In 2025 we were hired to sell automation to companies that had already bought automation.
Nearly every prospect on this list already runs an ERP. Most run a CRM as well. Neither of those facts removes the problem, because the work that hurts is the work between the systems: the approval that travels by email, the spreadsheet that reconciles two databases, the request that has been in the IT queue since March.
Selling into that gap needs the buyer to admit it exists, which is why this engagement lived or died on the questions our reps asked in the first ninety seconds.
What we did
Three months across the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait and Jordan. 88 meetings booked with 42 companies, at a pace of roughly seven a week.
Aramco and Aramco Ventures, King Faisal Specialist Hospital and Research Centre, Qatar Duty Free, Jotun, Taiba Investments, Al Fardan, Al Zorah, Hunter Foods, Kuwait Polyurethane Industry, Nuqul Automotive, Rafid Automotive Solutions, NASCO, Lendo, NIO MENA, Dunkin' in the UAE and the Waldorf Astoria at DIFC. Operations directors, IT managers, finance leads and the people who own a process nobody else wants to own.
Five questions instead of a pitch
The script our reps worked from barely describes the product. It asks.
Are there processes in your team that still run on spreadsheets, emails or manual approvals. How do cross-department approvals actually happen. Is there a backlog of automation requests waiting on IT or developers. Does anything slow down because your ERP or CRM does not fully integrate with your other tools. Have you tried building or buying automation before, and how did that go.
The last one is the good one. A prospect who has already failed at this knows exactly what it cost, and the honest answer to it separates a curious manager from a budget holder in a single exchange.
The client's own reference did the rest of the work. They were live with a Middle East fibre-cable manufacturer, automating internal workflows between systems that did not connect, and a regional customer in an unglamorous industry travels further here than a global logo does.
The engagement started with a questionnaire the client filled in themselves, from which we built the ideal customer profile, then the scripts, then the lists. It took under a fortnight from signature to first meetings, and the client ran the whole thing over WhatsApp because that is where their operations people live.
What it shows
When a product sells against a problem the buyer has learned to live with, the opening is a question, not a claim. Ask what they have already tried and what it cost. The ones who answer in detail are the pipeline; the ones who say it is fine were never going to buy.