Tara Sheridan Builds Growth Strategy Around Connected Execution

Modernizing a go-to-market strategy is rarely a matter of changing one sales process. It can require new account priorities, stronger customer conversations, better data practices, coordinated partner activity, and a common way for teams to measure progress. At FirstLight Fiber, Tara Sheridan approached that challenge as a connected transformation rather than a collection of isolated initiatives.

Serving as Senior Director of Enterprise Growth and Transformation Strategy, Tara drew on experience spanning strategy, sales, customer success, demand generation, partner programs, marketing, events, and operations. Her assignment centered on supporting upmarket growth while creating a more scalable revenue engine. The work linked executive messaging and account-health metrics with CRM discipline, campaigns, SaaS platforms, and AI-enabled workflows.

Changing the opportunity mix

A central objective was to help the organization pursue more strategic opportunities. Tara built and operationalized revenue enablement strategies across multiple buyer personas and vertical markets. According to the approved member synopsis, full-team quota attainment increased by 40%, while the opportunity mix shifted from 10% strategic and 90% transactional to 65% strategic and 35% transactional.

Demand generation was another part of the transformation. Ideal customer profile target lists and A/B-tested messaging increased leads by 600%, doubled appointments, and raised on-site engagement by 25%. An omnichannel business development cadence generated 25% of new opportunities, while a targeted customer success effort secured $6 million. These initiatives connected prospecting, existing-account development, and customer engagement instead of treating them as separate motions.

Tara also reworked account and territory strategy through ideal customer profile segmentation, wallet-share analysis, relationship scoring, account-based marketing, and must-win planning. The resulting approach produced a 100% opportunity uplift across identified ideal-customer-profile accounts. It also gave teams a structured way to decide where deeper preparation and cross-functional attention could matter most.

Finding growth beyond established paths

The strategy extended into new sources of opportunity. Tara identified a revenue stream tied to pre-build commercial projects and an engineering, property management, and construction lead-generation SaaS platform. That work contributed to $10.2 million in funnel deposits and applied her wholesale and data center experience to incoming AI data center opportunities.

Healthcare became a testing ground for repeatable growth plays. Tara helped turn whitespace into defined initiatives, including a Clinic-in-a-Box concept for smaller practices and a rural healthcare sell-with partner model. A planned cross-functional customer leadership forum produced $222,000 in pipeline deposits. In another engagement, she identified funding within an exhausted hospital budget to support patient-experience improvements and converted an initial refusal into an executive roadmap session with a $150,000 funnel deposit.

Complex pursuits also required coordination across organizational boundaries. For a utility company opportunity, Tara aligned original equipment manufacturers, partners, engineering, professional services, and the project management office around a $1.6 million sale. The work covered capital and operational structures, contract negotiation, design, statements of work, bills of materials, operational assurance, SaaS integration, and implementation planning.

Making transformation repeatable

Rather than leaving new methods within one team, Tara expanded them across sales enablement, product, marketing, customer success, business development, demand generation, and channel functions. She created more than 20 engagement, proposal, and product templates, supported by discovery frameworks, messaging, and playbooks. She also introduced a large-deal review cadence, an executive briefing template, a customer advisory board, and a companywide return-on-investment model.

AI formed part of the operating structure. Tara operationalized workflows for company efficiency and for gathering industry, client, persona, financial, competitive, partner, supplier, and project intelligence. The aim was to maintain a current repository that could support cross-functional planning and decision-making, rather than confining information to individual roles.

Her event strategy followed the same results-oriented approach. Tara developed experiences from concept through execution, producing record attendance while connecting events with customer journeys, advisory conversations, partnerships, and measurable return. She also initiated community service and customer and employee appreciation practices, pairing commercial transformation with opportunities for broader participation.

Looking toward the next chapter

Tara is now interested in a next role where fresh ideas, constructive debate, and cross-functional contribution are welcomed. Her FirstLight work illustrates the kind of mandate she is seeking: one where strategy is not limited to a presentation, but carried into account planning, customer engagement, partner alignment, technology workflows, and team habits.

For Tara, growth transformation is ultimately an execution challenge. The through line is a practical one: connect functions that are often separated, equip people with repeatable methods, and turn broader business conversations into defined opportunities and coordinated action.