Complex energy and infrastructure sales work best when the commercial conversation begins as an investigation, not a presentation.
The seller may know the technology, the service model, the economics, and the value proposition extremely well. The customer knows the institution: its operating problems, priorities, constraints, history, internal politics, capital limits, risk tolerance, and competing demands. Neither side has enough information at the beginning to know whether a good project actually exists.
One influence on how I think about that process has been the Sandler approach to selling. What has stayed with me is less a particular script than a philosophy: ask before telling, understand before proposing, qualify in both directions, and be willing to conclude that the fit is not there.
WORKING PRINCIPLE
The objective is not to make every prospect a customer.
The objective is to determine whether the customer has a problem worth solving and whether the solution, economics, operating model, timing, and institution fit well enough to justify moving forward.
Start with the problem, not the solution
Technical organizations naturally want to explain what they do. They have spent years developing capabilities, refining systems, and proving performance. That knowledge matters, but leading with it can reverse the commercial process. The conversation becomes an exercise in finding reasons the customer should want the solution rather than understanding what the customer actually needs.
A stronger starting point is diagnosis. What prompted the conversation? What is happening today? What has changed? Why does it matter now? What happens if nothing changes? How is the problem affecting operations, cost, reliability, capital planning, customers, staff, or strategic priorities?
Those questions do more than gather facts. They establish whether the issue is consequential enough to deserve a project at all.
Good questions are a form of analysis
In complex sales, questioning is not simply a technique for keeping the customer talking. It is one of the principal analytical tools available before a formal business case exists.
Socratic questions are particularly useful because they do not require the seller to announce the conclusion in advance. A question such as “How are you handling that today?” can reveal operating practices. “What would have to be true for that alternative to work?” can expose assumptions. “Who else would be affected by this change?” can reveal stakeholders. “What happens if the current system remains in place for another five years?” can uncover the real baseline against which an investment should be judged.
The customer often learns something in the process as well. A well-structured conversation can make dependencies, hidden costs, decision criteria, or conflicting priorities visible before anyone has tried to design a solution.
The commercial developer is partly a detective
This is where commercial development overlaps with the detective role in business-case development. Important information is rarely packaged neatly. A customer may initially describe a utility-cost problem that turns out to be primarily a reliability problem. A stated need for new equipment may actually be driven by staffing constraints. A sustainability objective may be real, but capital timing may determine what can happen first.
The commercial developer has to follow those threads without forcing them toward a predetermined answer. That means listening for inconsistencies, asking for examples, understanding how the current condition developed, and distinguishing symptoms from root causes.
In energy infrastructure, that investigation may cross engineering, operations, finance, procurement, real estate, sustainability, executive leadership, and external service providers. The opportunity becomes clearer as those perspectives are connected.
Fit has more than one dimension
A solution can fit technically and still be wrong for the customer. That is especially true for infrastructure, where decisions can create obligations that last for decades.
Technical fit matters: can the solution meet the load, reliability requirement, physical conditions, and performance expectations? Economic fit matters: does it improve the customer’s position relative to realistic alternatives? Operational fit matters: can the institution operate, maintain, manage, or contract around it successfully? Commercial fit matters: can the parties reach a structure that allocates cost, responsibility, and risk in a workable way? Institutional fit matters: can the customer actually approve, procure, fund, and implement the project?
Good commercial development keeps all of those dimensions in view. A prospect is not truly qualified simply because there is technical interest or a positive financial model.
THE FIT TEST
Can both sides explain why this project makes sense for this customer?
If the rationale depends mainly on the supplier’s enthusiasm for its solution, discovery is not finished. The customer’s problem, priorities, constraints, and decision logic should be visible in the project itself.
Qualification should work in both directions
One of the most useful ideas in a discovery-led approach is that qualification is mutual. The customer is evaluating the supplier, but the supplier should also be evaluating whether it can credibly solve the customer’s problem.
That requires some willingness to say no. The customer may not have a sufficiently important problem. The economics may not support action. The required operating model may not fit. The decision process may have no realistic pathway. Another solution may simply be better.
Recognizing that early is not a commercial failure. It protects the customer from a poor project and prevents both organizations from investing months of technical and commercial effort into an opportunity that was never likely to become executable.
Do not rush to the proposal
A proposal can feel like progress because it creates something tangible. But in complex infrastructure sales, producing it too early can substitute documentation for discovery.
The proposal then carries assumptions that have never been tested: the wrong baseline, incomplete decision criteria, an unrealistic schedule, an operating structure the customer cannot support, or economics built around benefits the organization does not actually value.
A better proposal confirms what the parties have already learned together. It should reflect the customer’s problem in recognizable terms, show how the proposed approach addresses the criteria that matter, make unresolved issues visible, and identify what each side must do next.
In that sense, the proposal should be the result of discovery—not the beginning of it.
The customer should help construct the rationale
The strongest commercial opportunities are rarely created by a supplier presenting a fully formed answer to a passive buyer. They develop through a process in which the customer contributes operating knowledge, challenges assumptions, identifies decision criteria, and helps define what a workable solution would need to accomplish.
That participation matters because institutional projects require internal ownership. Eventually, someone inside the customer organization will have to explain why the project should receive capital, survive procurement, overcome competing priorities, and become part of the operating environment.
A project understood only by the salesperson is not commercially mature. A project whose logic the customer can explain in its own terms is much closer to being real.
Trust improves when “no” is an acceptable answer
Discovery becomes more honest when neither side feels obligated to force the conversation toward a transaction. The customer can be more candid about constraints. The seller can identify limitations without worrying that every caveat weakens the pitch.
That changes the tone of the relationship. Instead of seller and buyer defending opposite sides of a transaction, both parties are trying to answer the same question: Is there a project here that makes sense?
Sometimes the answer is no. Sometimes it is not yet. Sometimes the original solution changes substantially as the real problem becomes clearer. And sometimes the discovery process reveals a much stronger opportunity than the one that initiated the conversation.
Commercial development is an integration function
For complex energy and infrastructure opportunities, commercial development sits at the intersection of customer needs, engineering, economics, operations, commercial structure, and institutional decision-making. Its job is not merely to create demand for a product. It is to determine whether those elements can be assembled into a project that works for both organizations.
That is why the detective mindset matters. So does Socratic questioning. So does the discipline to delay the pitch until the problem is understood and to stop pursuing an opportunity when the fit is not credible.
Good commercial development does not begin by asking, “How do we sell this solution?” It begins with a more useful question: “Is there a problem here that we are genuinely well suited to solve?”