In 2024 we were hired to find the companies whose integrations are done by hand.
The strongest opening we found was not about automation at all. It was a guess, stated as one: we think your company runs NetSuite, are we right.
That single sentence works because it is specific, falsifiable and immediately relevant. Everyone who runs a large ERP has felt the cost of connecting it to anything else, and most of them have paid an external consultant to write code that does one thing. Naming the system turns a generic automation pitch into a conversation about an invoice they remember signing.
What we did
Six months across the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Egypt, into enterprises, hotel groups and professional services. 76 meetings booked with 44 organisations, several of them more than once.
Emaar, Damac, Dar Global, Roshn, Samana, Emirates, e& and du, PwC, EFG Hermes, Wio Bank, Tokio Marine, Daman Health, Zahrawi, Eva Pharma, Americana Foods, Fine Hygienic, Lamprell, TÜV Rheinland, TASC Outsourcing, DCT Abu Dhabi, Tamkeen, Tasheel and Telecom Egypt.
The finding that had nothing to do with the product
In April our rep sent the client a note that begins by apologising for being off topic and then delivers the most commercially useful thing anyone learned that quarter.
Two government-linked organisations had told him the same thing in as many days. To be considered by the national oil company, the vendor has to be on its registered commercial list. To receive a request for proposal from the airport operator, the vendor has to be registered on the government procurement portal. No amount of interest from a manager inside those organisations substitutes for the registration, and the registration takes months.
He was right that it was not what he had been hired to do, and right to send it. An outbound team is the only part of a foreign vendor's operation that talks to twenty-five buyers a month, which makes it the only part that finds out how the market's plumbing works. Clients who read those notes save quarters. Clients who filter for meeting counts never see them.
What it shows
Open with a specific, checkable assumption about the prospect's stack rather than a benefit. And treat everything the team learns about how buyers are allowed to buy as part of the deliverable, because in this region the procurement mechanics decide more deals than the product comparison does.