Client name withheld. Figures are from our deliverable, verified on the stated dates.
Business: a European sales agent representing a Japanese incense brand across the Balkans. The agent is not the brand owner or a distributor — an independent contractor earning commission on wholesale orders, working alongside the brand's European trading hub, which holds the inventory, pricing and existing customer relationships. Typical wholesale order value is roughly €200–300, matched to buyers like yoga studios and tea shops rather than large retail accounts.
What we did
We built a B2B buyer database across the Balkans — wholesale-relevant businesses such as yoga studios, tea and wellness shops, and coastal gift retailers — with contact details, verification status and priority tier for each entry. The final delivered version lists 430 buyer contacts across ten countries. The client spotted a counting error in an earlier version, where verified and unverified contacts had been added together and presented as verified. We audited the whole report against the underlying data, corrected every affected figure and reissued it.
What we found
The client's framing of the problem was "too few wholesale buyers." The database showed a different picture: coverage was adequate, but unworked — a large, unsegmented list rather than a prioritized one ready for outreach. Inbound demand existed, but only from markets where the brand already has consumer recognition, mostly in Western Europe. The Balkans had none of that pre-existing pull. The agent's own sales approach — minimal outreach, let product quality speak, avoid bothering buyers — is a playbook suited to a mature market with an established buyer base. Applied to a market where category awareness and buying habits do not yet exist, it stalls: outbound contact has to create the demand before it can be responded to.
What we recommended
- Cut the 430-contact list to a short list of the highest-priority accounts in the two most promising countries, and reach them by phone or personal message rather than bulk email.
- Lead with a physical product sample rather than a written pitch — a scent category is hard to sell through description alone.
- Use faster, lower-cost shipping from a non-Spanish origin point as a stated logistics advantage over the existing European hub.
- Build a simple funnel tracker (contact reached, touch made, response, sample sent, order placed) so early traction reads as a count, not an impression.
- Approach the trading hub for sample stock once there is a first real response to point to, rather than requesting a marketing budget on an unproven hypothesis.
- Hold off on paid outreach at scale, bulk cold email, or rebuilding the agent's abandoned e-commerce backend until a channel is proven on a small batch.
No sales outcome to report yet. The engagement covered market mapping, contact verification and a diagnosis of why the agent's existing sales approach was stalling in this market — not execution of the resulting outreach plan.