People do business with people – even across 340 million of them.
Henrik has a booth. Paid for, aisle spot, next quarter, the biggest show in his industry. His product wins in Europe – cleaner numbers than anything the Americans run. His board wants to know why the U.S. pipeline is flat. And nobody has asked the one question that decides whether the trip is worth anything: which specific people, at which companies, is he meeting to talk about a specific purchase?
Usually, the answer is a shrug. “We’ll see who stops by.”
There is no “U.S. market”
– If there is, can I have the phone number?
Here’s the thing about “the U.S. market”: it does not exist. The United States is a continent of regional economies under one flag. California’s economy is bigger than Japan’s. Los Angeles County out-produces Switzerland. “Entering the U.S.” the way you’d enter Belgium is a category error – there’s no single door and no single buyer.
Go down a level and it gets more specific, not less. No state is one market either. Each is a stack of clusters, budget cycles, and regulators – and at the bottom sits the thing you’re actually selling to: a person. One desk, one problem, one budget, one boss who checks a number every Monday.
You’re not doing business with America. You’re doing business with the plant manager in Aurora chasing this quarter’s efficiency target, the procurement director in Austin whose bonus rides on cost savings, the water-utility GM in Ohio with a compliance deadline and her name on it. The tariffs, the trade show, the size of the addressable market – all of it collapses to that one human. People do business with people. Everyone nods, then builds a plan for a market that has no phone number.
TL;DR: Stop building a market-entry plan. Build a buyer list. The unit of U.S. go-to-market isn’t the state, the sector, or the show – it’s the human who signs the PO. Name 30-50 of them. Book specific meetings with specific people about a specific purchase. Sell to that person’s Monday number, not the org’s mission statement. Do this and you close; “enter the market” and you spend eighteen months learning you could have started with a spreadsheet of names.
Zero
A European water-tech company came to us a few years ago before WEFTEC, the largest water and wastewater show in the country. Strong product, real references at home, real money already sunk into the booth, the flights, the hotel, the rental car. I asked one thing: how many specific meetings, with specific buyers, at a specific time, about a specific purchase, do you have booked?
Zero.
Not a few. Not “we’ll see.” They were about to spend a mid-sized marketing budget to stand in a hall and hope the right people walked past. So, we stopped, built the list, and booked three real conversations with three named buyers, each with a live reason to talk. First U.S. sale within six months.
The product never changed. They just stopped selling to “the U.S. water market” and started selling to three people.
Three moves – none of them glamorous
1. Delete “the market.” Write down 30-50 names.
Open a spreadsheet – not a TAM slide, a list of humans. For a water play: the utility’s General Manager, the Director of Operations, the Contracts Officer who runs the RFP, and the consulting engineer at the design firm (AECOM, Black & Veatch, Jacobs) who writes the spec that decides whether you can even bid. By name. By title. By utility. Next to each: the problem you solve and where it sits in their capital improvement plan (CIP) and budget cycle.
Thirty to fifty named accounts, each a specific person with a specific problem you fix – that’s a pipeline. “The U.S. municipal water market is worth $X billion” is not a pipeline. It’s a wish with a footnote.
2. Book specific meetings with specific people about a specific purchase.
The show isn’t the goal. It’s a room where eight people on your list stand for three days. The goal is 45 minutes with each of them. You email those eight three weeks out and book the slots – specific time, specific place, specific purpose. During the show you’re not “working the floor”; you’re running the calendar you built. After, you follow up with named humans who had a reason to meet you, not a stack of badge scans that never call back.
Run the diagnostic on your next event: how many specific meetings, specific buyers, specific purchases, are on the calendar right now? If the honest number is near zero, you don’t have a show strategy. You have a travel plan.
3. Sell to the person, not the org.
The org has a need. The person has a career. Those aren’t the same thing, and the second one is what moves.
The GM doesn’t lie awake over “operational excellence.” She lies awake over the next boil-water advisory hitting the front page with her name on it. The Ops Director’s bonus rides on downtime hours. The Contracts Officer can’t afford the vendor who misses a deadline – that’s the mistake that follows him to his next job. Find the number each is measured on – downtime, violations avoided, cost per million gallons – and talk in that currency. Then ask what we ask on every deal: how does saying yes to you get this person their bonus this quarter? Name the title you make look good and make them look good on purpose.
That’s the layer most sellers never reach. The person isn’t buying for the company. They’re buying for themselves – and the seller who gets that is offering something the competitor isn’t: a win the buyer can put their own name on.
Scripts you can use this week
The pre-show meeting request (three weeks out, not on the plane):
- Subject: 15 minutes at WEFTEC – [the problem they own]
- Body: “Saw that [utility] is [specific detail – under a consent decree / expanding the [X] plant / replacing named technology]. We’ve moved [specific number] for three utilities on exactly that. I’ll be at WEFTEC September 26 – 30 in New Orleans – worth 15 minutes, your booth or ours?”
The opening line (person first, product second):
- “Before I show you anything – what’s the number your board asks about at the next review? Let’s see if we can move that one.”
The close (specific, dated, mutual – never “let’s stay in touch”):
- “Here’s what I’d suggest: 30 minutes on [date] with your Ops Lead, and I’ll bring the [reference / rollback plan]. Does [date] work, or is [date] better?”
Decision lens – before your next U.S. call
- Who are the five specific people who can say yes – by name and title? Can’t name five? You don’t have a pipeline. You have hope.
- What does yes do for that person’s Monday number – and can you say it in one sentence?
- What’s the next dated meeting with a specific person – and is it on a calendar, or still in your head?
Think Slow. Act Fast. Win Big.
Think Slow. Do the unglamorous work first: find the actual humans, learn their week, know the one number they answer for.
Act Fast. The moment you know who they are, get in the room. Book the meeting this week – not “after the show.”
Win Big. Treat the buyer as a person, not the market as a monolith, and you hold the signed PO while everyone else is still “building U.S. market presence.”
There is no U.S. market. There’s only the next person who can say yes. Go find them by name.
If you’ve paid for a booth and your buyer list is still blank, that’s what our ICP Clinic is for. Twenty-five minutes: we map your top accounts, name the real budget owner behind each, and turn “the U.S. market” into the five people you need in a room – and what to say to each.
Book it here: 25-Minute ICP Clinic
Thomas Riebs, JD
Partner
Traksjon
Actions Speak Louder Than Words
Los Angeles, California, USA
Website: traksjon.com · Email: thomasr@traksjon.com · Phone: +1 310 210 7090
Meet with Thomas – calendly.com/meet-with-thomasriebs
For more on turning American motion into American revenue, subscribe to the newsletter, Traction in the U.S.
Thomas S. Riebs is Managing Partner of Traksjon ‐ operators, not consultants ‐ working alongside companies from Europe, Australia, and New Zealand until they win in the U.S. market.
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