A sales force cannot survey a market it does not serve

The company wanted to grow into the two customer groups it could see least

An 8 to 10 week sprint, from September 2025. A global mining technology company of around €5B revenue. A standalone piece, not part of a series.

The client sells mining technology to large miners and sells to them well. It set out to reach two groups it had barely sold to: junior miners, meaning smaller operators with one or a few sites, and contractors, the service firms that operate equipment on someone else's behalf. Both segments carried under 20% portfolio visibility. The engagement record uses that phrase without defining it, so we carry it as the starting state and have not converted it into a share of revenue or of accounts.

Two constraints held the work back. Commercial and regional sales teams were already at near-full capacity on existing operations. Knowledge of customer potential and distributor effectiveness sat in separate regional pockets, with no common framework for comparing one opportunity against another.

The cost of leaving it there was commercial. The client risked missing emerging opportunities in growth regions, courting the same distributors twice across regions, and losing share to lower-cost competitors moving faster into the same segments.

A sales organisation learns by selling, so it knows least about the customers it does not have

Nobody here lacked domain knowledge. Regional sales managers at a €5B mining technology company understand the equipment, the duty cycles, the buying committees and the competitors better than any outsider will in 8 to 10 weeks.

The constraint was the shape that expertise takes. A sales organisation builds its picture of a market as a by-product of its presence in that market. Every account review, every lost deal and every commissioning visit adds to what the company knows about the customers it already serves and adds nothing about the customers it does not. The instrument only reads where it is pointed. The better a company serves large miners, the less it can say about anybody else, so the segment it most wants to enter is the segment it knows least.

Time alone would not have closed that gap. Which distributors actually reach junior miners in a given region, how much installed equipment sits behind each one, what a contractor weighs when choosing a supplier, how competitors go to market in these segments: distributors, competitors and customers hold all of it. No amount of internal effort reaches evidence that the company does not own.

Test that distinction before scoping any market question. Ask whether six uninterrupted months inside the business would produce the answer. If it would, you need protected time and a common method. If it would not, the evidence sits outside your walls and someone has to go and collect it. The two problems look identical from the inside and need entirely different work.

Regional pictures that could not be compared became one basis for choosing between them

What that enables. The company can now argue one region against another, and one channel against another, on a single basis. That is the decision a growth plan turns on, and until the sprint it went to whoever argued hardest.

Mapped is not won, and recommended is not opened

The €30m is quantified opportunity. It is not contracted revenue and it is not a forecast.

No distributor was signed and no commercial terms were negotiated. An 8 to 10 week sprint produces the evidence for that decision, not the decision itself.

The engagement record carries no measured outcome after handover, and we do not supply one.

Source. All figures come from the SprintlyWorks engagement record for Unlocking Growth via Distributor Sales Strategy, a global mining technology company of around €5B revenue, September 2025. We reproduce the record's qualifying words as it writes them: identified for the distributor networks, mapped and quantified for the €30m, recommended for the 4 priority sales channels. We describe clients, never name them, and no customer, distributor, channel or region from the engagement appears here.

Tell us the question nobody has the bandwidth to answer

We run 8 to 10 week sprints for industrial companies that have a decision to take and no spare team to take it with. You get named people, a defined question, and the evidence in your hands at handover.

Start with the six-month test. If protected time inside your own business would produce your answer, you need a method and a clear diary. If it would not, the evidence sits outside your walls and someone has to go and collect it.

Tell us the question. We will tell you whether a sprint can answer it, what it would take, and what you would hold at the end. If a sprint is the wrong tool, we will say so. Write to rahul.abhisek@sprintlyworks.com.