The Sale That Happened Before the Meeting
Wednesday 7 October — Art of Trade · Retail & brands
The table
The case
Subtitle: A fictional leadership case for discussion. Source: The owner's own case (Dražen Kapusta, 2026-09-13), verbatim — the eight questions are his
The sales director had prepared twenty-four slides.
He had a product demonstration, customer references and a clear explanation of the company’s capabilities. His team had spent weeks trying to secure the meeting.
Seven minutes after they began, the prospective customer interrupted.
“I understand what your product does. Can we talk about how you would start with our service division?”
The sales director closed the presentation.
The customer already knew the case he intended to make.
Someone had helped them understand the problem. Someone had answered their early concerns. Someone they trusted had suggested that this company was worth speaking to.
The meeting was important.
Much of the work that made it possible had happened before anyone entered the room.
The Account They Almost Misread
The opportunity began with a public announcement.
A regional business was expanding its service network. The supplier’s commercial team believed its software could help coordinate work across locations.
An AI-assisted research process assembled public information: company statements, relevant job advertisements, descriptions of current services and material about previous expansion.
The first summary proposed a familiar angle: the business probably needed greater efficiency and lower administrative costs.
A researcher looked more closely.
Recent recruitment suggested that the company was building additional service capability. A customer interview emphasised consistency across locations. Management’s public comments focused on delivering a reliable experience as the network grew.
Efficiency might matter, but it was not yet established as the leading problem.
The team rewrote its working hypothesis.
Perhaps the customer needed to grow without making service quality depend on which branch handled the work.
They marked the idea as a hypothesis to test.
The Introduction with a Reason Behind It
The founder knew a COTRUGLI alumnus who had worked with the prospective customer’s operations director.
They had studied together, travelled together and stayed in touch through years of business changes. The alumnus understood the founder’s company well enough to know both its strengths and its limits.
The founder asked whether an introduction would make sense.
He sent a short note describing the possible problem, a relevant example and the questions his team still needed to answer.
The alumnus did not forward it immediately.
He asked whether the supplier could support several locations and what would happen if the customer’s systems were more complex than expected.
Once satisfied that the conversation could be useful, he checked whether the operations director wanted the introduction.
The response was positive.
The introduction carried a specific reason to talk. It also carried the reputation of the person making it.
Helping the Buyer Think
Before proposing a formal meeting, the supplier sent a brief working note.
It described three points where growing service networks could lose consistency: how work was assigned, how exceptions were handled and how managers knew whether a customer problem had actually been resolved.
The note used a relevant example from work the supplier had permission to share. It avoided claiming to know the prospective customer’s internal situation.
At the end were three questions.
The operations director replied with corrections.
Assignment was working reasonably well. Exception handling varied between branches. Visibility after handover was the more pressing issue.
That reply changed the preparation.
The supplier’s team produced a small illustrative workflow using synthetic information. It showed how an unresolved issue could remain visible across handovers and how a manager might intervene.
AI helped create and revise the example. The team checked that it represented something the product and delivery team could genuinely support.
The operations director shared it with two colleagues.
One asked about integration. Another asked how much work the trial would create for branch staff.
The supplier answered both before the meeting.
The Buying Group Behind the Invitation
The sales director initially treated the operations director as the buyer.
The correspondence revealed a wider group.
IT needed confidence in the technical approach. A service manager wanted the trial to reflect actual branch work. Finance needed a clear spending commitment. The operations director needed these people to see why the problem deserved attention.
The supplier prepared short answers for each concern.
It also made room for uncertainty.
They could explain their standard integration approach. They could not yet promise an exact implementation effort without reviewing the customer’s environment.
They could propose useful measures. They would need the customer’s baseline to set meaningful targets.
Each exchange helped the customer judge whether the supplier understood the work and spoke accurately about its own capabilities.
By the time the meeting was confirmed, the invitation already had a practical purpose.
Seven Minutes into the Meeting
The customer’s question changed the sales director’s plan.
“Can we talk about how you would start with our service division?”
He asked which part of the proposed workflow the group wanted to examine.
The service manager described a recurring handover problem. IT explained one constraint. The operations director identified two branches that might be suitable for an initial trial.
The supplier’s delivery lead joined the discussion.
Together, they outlined what would need to be checked before a trial could begin.
There was no signed contract at the end of the meeting. Budget approval and technical review still remained.
But the conversation had progressed to a shared examination of a specific piece of work.
The presentation stayed closed.
The Commercial Lesson
Back at the office, the sales director reviewed the opportunity with his team.
Their reporting system would probably credit the meeting and, if successful, the eventual proposal.
It was less equipped to recognise the work that had made the meeting useful: research, a credible introduction, a relevant example, careful responses and the involvement of people beyond the main contact.
The founder wanted to make that work repeatable.
The challenge was to preserve its quality as the team approached more accounts.
AI could support preparation and drafting. It could also make superficial personalisation easy to produce at scale.
Trusted alumni could open useful conversations. Their relationships would weaken if every introduction became a favour requested for the supplier’s benefit.
The company needed a commercial approach grounded in relevance and evidence.
The CDayZ Leadership Challenge
You are designing the supplier’s approach to the next twenty potential customers.
Create a process that combines research, useful early material, trusted introductions and clear involvement of the delivery team.
Decide what must be learned before contact, how the team will test its assumptions and when an opportunity has earned a formal proposal.
Discussion Questions
The owner's "Eight Questions for the Room":
- What happened before the meeting that materially improved the opportunity?
- How should the team separate facts from account hypotheses?
- What makes a warm introduction worth requesting?
- What could you send that helps the buyer think?
- How would you identify the wider buying group?
- Where should AI support the commercial process?
- How can the COTRUGLI tribe contribute beyond introductions?
- What evidence would justify a proposal or trial?
Identify the actions that helped the customer understand the problem and assess the supplier.
What public information is useful, and which assumptions require direct customer confirmation?
What should the introducer know, and how would you protect the relationships and reputation involved?
Design a concise piece of material that demonstrates relevance without pretending to know the customer’s internal situation.
What concerns might different participants bring, and how would you help them evaluate the opportunity together?
Which outputs require checking for accuracy, relevance and consistency with what the company can deliver?
Consider peer review, sector knowledge, reference conversations and practical feedback on the proposed approach.
Define the customer commitment, problem clarity and delivery understanding needed before investing further effort.
A Lesson for the Next COTRUGLI Generation
A customer begins forming a view of a supplier long before the formal presentation.
Useful preparation, credible relationships and accurate answers can help the customer understand both its own problem and the people offering to solve it.
AI can make that preparation more capable. The COTRUGLI tribe can bring context and trusted access. Both create value when the supplier uses them to earn a relevant conversation.
The sales director had arrived ready to explain his company.
The customer was ready to discuss the work.
Your comment on this chapter
A question for the table, a disagreement, what you would have done. The case lead reads every comment; the ones the table takes up enter the chapter as questions from the room, with your name.