I remember a deal I lost in 2018 — a $2M automation project in Guangzhou. I had the best product, the best price, and I lost it. Not because of the competition. Because I never figured out that the real decision maker wasn't the VP of Engineering — it was the CFO who sat in on only one meeting and never spoke. That loss cost me six months of work. Cliento was born from that loss.
The Problem I Kept Seeing
After 30+ years closing complex B2B deals in industrial automation, robotics, and enterprise software, I kept watching the same thing happen:
Talented sales reps losing deals they should have won.
Not because of lack of effort. But because at 9pm before a critical meeting, there was no senior advisor to call. No one to help diagnose why a deal went cold. No framework to figure out who the real decision maker was.
