Selling tech, at home and offshore.
Practical writing for technical founders and small sales teams. Building a sales engine that works in New Zealand, then taking it into bigger markets. No theory you cannot use on Monday.
In about 6 minutes, the free Growth Scorecard shows where your sales are leaking and what to fix first.
Get your free scorecardNick's 5 Insights for Selling More Tech
The five shifts that grow tech sales without adding more of your hours. It comes straight from what turned me from a terrified technical founder into someone who closed multimillion dollar deals. Read it in 15 minutes, use it this week.
- "Interesting" does not mean "interested" - how to read real buying signals instead of polite ones
- How your product solves their problems - connecting what you do to what the buyer actually needs
- Clean Sheet Selling - my most effective technique for early sales meetings
- Use a free online sales tool - the simple system that keeps you focused and organised
- Every interaction is a sale - why selling is a skill you can practise every day
Free tools
Growth Scorecard
Seven dimensions of your revenue engine, scored, with your weakest link named and the first thing to fix. Finish it and the international scorecard opens straight after.
International Readiness Scorecard
Five dimensions of readiness to sell offshore, and the first tool in the Global Growth OS. It opens once you have done the Growth Scorecard, because a home engine that leaks will export the leak.
The Global Growth OS
Eleven diagnostics across three phases, each a focused 20-minute conversation that produces a personalised report. All included in a Go Global partnership.
Downloads
Global Growth OS brochure
The eleven diagnostics, what each one answers, and how they fit together across Foundation, Execution and Scale.
SwalTech
A clinical-tech team who had never sold offshore. We built the engine at home, then flew to Australia and closed their first international sale.
AFAM
Twenty years of organic growth with no repeatable way to do it again. We put structure underneath it, and they run the engine themselves.
Articles
Everything I've written for technical founders and small sales teams, across both stages. Filter to the one you're in, or read the lot.
Nothing here yet for that stage.
The customer who costs you money to keep
The account that pays late, escalates weekly, and renews at a discount. How to work out what it really costs, and how to leave without a public fight.
Your first offshore hire is not a salesperson
Everyone plans the first offshore salesperson. The support, implementation or CS hire who keeps your customers usually matters sooner, and nobody budgets for it.
When the founder takes the meeting
You hired a salesperson so you could step back. The four meetings still worth walking into, and how to be in the room without taking it over.
What offshore buyers ask
The questions that catch New Zealand vendors out offshore - references in their market, local presence, support hours and procurement. What to have ready before the call.
The one-page sales plan
Most sales plans get written once and never opened again. What belongs on the single page, and what belongs nowhere.
Reading a market you cannot afford to visit
Four markets on your shortlist and the budget to visit one. How to judge each from your desk before you spend the airfare.
Selling through a partner at home
A domestic reseller is not selling you reach you could never get. What you are actually buying, and what the margin really costs.
Distributor, reseller or rep firm?
Three channel models founders lump together that behave nothing alike. What each costs you in margin and control, and which fits your stage offshore.
Raising prices on customers you already have
Hold your price for two years and inflation handed out a 6 percent discount nobody agreed to. How to sequence the rise, and what to do with the account that threatens to leave.
The security review that stalls your offshore deal
Offshore buyers put small NZ vendors through SOC 2, ISO 27001 and data-residency checks. What they ask, what it costs, and when to spend.
What sales promised, what product heard
Sales sold a workflow and product built a field. The five lines that stop the same argument happening every quarter.
Who owns the customer when you sell through a partner?
Sell through a partner and you can lose the customer without noticing. The four things that get owned, and which ones to keep.
What your churned customers had in common
The reason they gave you is almost never the pattern. How to run a churn review on a handful of customers and come out with a decision about who to stop selling to.
What changes in your demo when the buyer is offshore
Offshore you cannot read the room. What a remote demo loses, what to cut, and how to run one that still lands when you cannot see a face.
Reading a stalled deal
A deal goes quiet and the first instinct is to fix your own pitch. How to work out whose problem the stall actually is, and what to do in each case.
Exporting a services business, not a product
Consulting, implementation and managed services do not cross a border like software. What travels, what you rebuild locally, and where to start.
The case study a buyer actually finishes
Most run long, open with the vendor and bury the result. The six-part shape that survives a skim, and the one number that has to be in it.
Holding your margin when the dollar moves
Sell offshore on net terms and the exchange rate can quietly eat a margin you already won. Who should carry the currency risk, and the plain tools that cover it.
Pricing a product nobody has priced before
No comparable, no category, no price list to copy. How to set a first price you can defend, and still be able to move off it.
What changes in your contracts when you sell offshore
The handful of terms that actually bite when you cross a border - governing law, where the data lives, how you get paid - and the ones founders over-lawyer.
Write the proposal for the person who was not in the room
Your proposal gets forwarded to someone who was never in the meeting, and it has to win them over without you. What the forwarded version is missing.
Supporting a customer you will never meet
Once an offshore customer is live, support is the whole relationship. What changes when they are awake while you sleep, and how a small team covers it.
The pipeline review people tell the truth in
Most reviews ask one question in eight different costumes: is it still on? Three questions that get you what is actually happening.
What to do when you lose
The reason in your CRM is your theory, not the buyer's. The loss review most founders skip, and the two questions worth asking.
What a trade mission is actually good for
It opens doors your logo cannot, but it will not build your pipeline or close the deal. What NZTE missions do well, and how to get value from one.
Land and expand with a small customer base
New Zealand has 17,280 companies with twenty or more staff. What expansion has to mean when you cannot simply add more logos.
Localise the pitch before you localise the product
A stalled new market is usually a pitch that did not travel, not a product that needs rebuilding. How to tell which one is actually broken.
Your first renewal conversation is a sale, not admin
The first renewal is where a subscription business finds out what it actually sold. Why your retention number flatters you, and when the conversation starts.
Beating no decision: making the cost of standing still feel real
Most offshore deals are lost to the buyer doing nothing, not to a rival. How to make the cost of standing still concrete enough to move a stalled deal.
When do you actually need a local entity?
Founders reach for an overseas company far too early. What genuinely forces the decision to incorporate offshore, and what you can sell, invoice and register for without one.
How to forecast a pipeline you can actually trust
A forecast is only useful if the number holds. Six habits that turn a hopeful pipeline into one that predicts revenue - stage definitions, real conversion math, and the discipline to kill weak deals early.
Should you build the custom thing they want?
The one-customer feature that eats two quarters. A four-question test for founders who cannot say no yet.
Cultural nuance in B2B buying: ANZ vs North America vs EMEA
The same pitch lands differently in Sydney, Chicago and Frankfurt. How NZ B2B tech should adapt message, pace and process across ANZ, North America and EMEA.
The second market is harder than the first
Your first offshore market proved there is demand. The second proves whether you have a repeatable way in - and that is the harder test.
The referral ask that actually works
Most founders ask badly, once, at the wrong moment. The timing that works, the wording to use, and why being specific beats being polite.
Funding the offshore push: cash-flow and runway before you expand
A new market burns cash for months before it pays you back. How to size the runway an offshore push needs - and fund it without starving the business at home.
When a buyer says "after the next release"
It sounds like a scheduling problem. It is a priority problem. How to answer it without forecasting on a roadmap you do not control.
Building a demo that converts offshore buyers
A converting demo shows the buyer their outcome, not your feature list - and keeps working when you are not in the room. How to build one that travels.
Selling across time zones: turning distance into an advantage
The overlap with Australia is generous; with the US and UK it is close to zero. How to turn the time-zone gap into an operating edge, not a drag.
The first 90 days after you land your first offshore customer
Winning the deal is the start, not the finish. How to turn your first offshore customer into proof, revenue and a second one.
Champion or friendly contact?
They take your calls, they like what you have built, and the deal has not moved in weeks. Four questions that tell you which one you have, and what to do about it.
Your website is your first offshore salesperson
Offshore buyers do most of their buying before they ever contact you. What your website has to do to sell for you in a market that has never heard of you.
Fractional CRO vs full-time Sales Lead: which does a scaling NZ company need?
A full-time VP of Sales is a US$450k to $700k first-year bet that lasts about two years on average. When a fractional CRO is the smarter revenue-leadership hire - and when you have outgrown it.
The numbers that must travel before you expand
Expansion multiplies whatever economics you already have. The numbers - gross margin, CAC payback and retention - that must hold at home before you scale a NZ B2B tech company offshore.
UK vs US: what changes when NZ tech sells into each
Two big English-speaking markets, two different sales jobs. What NZ B2B tech founders should know about the UK versus the US - buying pace, deal size, how a foreign vendor gets judged, and cost to serve.
What a discount teaches your buyer
A discount does not just cost you margin, it tells your buyer your first number was not serious. The real arithmetic, and four things to trade before you touch price.
The proof gap: building your first offshore reference customers
Your New Zealand reference customers carry less weight offshore than you would hope. How to close the proof gap and build references an overseas buyer actually believes.
Too broad to win: why niching down beats scaling up offshore
In a market five times the size, being able to help any business stops working. Why niching down - not scaling up - is how a small NZ tech company wins offshore.
Why “you’re too expensive” is rarely about price
When a tech buyer pushes back on price, the problem is usually the order of the conversation, not the number. Here is how to fix the sequence.
What overseas investors actually look for in a NZ tech company
Overseas investors fund evidence, not potential. The traction, unit economics and market-entry plan that make a NZ B2B tech company fundable abroad.
Direct or through partners? Choosing your offshore route to market
A channel partner can open a market fast - or bury your product in someone else's priorities. How NZ B2B tech founders choose between selling direct and going through partners when they expand offshore.
You are still the only one who can close
Deals stall when you are not in the room. That is not a talent problem in your team - it is three things you have never taken out of your head.
From founder-led sales to an offshore engine that runs without you
Founder-led sales wins your first deals, then stalls the moment you sell across time zones. Here's how NZ B2B tech founders turn founder magic into a repeatable system that sells without them.
Your New Zealand pricing is wrong for the world - here's how to reset it
Kiwi tech routinely under-prices offshore. The fix isn't a bigger number - it's pricing to the value a bigger market already sees. A practical reset for NZ B2B tech founders, from Nick Burns.
Your pipeline is not a forecast
Feast and famine is not bad luck. It is what happens when your deal stages describe your activity instead of your buyer's decision.
Why your first US sales hire usually fails - and what to do first
The six-figure US sales hire feels like progress, then stalls. Why it fails, how to know when you're ready to hire, and the cheaper first move for NZ B2B tech founders.
How to choose your first offshore market (and why it's usually not the US)
The biggest market is rarely the best first market. A practical five-part way for NZ B2B tech founders to choose where to expand first - and why it's usually not the US.
5 things NZ founders get wrong about selling in Australia
Australia is the first offshore market for most NZ B2B tech companies - and where many stall. The five things that cost NZ founders deals across the Tasman, from Nick Burns.
Hiring your first salesperson too early
A salesperson cannot find your repeatable sale for you. Here are the signals that say you are ready, the ones that say you are outsourcing a problem, and what good looks like at this stage.
The capital-revenue catch-22: why NZ tech companies stay stuck
You need offshore revenue to raise capital, and capital to fund the offshore push. Why NZ tech companies get stuck in that loop - and how the ones that get out break it.
What a discovery call is actually for
Most founders demo. Discovery is arithmetic, not a product tour - and the number it produces has to belong to the buyer, not to you.
How to validate an international market in 90 days without burning cash
You don't need to bet the year or a big chunk of cash to know whether an overseas market is worth entering. A 90-day validation playbook for NZ B2B tech founders.
The CRM you are not using
Your CRM became a graveyard because it was set up to report on your team rather than help them. Here is the smallest version that earns its place.
What McKesson taught me about B2B sales at scale
When McKesson, then the 14th-largest company on the Fortune 500, acquired the NZ business I built, I got a masterclass in how B2B sales works at scale. The lessons that changed how I sell.
Selling to New Zealand government and councils
Long cycles, opex versus capex, and why verbally committed is not signed. What actually moves a public-sector deal in New Zealand.
The real cost of waiting: what a year of DIY expansion actually costs you
The cost of getting help with international expansion is an invoice. The cost of not getting help is invisible - and usually far bigger. The maths NZ founders miss.
Your pitch is strong on the problem and weak on the product
The most common deck fault I see: the buyer reaches the end and still cannot say what it actually does. Here is how to fix the middle.
What to do when a big deal goes quiet
Silence is information, not rejection. The three messages worth sending when a deal stops replying, and the one that kills it.
Coaching a seller you cannot out-sell
You built the product, they know the process. Founders can still coach a better salesperson than themselves - by coaching the deal, not the technique.
Taking it beyond New Zealand?
Selling offshore is a different job - new buyers, new rules, and plenty that does not carry over from the home market. It is the work I love most, which is why it has a whole stage of its own: market entry, choosing a first market, partners versus direct, and getting investment-ready.
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