In 2024 we were hired to sell a purchasing tool to people who already have a purchasing system.
Every company on this list runs an ERP. The ERP records what was bought. It does nothing about the part that decides the price, which is still three quotations collected by email over two weeks and a phone call to the incumbent supplier.
A reverse auction attacks exactly that gap, and it has one enormous advantage as a sales proposition: it can be demonstrated on the buyer's own spend, in an hour, with their own suppliers. Almost nothing else in enterprise software can say that.
What we did
Five months across the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, in hospitality, construction, real estate and manufacturing. 47 meetings booked, 36 confirmed held, 40 companies introduced.
Hotel groups and operators: IHG, Mandarin Oriental, Rixos, Crowne Plaza, Warwick, Boutique Group, Aldar Hospitality, Amsa Hospitality. Contractors and manufacturers: Ghantoot, Saad Precast, Progress Construction, Shael Contracting, Medmac, Foamco, Al Masaood, Basamh Group. Developers including Modon and Rafal. Procurement managers, purchasing heads and owners.
Meetings that ended in "show me on my own spend"
Two conversations from this engagement tell you what qualification looks like when the product demonstrates in real time.
A procurement manager at a healthcare group said he had an ERP, was interested in running his purchasing with suppliers from one place, and wanted to understand the reverse auction. His annual spend ran to several million dollars. That is not a discovery call, it is a scoping call.
Another buyer, running purchasing across three product lines, asked for a live auction on a real chemical category so he could watch it work before committing. That request is the strongest buying signal this product ever generates, and our reps learned to steer for it rather than for a demo of the interface.
At least one of these meetings became a signed deal.
The working rule we agreed with the client was crisp: run the discovery meeting, and if the prospect is interested and a second meeting for the auction demonstration is booked, the meeting counts. Tying the count to the second meeting rather than the first changes what a rep optimises for, and it is a better contract for both sides than paying for an introduction.
What it shows
When a product can be proved on the buyer's own numbers, the goal of the first meeting is not to explain it. It is to get permission to run it once, on something real. Write the commercial terms so the outbound team is paid for reaching that point, not for filling a calendar.