Mo. Okasha

I keep seeing the same webinar mistake in MENA B2B. Teams promote a topic that sounds safe, then wonder why only a handful of people show up.

That is how you end up with eight attendees and a disappointed sales team.

The fix is not more promotion. It is better relevance. Start with one buyer problem, write for one committee, and follow up while the session is still fresh.

If the webinar cannot move a commercial conversation forward, it is just noise with a registration form.

I was looking at a Gulf B2B content system recently and the issue was obvious.

The team had Arabic pages, English pages, brochures, decks, the whole set. On paper it looked complete. In practice, the buyer journey felt split.

Arabic was doing branding. English was doing proof. Nobody had decided which language should do which job.

That is the real bilingual decision in Saudi and the Gulf. Not “do we translate?” but “where does each language help the buyer trust the message, defend it internally, and move to the next step?”

That shift changes the whole content system.

I keep seeing the same mistake with GCC expansion.

A team gets a UAE win, then assumes Saudi will behave the same. It usually does not. The buyer changes. The proof required changes. The sales cycle changes.

If you are serious about the region, treat Saudi and the UAE as two different motions, even if the brand and product stay the same.

That is the part most teams skip.

What would you change first in your own expansion plan?

I saw a Saudi B2B team lose a good deal because they treated procurement like an enemy.

The product was strong. The champion liked it. But when the commercial team was asked to justify the number, they only had enthusiasm and a discount.

That is a bad place to be.

Procurement will always ask for the business case, the terms, and the tradeoffs. If you do not prepare that story early, the committee will rebuild it for you.

The fix is simple: value first, price second, and scope before discount.

I keep seeing the same thing in B2B teams. A deal gets counted because the rep had a good call, the champion sounded upbeat, or the proposal was sent. Then the forecast breaks.

The fix is not magic. Ask for evidence, not vibes. Forecast by buyer state, not CRM stage. Review slippage as a root-cause problem.

That discipline matters a lot in Saudi and MENA, where the committee is real, the cycle is long, and the number gets tested late.

I keep seeing the same pattern in B2B teams: they say they serve everyone, but what they really mean is they have not chosen.

The result is predictable. The pipeline gets noisy, sales chases the wrong accounts, and customer success inherits deals that were never a fit.

A practical ICP is usually just four filters: fit, pain, speed to value, and serviceability. If a prospect fails one of them, you feel it later.

In Saudi and MENA, this matters even more because committee buying already adds friction. If the account is also a weak fit, the whole deal slows down.

A lot of teams treat a lost deal like a bad day and move on.

That is expensive.

In one Saudi B2B review, the team kept writing “budget” in the CRM. The real issue was that procurement never believed the implementation story, and the champion could not defend the price in the room.

That is why lost-deal reviews matter. They show you where trust broke, where proof was weak, and where the committee stopped leaning in.

If you review the loss while it is still fresh, you usually get a cleaner lesson and a better next pitch.

I keep seeing the same thing in Saudi B2B sales.

A team sends 500 messages, gets a few replies, and thinks the problem is follow-up.

Usually it is not follow-up. It is relevance.

If the message does not match the account, the committee, and the timing, people ignore it. If it does, even a short note can start a useful conversation.

That is why the best outreach feels calm and specific, not loud.

What is the first thing you check before you message a new account?

I keep seeing the same thing in B2B sales teams.

The first call goes well, everyone is polite, and then nothing happens.

Usually the problem is not the product. It is the discovery.

The rep is trying to impress the buyer. The buyer is trying to decide if the problem is serious enough to bring back to the team.

In Saudi and MENA, that matters even more because the person on the call often has to translate the opportunity to a committee later. If they cannot explain the problem clearly, the deal slows down.

A discovery call should leave the buyer with a diagnosis they can repeat internally.

If it does not do that, it did not earn the second meeting.

I keep seeing the same mistake in B2B teams: they hire a growth function and immediately ask for more leads.

In one Saudi team, the real problem was not demand at all. It was slow follow-up and unclear qualification, so every campaign just created more noise.

The first 90 days should diagnose the bottleneck, define the ICP, and build trust in the funnel before anyone asks for scale.