For industrial, chem & pharma software
Make your industrial software sell. Into chem, pharma, and the plant floor.
You sell industrial software into conservative, regulated buyers, where operations, IT, safety, and procurement all weigh in and cycles run for months. The product is rarely the problem. The commercial system that carries it through all of that was never built. I build it, and I came up in chemicals and pharma.
The short version
Why won't industrial buyers buy, even when the product works?
Because in chem, pharma, and manufacturing the decision is not one person's. 6–10 people now sign off on a deal, and the cycle runs 6–12 months. It moves through plant operators, IT, safety and quality, procurement, and finance, each with a veto and none with urgency. The buyer cannot put a clean number on the value, switching means changing a process people trust, and there is no budget line for a category they do not yet have a name for. So a working product stops moving, not on merit, but on a buying process built to slow new things down. Selling here is a system that carries the product through that process. It is rarely built, and it is what I build.
Sound familiar?
If you sell into industrial, you will know these.
- ✓Every deal needs a new business case, rebuilt from scratch.
- ✓The plant loves it. Procurement grinds it down on price.
- ✓Stakeholders multiply mid-deal: operations, IT, safety, quality, procurement, finance.
- ✓You are handed a requirements list and treated like internal IT.
- ✓"We have always done it this way" beats a better product.
- ✓Pilots run forever and never roll out to the next site.
Three or more, and it is not your product. The decisions under your pitch were never locked, and the buyer's process is built to slow you down.
Why it is harder here
Why are industrial and chem-pharma sales cycles so long?
01
A committee with a veto, not a champion with a budget
The plant engineer who loves it does not hold the budget, and four other people can each say no. Deals stop moving even when the product clearly wins.
02
No category, no budget line
Buyers have no template for what you do, so you sell the category as much as the product, and the cycle stretches.
03
Switching cost is process and risk, not software
Changing a validated process can trigger re-qualification, and it has to sit with the historian, MES, and ERP they already run. "Is it safe, and what does it touch?" gets answered before anyone cares what it does.
04 · the requirements-list trap
You build to their spec and become a feature factory
Hand a young product a long requirements list and the team starts building to it instead of selling a value. You become internal IT with a roadmap, not a vendor with a price.
05 · the one that matters most
Value tied to a number the buyer cannot trust
To justify the price you try to prove a far-off saving, downtime avoided, yield gained, compliance risk reduced, over years. That is slow to model and easy to argue with. What sells is one job your product does now, named in the buyer's language, with a number they already believe.
I know your world
I came up in chemicals and pharma, and I built the buying side.
You do not pay me to learn your industry while the clock runs. I started at Bayer in pharma and Covestro in chemicals, on the cost, strategy, and commercial side. Then I raised twenty million and built the marketplace for chemical materials, one and a half billion euros of transactions through the platform. I have sat with plant managers, procurement, and boards, and I know exactly why a working product gets stuck in this world: I sold into it, and I built in it.
€1.5B
I raised €20M and built a chemical-materials marketplace that moved €1.5B in transactions. Not an advisor reading about your world, an operator who sold and built inside it.
Founders and operators I have built with.
What I build
How do you sell industrial software, step by step?
01
One site, one use case to start
One buyer, one plant, one job, and a price tied to what the product actually does for them. A first foothold, not an "industrial platform" sold to everyone.
02
A business case the committee can pass around
One story that survives operations, IT, safety, procurement, and finance, so the deal does not stop the moment you leave the room.
03
Proof a regulated buyer can act on
Safety, validation, integration with existing systems, and references, answered before procurement asks. The evidence each veto-holder needs to say yes.
04
A first step that de-risks the pilot, and a path off it
A low-risk way in, plus a built route from one pilot to the next site, so the thing actually rolls out instead of living forever in one plant.
Built for how industrial and chem-pharma actually buy, not a generic SaaS playbook. It starts with a free read of your homepage.
Questions you're asking
Industrial go-to-market, answered.
How do you sell software into chemical and pharma companies?
You stop selling the platform and start with one site, one use case, and one job your product does, named in the buyer's language. You build a business case that survives the committee, operations, IT, safety, procurement, and finance, without you in the room. And you answer the regulated buyer's real questions, validation, integration, and safety, before procurement asks. The product was rarely the problem. The system that carries it through procurement is.
Why are industrial B2B sales cycles so long?
Because the decision is shared across operations, IT, safety, procurement, and finance, and switching means changing a process people trust. Fuzzy decisions add months, because the buyer needs extra meetings just to understand what you do and whether it is safe to adopt. Lock the decisions, name the value in their terms, and the cycle shrinks. The work is short; the time it saves per deal is not.
How long is a B2B sales cycle in chem, pharma, and manufacturing?
Longer than software's usual three months. Manufacturing deals routinely run 6–12 months, and chem and pharma stretch further, because IT, security, and compliance each get a say and 6–10 people now sign off on a single deal. Most of that time is not evaluation, it is the buyer working out whether it is safe to change a process they trust. Lock the decisions and name the value in their terms, and you take months out of every cycle.
How do you sell to a buying committee in manufacturing?
Build one story that travels. The plant manager, the IT lead, the safety and quality owner, and procurement each carry a different fear, so your homepage, deck, and demo have to answer all of them with the same story. When the story is one thing, the committee can pass it around and the deal does not stop when you step out of the room.
We sell into several industrial sectors. Will you make us pick one?
I lock one site and one use case with you first, then we expand on evidence. Sequential beats parallel. You do not abandon the other sectors, you reach them on purpose instead of all at once.
How do you prove value when the ROI is hard to quantify?
Stop trying to prove a far-off saving the buyer can argue with, like downtime avoided or yield gained over years. Anchor on the one job your product does now, with a number the buyer already believes. The honest, near-term number beats the impressive, distant one.
We have a product and a pilot, but it is not converting. Why?
Because the pilot proves the technology, not the business case, and the decisions under your story were never locked, so each stakeholder hears something different. I lock the decisions, build the story and the proof the committee needs, and a path from pilot to the next site.
Start here
Start with a free read.
Send me your homepage. I read it the way your buyer reads it, and send back where it loses them. No call required, and it is the same first step every founder takes.
Built in chemicals and pharma, but the system is the same one I build for any founder.