417 OEMs Contacted, 37 Engaged: Building European Industrial Presence For a Japanese Electronics Corporation

The client was well established in the European automotive market and wanted its electronic products designed into industrial applications. That move is harder than it appears. Industrial buyers specify differently from automotive ones, design-in cycles run through engineers rather than purchasing departments, and the distributors capable of selling on technical merit form a small and largely committed group.

Three things were missing. The client had no map of which industrial applications suited its products, no relationships with the Tier-1 OEMs that would need to design them in, and no Western distribution framework, having never established one. Each depended on the others, which meant a strategy document alone would not move the position. The work required execution in market.

We designed and continue to run a long-term Client Growth Programme, taking ownership of the full sales cycle rather than handing over a plan.

1. 01

   Market and application research

   We identified the target industrial markets and applications where the client's products fit, and built a sales strategy around them.

2. 02

   Positioning and collateral

   We refined product positioning for industrial audiences and rebuilt the supporting sales collateral, since material written for automotive buyers does not translate directly.

3. 03

   Multichannel lead generation

   We ran sustained outreach across channels to build a qualified pipeline, contacting 417 OEMs and converting 37 into active engagement.

4. 04

   Distribution partnerships

   We negotiated and secured the client's first Western distribution agreements, covering regional exclusivity, account ownership, performance expectations and customer coordination. We then managed those partnerships through structured onboarding, product training, joint account planning, review meetings and a shared incentive programme.

5. 05

   OEM account management

   We progressed Tier-1 accounts through product discussions, sampling, technical evaluation, prototyping, re-prototyping and commercial development, and coordinated joint roadshows and customer visits that placed the client directly in front of major OEMs.

6. 06

   Events and continuous optimisation

   We built an evidence-led European exhibition roadmap, combining organiser insight with first-hand results to prioritise the shows most likely to generate qualified opportunities, and fed market feedback back into positioning and targeting.

The programme has run since 2022 and continues to generate qualified opportunities.

Of 417 OEMs contacted, 37 moved into qualified engagement, an 8.9% conversion rate in a market where the client previously had no industrial presence. Several Tier-1 accounts have progressed through technical evaluation and prototyping into commercial development, including a global energy technology group, one of the world's largest aerospace and defence OEMs, a household technology manufacturer, and a high-growth European energy-storage manufacturer building a new large-scale factory.

On the distribution side, eight specialised distributors were engaged and two design-in partnerships established, creating the client's first legal and commercial framework for Western distribution. Those partnerships now generate five active OEM opportunities of their own. Targeted event attendance contributed to both, and identified humanoid robotics as an emerging sector, converting outreach around a single event into a qualified opportunity in a multi-billion-pound market.