🚢 For decades, B2B software sales ran on relationships.
Take the right person to dinner. Get comfortable with procurement. Make sure the person conducting the evaluation presents you favorably.
I’ve been on both sides of that table.
Here’s what’s changing.
Companies are building operational graphs — complete maps of every function they perform, with metrics attached to each node. Speed. Cost. Failure rate. Success rate.
When a software vendor shows up, the conversation isn’t “let me show you a demo.” It’s:
↳ Here is the node your product replaces. ↳ Here are our current metrics for that function. ↳ What are yours?
Prove your numbers are better. Or don’t get in.
When I worked with Petrobras on a supplier proposal, they already asked to see our company financials — they needed to know we wouldn’t go bankrupt mid-contract. That was years ago, manually.
Imagine that process automated, real-time, applied to every vendor evaluation: product performance, financial health, customer retention, uptime. No human intermediary deciding whose presentation to favor.
🦑 The steak dinner doesn’t disappear because procurement got ethical. It disappears because there’s no human left in the loop to influence.
If you’re in B2B sales: your relationship is still valuable today. Build your metrics for tomorrow.
What does your product actually do to the node it replaces?