In 2022 we were hired to sell something other than the product the name is famous for.
Kaspersky is a name every IT manager in this region recognises, which is worth a great deal at the top of a cold call and can cost you the next five minutes. Everybody assumes they know what the meeting is about. Almost nobody is right.
So the opening had two jobs. Use the name to get the meeting, then reset it immediately: this is not endpoint software, it is a way of getting data off cranes, chillers, lifts and vessels without creating the security hole that normally comes with industrial connectivity.
What we did
Two months in the UAE, across construction, marine, energy, healthcare and building services. 23 meetings booked, 17 confirmed held, 23 companies introduced.
Contractors and construction: ALEC, BIC Contracting, Al Jaber Group, Depa United, Dutco. Marine and energy: Bahri, Zakher Marine, Petrofac, Sharjah National Oil. Industrial and building systems: General Electric, Kone, SKM Air Conditioning, Tasneef. Healthcare groups, logistics operators and Mubadala.
A famous name is a door, not an argument
The pattern was consistent enough to become a rule we still use. Where a client carries a recognisable brand, the brand gets the meeting accepted and then works against you, because the prospect arrives with a fixed idea and stops listening at the first familiar word.
The fix is structural rather than clever. Put the correction in the first two sentences of the call, before the buyer has finished settling into what he assumes this is. Say plainly what it is not. A prospect who has been told he is wrong about the subject in the first thirty seconds is mildly surprised and fully present, which is exactly the condition you want him in.
The segment breadth in this list is the other lesson. Cranes, lifts, chillers, ships and hospital equipment have nothing in common commercially and everything in common technically. When a product is defined by a technical condition rather than an industry, the target list has to be built the same way, and the usual sector filters are worse than useless.
What it shows
Borrowed recognition gets you in the room and then has to be dismantled. Build the correction into the script rather than leaving each rep to improvise it, and target on the technical condition the product actually addresses, not on the industries that happen to be nearby.