In 2023 we were hired to put a biometrics vendor in front of Saudi Arabia.
Security is the most reference-driven purchase in enterprise technology. Nobody installs face recognition at a refinery, a ministry or a bank on the strength of a website. They buy it from the integrator who built the system it plugs into, and that integrator buys it after his own engineers have seen it work.
So the target list had two halves that needed opposite conversations. The integrators and distributors wanted to know what it earns them and how hard it is to support. The end users wanted to know whether it would run on the cameras they already own.
What we did
Six months, almost entirely in Saudi Arabia. 34 meetings booked, 25 confirmed held, 34 organisations introduced.
Industry and energy: Saudi Aramco, SABIC, SATORP, SAMREF, the Royal Commission for Jubail and Yanbu. Government: the Ministry of Health, the Ministry of Culture, the Ministry of Transport and Logistic Services, Tahakom. Banking: Riyad Bank, Gulf International Bank, Bank Aljazira, the National Commercial Bank, SAMA. Integrators and technology houses: Alnafitha IT, Obeikan Digital Solutions, Master Works, Security House, Etqan, Telenoc, Siemens. And NEOM.
The pitch we ran was the client's own, and it was refreshingly concrete: existing security projects get more technological and more valuable, customers can be using face recognition in twenty minutes on the video management and access control systems they already run, and the partner gets free training and a free demonstration to take to their own customers.
The meeting before the meeting
One pattern in this market cost us time until we stopped fighting it.
A prospect asked our rep to brief him personally first, and only then to bring in the technical manager. Our rep pointed out, sensibly, that the technical detail would come from the manager. The prospect insisted anyway.
He was right and we were wrong. In Saudi security procurement the first meeting is not a technical evaluation. It is a decision about whether this vendor is worth the technical manager's afternoon, and the person making that decision wants to make it face to face, alone. Once we planned for two meetings rather than one, the hold rate took care of itself.
The engagement's most useful outcome was not a number. Our reps put the company in front of buyers who had never heard the name, in a market where the name was the whole obstacle, including one of the Kingdom's largest industrial groups that would not otherwise have known the product existed.
What it shows
In a reference-driven market with no local presence, the first job of outbound is not to sell. It is to make the vendor exist. Count the introductions to organisations that had never heard of the client, and respect a buyer who asks for a private first meeting, because he is telling you exactly how his organisation decides.