TRACTION IN THE U.S. · CLEANTECH
She has ninety seconds to promote your deal and whatever you left her holding.
This time you connected deeper and broader.
You found the general manager, then the four people around him. You know whose budget pays for your solution, the month it gets allocated, and which of them chose the incumbent and would have to explain the switch. You sent your champion the deck, the case studies, and the technical annex, and she wrote back that it was exactly what she needed.
Then Tuesday’s meeting happened, and you were eight time zones away, asleep.
Not the fifteen minutes you imagined, and not the fifteen she expected either. Your item came up at minute forty, somebody said “where are we on the European thing,” and she had ninety seconds to answer from memory, no slides.
The short version
You cannot attend the meeting where your deal moves or stalls, so the only thing that travels in your place is what your champion can say from memory under pressure. A deck does not fit in ninety seconds. Five things do, and all five are written from her exposure rather than your value, because what she spends in that room is her own credibility.
She is not selling your product. She is spending her standing.
You almost certainly sent the right material. Peer references, the case for what this does for her utility, the technical annex. She asked for it, and it is addressed to the wrong situation: built to be evaluated by someone sitting down alone with it, with time. She was standing up, under pressure, in front of people who had read none of it. Good material in a format that cannot travel is a delivery problem, and it stays invisible until the day it costs you.
The room is also asking something your annex does not answer, and asking it about her. If this works, somebody more senior presents the results at a conference. If it fails at two in the morning in February, it was her recommendation.
She is not deciding whether to buy from you. She is deciding whether to attach her name to your solution, in front of colleagues she will still have in ten years. So, the question is not what will convince them. It is what she needs to say yes out loud and feel safe doing it. Closer to selling to one person than to selling to a company.
The pattern, up close
Same utility as who actually decides your U.S. deal, six months on. The European company has the map now. They know the board approves the capital plan and that an outside firm writes the specification. They have found their champion.
Her item comes up. Somebody asks whether she is prepared to put her weight behind an unfamiliar supplier. She says they seem solid, and she can get more detail. That is not a no. It is worse, because a no tells you something. It is an item deferred without an owner, and the agenda moves on.
She was not short of material. She had everything the company sent, carefully chosen, every page of it written to be read. Nobody in that room was reading.
Three moves before she goes in without you
1. Write the one page she speaks from, in her numbers.
Not a summary of your deck. One page, five things:
- The number her own boss checks. Unplanned outage minutes at a utility. The readmission penalty at a hospital system. Schedule against a milestone at a defense prime. Your specification is not on this list. Hers is.
- The cost, in the shape her finance team uses. Capital or operating, which line, which fiscal year, what it displaces.
- The objection from the person who loses, in his words, your answer underneath. You worked out who that was already. Write his objection, not a softened one.
- One reference in her sector and roughly her size, with a name, a number, and permission already given. Not a logo wall. With no American reference, give her the closest real thing plus the two operating differences that matter.
- What happens if it does not work, written to protect her. If it is not doing X by a stated date, you remove it at your cost and they keep the data. At a hospital system it also names who covers the clinical workflow meanwhile. Not warranty language. A sentence she can read aloud.
One more, if it is true of your offer. To her this is a large project even where to you it is routine, and first-of-a-kind is where deals go quiet. Find the smallest version that still proves the point, assembled from parts you have installed many times elsewhere.
You need not guess what she will be asked. In California an open meeting law requires a local agency to post a regular meeting agenda at least 72 hours ahead, and the staff reports behind those items are public records. Other states set their own periods. Read those and the last two sets of minutes, and you have the board’s language in advance.
2. Work through the ninety seconds together, out loud.
Sending your pitch is not the move. The conversation after it is, and it runs opposite to the one most people picture. You are not checking whether she has learned her lines. She knows that organization far better than you do. You are asking how she would put it, so you hear what your material fails to give her. What is being audited is your pitch, not her memory.
Three things in what she says are about you rather than her. Where she says they seem, you handed her an impression instead of a number. Where she says I think, you gave her no source. Where she pauses, that is the question you never answered, and the one that gets asked when you are not there.
3. Ask how you can support her and let her decide how.
Offer to be reachable while her item is up, so she is not the one who has to say she will find out and come back. Then ask what would actually help, because she knows that room and you do not. Sometimes it is a phone line. Sometimes a name she can use. Sometimes that you stay away.
Whether you can be there depends on which meeting it is, and sellers often have this backwards. In California, as of August 2026, the board meeting itself is public and the body must let the public address it. Closed is everything around it: the staff meeting, the evaluation committee. And where a solicitation is open, contact is often restricted to one named procurement officer, in which case the right move is no contact at all. Ask her which of the three you are in. Getting that wrong costs the bid, not the meeting.
Scripts you can use this week
The work-through:
“At the meeting, how will you frame this? Ninety seconds, no slides. I want to hear where I have left you short.”
The sentence that protects her:
“Here is the line I would want if I were sitting where you are. If it is not doing X by March, we take it out at our cost and you keep the data. Would that help you in that room?”
The offer of support:
“I do not need to present. Would it help if I were reachable while your item is up, so you are not the one who has to go and find out?”
Decision lens: before your next call
- If someone stopped your champion in a hallway and asked about you, what one sentence would she say? Write your guess, then ask her.
- Is anything in her hands written from her perspective rather than from yours?
- Does she have an answer for what happens if it does not work, and does it protect her or you?
Think Slow. Act Fast. Win Big.
Think Slow. Work out what she is risking before you send one more thing about what your product does.
Act Fast. She will be in a room without you sooner than you think. The pitch takes an afternoon, the work-through fifteen minutes.
Win Big. Write the next step with her rather than for her, with a number and a date in it: if the demonstration hits the agreed target by a named month, it converts at a stated price and term. A plan she helped write is one she defends in February.
You are not trying to get into the room. You are making sure the person who is in it is not carrying you alone, from memory, at minute forty. If you cannot say in one sentence what she says about you when you are not there, that is the thing to fix first.
Thomas Riebs, JD
Managing Partner
Traksjon
Think Slow. Act Fast. Win Big.
Los Angeles, California, USA
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