The complete English academic notes follow the Ukrainian source, retaining the original argument, engineering examples, terminology, diagrams, tasks and editorial qualifications. The original transcripts remain available separately in Ukrainian.

Lecture 03. From an Unknown Company to a Sales Lead

Chronology: 8 September 2026 · third session. Primary source: the complete transcript. Turning point of the course: from “who can perform the work?” to “how will a potential customer learn that we exist?”

1. Initial situation: there is a customer need, but no collaboration yet

The lecture starts with two companies that have not signed a contract. The customer has an idea, problem or product requirement but lacks capacity, expertise, time or technical resources. The service provider has engineering capability, but cannot assume that its particular technology stack is necessarily what the customer needs.

The lecture's central principle:

Do not sell your technology as an answer before you understand the customer's problem.

In pre-sales, first identify the pain point, and only then introduce relevant experience, a team or a possible solution direction.

2. Trust as the first engineering-business asset

The strongest channel considered in the lecture is a recommendation based on previous successful work. The analogy of a trusted repair technician or garage is intentionally simple: someone who has received a good outcome transfers some of that trust when recommending the provider to another customer.

Business-to-business relationships work in much the same way:

successful delivery
      ↓
personal trust in specific people
      ↓
people moving between companies / new roles
      ↓
new introduction
      ↓
first contact with a new business opportunity

A crucial detail is that the company's reputation and the reputation of particular engineering leaders reinforce each other.

3. Without a referral: make the company visible

The lecture identifies several channels.

3.1. Paid visibility / advertising

Advertising need not bring a customer through a direct click. Another purpose is brand recall: the name becomes familiar, so a subsequent meeting at an event does not begin entirely “from zero”.

Practical lesson: advertising should target regions and audiences where actual buyer-side demand exists, not merely generate impressions.

3.2. The website as an evidence layer

After an initial encounter, a prospective customer checks:

who you are;
which industries you understand;
which case studies you can present;
whether there is evidence of sustained operations;
which services and competencies you claim;
whether your public footprint matches what you just said in person.

In this model, the website is not a brochure created for attractive design; it is a body of evidence supporting the first contact.

3.3. LinkedIn / technical content

Regular technical content shows that the company and its specialists are consistently engaged with a topic rather than mentioning it incidentally at a meeting. Especially valuable are materials that connect a technology to a business outcome or genuine engineering pain.

4. Technical champions

The lecture introduces the champion: a visible technical professional whom a company may send to a conference, industry event or initial customer meeting.

A champion needs to combine:

sufficient technical depth;
the ability to communicate clearly;
a public professional footprint;
audience trust;
the discipline to listen to the customer rather than indiscriminately “sell everything”.

This is not necessarily the company's strongest narrow specialist. Selecting the speaker is a distinct optimization problem: topic × audience × speaker × commercial objective.

5. Exhibitions and conferences as lead-generation engines

The lecture distinguishes several approaches to participation:

Format	What we do	Advantage	Risk / cost
Visitor / “hunting on foot”	Visit booths and meet people	Lowest cost; active outreach	We must initiate contact ourselves
Booth / exhibition	Bring people to our own booth	Opportunity to demonstrate a product	High preparation effort and cost
Combination	Own booth plus active outreach	Broadest coverage	Largest team and logistics demand
Speaker	Give a talk on a relevant topic	Authority and inbound interest	Hard to obtain a slot; considerable preparation

The lecture particularly emphasizes that a trip begins long before boarding a plane. Preparation includes a website, technical content, business cards and digital contacts, a target-company list, suitable case studies, demos, presentation materials and defined delegation roles.

6. A minimal cross-functional event team

The lecturer describes a model in which multiple functions work together at an event:

marketing / engagement opens the contact and maintains the business framing;
delivery or business leadership understands what the company can realistically promise;
a technical champion or architect identifies engineering pain points and sustains a deeper technical conversation.

As such a team works together repeatedly, it becomes faster at handing a contact from small talk to technical follow-up.

7. The main objective on-site: discovery, not a pitch

At an event it is not enough to explain “how great we are”. A more useful cycle is:

observe
   ↓
ask a specific question
   ↓
identify pain / bottleneck / trend
   ↓
present relevant evidence
   ↓
agree on follow-up

A successful first conversation does not mean a contract. In the context of this course, a lead is a contact with enough mutual interest to justify a subsequent discussion.

8. What to bring home besides business cards

The lecture adds a second source of event value: market intelligence. The team should return knowing:

which topics occurred repeatedly;
which pain points appear across companies;
which technologies are becoming mainstream;
which solutions have become commoditized;
where customers encounter obstacles;
what competing companies are demonstrating.

An event is therefore both a lead-generation channel and a form of field-based market research.

9. Editorial note — numbers and anecdotal claims

The transcript includes specific assessments of channel effectiveness, “top-three” claims and examples drawn from the lecturer's personal experience. The notes treat these as the lecturer's practical observations, not as statistically established universal conversion coefficients. Any individual company should calculate its conversion rates using its own CRM analytics.

10. Review questions

Why must discovery of the pain point precede a technology pitch?
How does a referral transfer trust between companies?
Why is a website important even after a face-to-face introduction?
What distinguishes a technical champion from an ordinary senior engineer?
Which four event-participation formats are discussed in the lecture?
Why is a conference also a source of market intelligence?
What minimum outcome makes the initial conversation successful?
What materials should be prepared before travelling?

11. Practical checklist: “we leave tomorrow”

A 30-second explanation of who we are and what we do;
two or three clearly defined domain strengths;
three relevant case studies;
one demo or visual story, when useful;
a website landing page consistent with the spoken pitch;
a working QR code / business card;
a list of target companies and people;
roles in the delegation;
a method for recording contacts and next actions;
a rule for follow-up after the event.

12. Transition to 15 September 2026

Once a contact has been made, the harder task is turning attention into technical trust and a formal pre-sales process. The next session examines conference dynamics in more detail, initial and follow-up meetings, prospect research and the first formal requests: RFI, RFQ and RFC.

From an Unknown Company to a Lead

Key ideas

Pain before pitch

Trust compounds

Website is evidence

Events are research too

Practical takeaway

04 — From Lead to Formal Pre-Sale

Full lecture notes