we were doing, which Belkins was really robust with. And we wanted a team that had experience doing these things and could also kind of teach us along the way.”
— Natalia Figuereo, Chief of Staff for the Fusion Sales team at Autodesk
Belkins’ solutions: Infrastructure first, then outreach built to survive real objections
Phase 1: Product immersion, lead validation, and ICP definition
Before initiating validation, the team conducted a deep-dive audit of Autodesk Fusion’s product, market position, and target industries. Belkins analyzed a year’s worth of internal Autodesk materials, including value propositions and competitive intelligence. This strategic grounding ensured accurate ICP identification.
Only then did the partnership turn to auditing the database to identify viable prospects. Belkins began by processing an initial batch of 1,300 contacts from a master list that eventually grew to 6,000.
The initial audit revealed a significant quality gap: Of the first several thousand contacts processed, the team could only verify approximately 1,000 as valid, reachable targets within the ICP. To bridge this gap, the Belkins research team executed a systematic validation process:
- Company filtering: We audited every account against strict ICP criteria, prioritizing manufacturers with in-house production and removing distributors and retailers.
- Contact verification: We scrubbed contact details for accuracy and removed roles outside the buying committee, such as software developers and administrators.
- Account expansion: We supplemented existing accounts with additional high-value contacts to ensure all key personas within the design and engineering workflows were represented.
As a result, we transformed a high-volume, low-utility list into a precision-targeted database, ensuring every outbound effort reached a qualified decision-maker.
“[Belkins] took a deep approach into understanding our strategy, our current messaging. There was a lot of research in the initial couple of weeks. We sent a lot of content and things that we had built over the last year. And so I felt the team really tried to understand our industry [...]. They analyzed it with a new lens and gave us feedback early on as well, and made recommendations in terms of how to improve.”
— Natalia Figuereo, Chief of Staff for the Fusion Sales team at Autodesk
Two primary personas were defined in close collaboration with the Autodesk team:
| Design persona | Engineering persona |
| Heads of Design, Directors of Design, Senior Design Managers Pain focus: workflow fragmentation, design-to-engineering handoff friction, time lost on file transfers, and version confusion. Messaging angle: cloud collaboration, a unified design environment, speed from concept to CAD-ready output. |
Engineering Managers, Manufacturing Engineers, Product Engineers Pain focus: CAD-to-CNC handoff gaps, data management overhead, and lack of integrated simulation and manufacturing tools. Messaging angle: integrated CAM, native data management, manufacturing workflow continuity without add-on tools. |
Where the existing database lacked contacts in those roles, the team researched and added them. This meant campaigns were reaching people who could actually act on the conversation, not just people who happened to work at the target companies.
Phase 2: Competitive messaging and objection handling
Getting past a “We already have a tool” type of objection required messaging built around a specific argument, not just a feature comparison. To develop that argument properly, Belkins organized a working session with Autodesk Fusion’s technical sales specialist, who has over 7 years in the field and a background in industrial design.
“What is a reason for a company to change its system is if they can achieve a better value, because they’re removing time that they’re spending otherwise, or removing cost that they’re spending otherwise, that they can use more efficiently somewhere else.”
— Jonathan Geffen, Technical Sales Specialist, Autodesk Fusion
The session identified where Fusion wins and how to pivot away from feature-war objections. The core takeaways were:
- Don’t sell modeling; sell the solution to workflow friction. Companies rarely switch for better modeling. They switch because their current stack is broken. The conversation should start with their workflow pain points, not a head-to-head feature comparison.
- Target the handoff gaps. The biggest friction exists between design, engineering, and manufacturing. Fusion’s integrated CAM and native data management solve the "data handling" tax, which consumes up to 30% of an engineer’s time. Also, we needed to focus on the seamless handoff that SolidWorks’ bolt-on architecture can’t match.
- Position for adjacency, not replacement. In markets using niche tools, fighting for a replacement doesn’t work. We needed to position Fusion as a companion tool for custom configurations and non-standard manufacturing that specialized software can’t handle.
The objection-handling framework used in outreach was:
| Objection | How Belkins addressed it |
| “We already use SolidWorks.” | Reframed the conversation away from a head-to-head CAD comparison. Focused instead on workflow gaps: collaboration between design and engineering, data management overhead, and the cost of maintaining fragmented toolchains. Fusion was positioned as a complement, not a replacement. |
| “We don’t need another tool; our current setup works.” | Asked open-ended questions about handoff friction, version control, and how much time teams spent on data management rather than design. Research shows engineers can spend up to 30% of their time on data handling — we made that concrete and personal. |
| “Switching is too expensive and risky.” | Shifted the focus from switching cost to switching ease: new hires often come out of university already knowing Fusion, self-teaching resources are extensive, and a migration guide exists for SolidWorks users. Fusion was framed as low-risk adoption, not high-risk migration. |
| “We use a tool specialized for our niche.” | Acknowledged the tool’s strength in its lane, then asked about edge cases: custom orders, non-standard configurations, or projects that fall outside the software’s modular logic. Fusion was introduced as a complementary capability for work that the current stack can’t handle. |
| “We already have an Autodesk product (AutoCAD, Inventor).” | Highlighted specific gaps: Inventor’s limitations in manufacturing and CNC programming compared to Fusion’s native CAM capabilities. Positioned Fusion as a value-add for the making side of the workflow, not a replacement for existing design tooling. |
Phase 3: Omnichannel campaign execution
Campaigns were launched in vertical sequence, with messaging and case studies tailored to each segment. Furniture manufacturing was the first wave, a segment where Autodesk had relevant proof points and where the design-to-manufacturing workflow argument was most concrete. Consumer product manufacturing followed, with tools and appliances added later.
Each campaign combined three channels running in parallel:
-
Email outreach: Six-wave sequences, with each pair of waves focused on a specific pain point. Early waves were conversational and interest-focused, asking about current tooling and workflow rather than pitching immediately. Meeting requests were introduced in wave three; the 30-day free trial was offered as a lower-commitment entry point in wave five.
Here’s an example of one of the best-performing emails:
-
LinkedIn outreach: Five-wave sequences using a more conversational tone. Opening messages asked about current software usage to surface the specific competitor or tool in play, rather than sending a generic pitch to a cold connection. This allowed the team to tailor follow-up messaging to what prospects actually said.
-
Cold calling: Each batch was dialed 3–4 times before being refreshed with new contacts. Cold calling was the fastest channel to activate. It launched before email, when LinkedIn outreach was ready, and proved particularly effective for conversion. It re-engaged prospects who had gone quiet on written channels and allowed the team to move warm contacts to meetings within one or two follow-ups.
Geographic segmentation added a layer of personalization: US and Canada contacts received English messaging; German contacts in the DACH region received German-language sequences, supported by a German-speaking sales rep on the Autodesk side.
Phase 4: Campaign iteration and Stage 2 focus
After the first round of furniture and consumer product outreach, a second campaign phase was built around a specific Fusion module: Product Data Management (PDM), to increase conversions.
“Their [Belkins’] ability to pivot very quickly, take feedback, and change their approach slightly — was best-in-class.”
— Natalia Figuereo, Chief of Staff for the Fusion Sales team at Autodesk
This module, which addresses how teams track, version, and access design files, turned out to be a strong differentiator against competitors, including SolidWorks, where PDM is a separate paid add-on rather than a native capability.
The PDM campaign re-engaged contacts who had not responded in the first round, offering a different angle on the same product. It generated additional appointments and validated the value of a multi-stage approach: not every prospect is ready for the same message at the same time.
“When we started getting a lot of objections around competitors, we went on a call with their technical SDR, who explained exactly how Fusion differentiates itself. Based on that, we actually rewrote parts of the messaging — and then ran a second campaign around Product Data Management specifically. That one also brought in appointments.”
— Anastasiia Varvarova, SDR, Belkins
How we communicated with our enterprise client
Given the enterprise nature of the client, we maintained structured communication across multiple stakeholder groups at Autodesk, ensuring full alignment throughout the engagement:
| Stakeholder | Communication scope |
| Chief of staff (Main POC) | Managed high-level strategy discussions, overall campaign updates, performance analytics, and recommended pivots. |
| Marketing team | Collaborated closely to refine persona-specific messaging and content through dedicated calls and ongoing Slack communication. |
| Sales leader | Aligned on appointment goals by region and discussed strategic pivots as needed throughout the engagement. |
| Sales team | Communicated around booked appointments, exchanged feedback on meeting quality and outcomes, and provided sales training with a focus on objection handling. |
Project retrospective: What we learned
1. Research quality > Lead volume. Database size is a vanity metric; validation is an engine. Spending time upfront on verifying role-appropriate contacts isn’t overhead. It’s the difference between a high-conversion campaign and a blocked sender reputation.
2. Technical specificity over “talking points.” Engineers and design directors ignore generic “we’re better” messaging. Success in this program came from the technical context:
- Citing the $2,000/year SolidWorks maintenance cost.
- Addressing the 30% of time wasted on manual data handling.
- Highlighting Fusion’s native PDM vs. competitors’ paid add-ons.
3. Non-negotiable persona splits. Design and engineering leaders use the same tool but buy it for different reasons. Running identical sequences is a recipe for irrelevance. Messaging must be split by persona to maintain each stakeholder’s attention.
4. “Second angle” recovery. Don’t treat non-responders as dead leads. We converted a significant portion of the initial no-shows by pivoting to a second, PDM-focused campaign. Always plan a fallback narrative before the first round ends.
5. Brand opens doors; process closes deals. Autodesk’s brand recognition provided immediate permission to speak. However, meetings only converted when the sequences transitioned from brand awareness to pain-point solving.
