Notes from the field.
Short pieces on selling complex products to technical buyers, drawn from decades of doing it.
Selling to the control room and the boardroom
Industrial deals need two yeses: one from the engineers who will live with the system and one from the executives who pay for it. Here's how to earn both.
Selling to the control room and the boardroom
Industrial deals need two yeses: one from the engineers who will live with the system and one from the executives who pay for it. Here's how to earn both.
Every significant industrial sale has two buying centres. The technical team decides whether your product works in their plant. The leadership team decides whether it is worth the money and the risk. Most vendors are good at one conversation and awkward in the other.
Start where the work happens
Operators and engineers have seen plenty of products that looked good in a demo and failed in the field. They trust people who understand their process: the control system, the shift pattern, the maintenance window that never quite arrives. Time spent on site, listening, is never wasted. It is where you find the problem worth solving and the person who will champion the solution.
Engineers buy evidence. Executives buy outcomes. Give each of them the version they need.
Translate, don't repeat
The executive conversation uses the same facts in a different language. Fewer alarms mean fewer unplanned shutdowns. Better data means faster decisions and lower risk. Put a number on each, agreed with the technical team, and the business case stops being yours. It becomes theirs.
Keep both conversations alive
Deals stall when one side goes quiet. A short, regular update to the sponsor and a working session with the users keep momentum on both fronts until the contract is signed.
A question to take awayWho in your biggest open deal has heard your story in their own language?
Build the business case your buyer can't build
Your champion believes in you. Now they need to convince a finance team they've never met. An ROI and TCO model is how you help.
Build the business case your buyer can't build
Your champion believes in you. Now they need to convince a finance team they've never met. An ROI and TCO model is how you help.
The person who wants your product is rarely the person who approves the spend. Between them sits a capital request, an investment committee or a procurement process built to say no. Your champion has to carry your case into rooms you will never enter.
Compare whole costs, not prices
A cheaper option on paper is often the more expensive one over a project's life. In exploration drilling, for example, the right comparison is the full programme cost and the quality of the data it produces, not the day rate. Lay the alternatives side by side: equipment, labour, mobilisation, downtime and the cost of a wrong decision.
Use their numbers
A model built on your assumptions is a brochure. A model built on the customer's own production figures, failure rates and labour costs is a decision tool. Build it with them, and let them adjust it.
The best business case is the one your champion can defend without you in the room.
Keep it to one page of results and one page of assumptions. Finance teams respect brevity and transparency far more than a forty-tab spreadsheet.
A question to take awayCould your champion explain your business case in two minutes, without slides?
Your forecast is a process problem
When the forecast misses, the instinct is to push the team harder. Usually the fix is clearer definitions and a steadier rhythm.
Your forecast is a process problem
When the forecast misses, the instinct is to push the team harder. Usually the fix is clearer definitions and a steadier rhythm.
Most inaccurate forecasts don't come from bad salespeople. They come from stages that mean different things to different people. One rep's "proposal sent" is another's "verbal yes".
Define stages by what the buyer has done
"We sent a proposal" describes the seller. "The economic buyer has confirmed budget and timing" describes the deal. Tie each stage to evidence from the customer's side and the pipeline starts to tell the truth.
Review weekly, briefly, deal by deal
A thirty-minute weekly review of the largest opportunities beats a two-hour monthly meeting. Ask the same questions every time: who decides, what's the next step, when, and what could stop it.
Make the dashboard the meeting
When the CRM dashboard is the agenda, the data stays current because everyone knows it will be seen. Good pipeline governance is mostly habit, and habits come from rhythm.
A question to take awayWhich stage in your pipeline means something different to each salesperson?
When to bring in a fractional sales leader
Five signs that your company needs senior commercial experience now, and why it doesn't have to be a full-time hire.
When to bring in a fractional sales leader
Five signs that your company needs senior commercial experience now, and why it doesn't have to be a full-time hire.
A full-time head of sales is one of the most expensive and riskiest hires a growing company makes. Get it wrong and you lose a year. A fractional leader lets you get the experience first and make the permanent decision later, with better information.
The signs
The founder is still closing every deal. Growth is capped by one person's calendar.
You're entering a new region. You need someone who has sold there before, not someone learning on your budget.
The forecast is a guess. Deals slip every quarter and nobody can say exactly why.
You have salespeople but no sales system. Everyone sells differently, and nothing is written down.
You've raised money or won a large contract. The next stage of growth needs to be planned rather than improvised.
Buy the experience first. Make the permanent hire once you know exactly what the role needs.
A question to take awayHow many of those five signs did you recognise?