In 2024 we were hired to find Gulf companies with an inventory problem worth solving.
Demand planning software has a narrow and unforgiving qualifying question: does this business actually plan and replenish stock, or does it just buy things?
From the outside the two look identical. A large industrial group with warehouses full of inventory looks like a perfect prospect. Sometimes it is. Sometimes it buys copper on the spot market against project orders and has nothing to plan at all.
What we did
Four months of outbound across five markets, in supply chain, manufacturing, retail, FMCG, pharmaceutical distribution and food production. 30 meetings booked, 22 confirmed held, 30 companies met the product.
Group supply chain managers, product managers, department heads and one chief commercial officer, at industrial conglomerates in Kuwait, a pharmaceutical distributor in Qatar, a food manufacturer in Oman, retail groups in the UAE.
The client taught us their ICP, in writing, in about six weeks
Slimstock did not send us a persona document. They corrected us in the chat, meeting by meeting, and it was the fastest ideal-customer-profile calibration we have run.
After an early meeting with a switchgear business their side wrote back plainly: the company ordered back to back against projects, and the stock it held was copper, bought on price. Nothing to plan. Their conclusion was blunt and correct. Qualify harder.
Then it kept happening, and each time the question got sharper. Of a luxury watch retailer: "I don't believe these guys demand plan and replenish. I want meetings where there is a functional fit." Of another: "Which categories will he need support to plan? Or is he looking for an Open to Buy tool?" And the one that became the test we applied to everything afterwards: "We just need to understand what part of their business requires a demand plan."
So we changed the process rather than defending the meetings. Our rep started cancelling his own bookings before they ran when the fit no longer looked real, and checking target accounts with the client before outreach rather than after. Within weeks the conversation in the chat had moved from arguing about meetings to deciding together which conglomerate subsidiaries were worth approaching.
By the summer the discussion was about contract results and a Saudi contract amendment, not about qualification.
What it shows
A client who tells you your meetings are wrong is doing you a favour, and the only wrong response is to defend the booking. The useful question is never "was this a good meeting" but "what has to be true about a company for this product to matter to them". Get that answer written down in the client's own words, and the pipeline fixes itself.