Where the sale is written into a specification
Industrial & project-based businesses
In project business the order is not won at the tender. It is won months earlier, when a consultant writes a specification — and by then it is either your product in that line or it is not.
The problem
Companies selling equipment, materials or systems into construction, energy and infrastructure projects run into a sales process that behaves nothing like a product sale. The buyer who signs the purchase order had almost no influence on the decision. The consultant or design engineer who did had no budget and will never be your customer.
The cycle is long enough that conventional pipeline discipline gives up on it, and the conventional lead-generation answer — reach the procurement contact — arrives at exactly the point where the choice has already been narrowed to whatever the specification allows.
The result is companies bidding on projects they were never going to win, against a competitor who was in the consultant’s office eighteen months earlier.
What we do about it
We work the decision chain in the order it actually runs: specification first, contractor second, procurement last. That means identifying projects at design stage rather than at tender stage, and knowing who writes the relevant sections.
- Market research & intelligence — project pipeline in the market, standards and approvals required, and who specifies in your category
- B2B lead generation — reaching consultants, design engineers and contractors rather than only procurement
- Marketing & content production — the technical datasheets, specification text and approval documentation a consultant needs to name you
- CRM & sales operations — a pipeline built for a multi-year cycle, where the stages are specification events rather than sales calls
A typical engagement
Every company is different, so this is a shape rather than a promise. It is the sequence most project-driven companies follow with us.
- Map the decision chain — Who specifies, who approves, who buys, and at what point in a project each one has influence — which differs by market and by category more than most companies expect.
- Find projects early — Identifying relevant projects at design and pre-tender stage from announcements, consultant appointments and public pipelines, rather than at tender.
- Reach the specifiers — Structured contact with the consultants, design engineers and contractors who write and interpret the relevant specification sections.
- Make specification easy — Technical datasheets, approval and standards documentation, and model specification wording a consultant can use without rewriting it.
- Support the bid — Contractor and distributor relationships, pricing structure and the commercial answers a procurement team will ask for.
- Build the long pipeline — A CRM whose stages are specification events, so a three-year cycle is visible and manageable rather than invisible.
What you end up with
- A decision-chain map for your category in the target market
- A pipeline of relevant projects identified at design or pre-tender stage
- A researched list of the consultants, engineers and contractors who matter
- Technical documentation and model specification wording ready to be used
- A CRM configured for a specification-led cycle
- A regulatory and standards checklist for the market in question
Frequently asked questions
Our sales cycle is three years. Does this still work?
It works better, not worse — a long cycle is precisely the situation in which early specification work compounds and late procurement outreach fails. What changes is the reporting: the measure becomes specifications secured and projects entered, not orders this quarter.
Do you have engineering expertise in our category?
We do not, and we will not pretend to. The technical content comes from your engineers; what we bring is the market research, the decision-chain mapping, the outreach and the documentation discipline. Where a mandate genuinely needs category engineering knowledge we will say so.
Can you handle standards and approvals?
We map what is required — which standards, which approvals, what documentation and how long each takes — as part of the research. The testing and certification itself is a specialist’s job and we will tell you what to ask them.
Tell us the market you want to enter.
We reply within one business day with an honest view of whether — and how — we can help.