In 2022 we were hired to sell compliance software to a market that was writing its rules that year.
Identity verification is bought for one of two reasons: a regulator has said so, or a fraud loss has already happened. Nobody buys it because it is interesting.
That makes the targeting unusually mechanical, and unusually satisfying. The question is not whether a fintech has a compliance problem. It is where that company sits in its licensing process, because the licence is the event that turns a nice idea into a deadline.
What we did
Three months across the UAE, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Oman, entirely in financial services. 20 meetings booked, 15 confirmed held, 20 companies introduced.
The regional fintech generation, most of it in the year it was scaling: Tabby, Tamara, Tap Payments, NymCard, YAP, Now Money, Jingle Pay, Pemo, Telr, Thawani Pay, Tarabut Gateway, Securrency, CoinMena, HyperPay, Geidea. Alongside them the banks buying the same capability for different reasons: Abu Dhabi Islamic Bank, RAKBANK, Habib Bank AG Zurich.
Sell to the deadline, not to the department
The reps who did well on this account stopped asking about onboarding and started asking about licences and launches. Which regulator, which stage, which market next, when.
A company two months from launching in Saudi Arabia has a compliance requirement with a date attached and a person whose job depends on that date. A company with the same product and no imminent launch has an opinion about compliance. The two look identical in a database and behave nothing alike on the phone.
That is the transferable part of this engagement, and it applies far beyond compliance. Regulated markets hand outbound teams a gift most sectors do not: a public, dated, non-negotiable trigger. Build the list from the trigger and the conversation writes itself.
What it shows
Where regulation sets the timetable, the timetable is the target list. Find the event that makes the purchase unavoidable, work out who owns the date, and call that person. Everyone else in the company is a research call.