Chapter 6

Your three warm leads

These are worth more than the other 100 put together. Treat each as a project with an owner, a date and a next step, and do not let any of them drift into "we should catch up".

The play in one line
  • Barratt London: a £2,500 60-day pilot on up to three sites, bought by the divisional H&S lead on a purchase order, deliberately under the threshold that would send it to group procurement. Then the division; then, as a separate sale, the group.
  • The Menu Partners: the same pilot across three kitchens on the recall-notice story, converting to the £950 Company band. Fastest to close.
  • Fernham Homes: the £550 Company plan from day one, because they are small enough to just start. Your first logo.

Barratt London

What you need to know

  • A division of Barratt Redrow plc, the UK's largest housebuilder since the 2024 merger; London is a distinct division with its own leadership and large, subcontracted, multilingual sites.
  • Barratt Redrow centralises about 95% of procurement across ~160 group agreementsS28. A £2,500 pilot is below a divisional purchase-order threshold; a divisional annual plan may still be signable locally; the group is a second, longer sale (9–18 months, 8–12 stakeholders). Plan all three stages from the start and never pretend the third is not there.
  • They will already have an employee comms tool for staff. Your wedge is the subcontractor workforce on site, which those tools do not reach.

The play

  1. Ask your contact for the name of the HSEQ lead or a Senior Site Manager on one live site, not "someone in comms".
  2. Offer the £2,500, 60-day pilot on up to three sites (Chapter 3), the four criteria in writing, refund if activation and confirmed reach are missed.
  3. Run the toolbox-talk-record story: today it is paper, signatures and a filing cabinet; with TeamTalk it is a tap and a PDF, in every language on that site.
  4. Get the site's languages on day one and show the translated post in the first meeting.
  5. At day 60, ask for the reference quote and the division at the 1,001–2,000 band. Then start the group conversation the same week.
Lead timeS16: 6–12 weeks from first meeting to a signed pilot for a plc division; 5–9 months first touch to annual revenue. Start the DPA and the supplier folder the day they say yes in principle.

The Menu Partners

What you need to know

  • The Menu Partnership Ltd, a contract caterer based in BicesterS29; kitchens and front-of-house teams across client sites, a manager per site, a shift-based, multilingual workforce.
  • Their pain is regulatory notices that must reach every kitchen: allergen changes, hygiene procedures, product recalls. Proof of receipt is a food-safety audit asset.
  • Smaller and faster than a housebuilder: an operations director can decide.

The play

  1. Ask for the operations director or head of food safety.
  2. Lead with recalls: "when a supplier recalls a product, how do you know every kitchen has read it?"
  3. Offer the £2,500 60-day pilot on three kitchens, with the £950 Company band printed on the paper.
  4. Use group posts per site and company-wide must-reads; show the chase list.
  5. Convert at day 60 to the Company band for the whole estate. Your catering reference, in the sector that is growing.
Lead timeS16: 4–10 weeks to a signed pilot, 4–7 months to annual revenue for a single-contract caterer. Caterers move on client-contract cycles: ask when the next mobilisation is and be live for it.

Fernham Homes

What you need to know

  • A regional housebuilder in Kent and the South East; small enough that the managing director or construction director decides in a meeting.
  • Same site dynamics as Barratt, at a size where the whole company fits one plan.
  • Regional builders are proud of doing things properly and being easy to work with; that is the tone.

The play

  1. Meet the construction director. Bring a phone with a live tenant branded in their colours (the landlord admin does this in minutes).
  2. Offer the Company plan (£550 a month, up to 250 workers, all sites) from day one with a 60-day get-out. No pilot theatre; they are small enough to just start.
  3. Put every site on with the join card in one week; you do the onboarding in person.
  4. Ask for an introduction to their groundworks and scaffolding subcontractors, who also work for other builders.
Lead timeS16: 3–6 weeks to a decision, 3–5 months to revenue if they insist on a pilot; faster if they take the plan directly. Your fastest possible first logo.

What to ask each contact for, word for word

"I'm not asking you to buy anything. I'm asking for 25 minutes with the person who owns [toolbox talks / food safety notices] on one site, so I can show them a notice arriving in Polish, Romanian and English on a phone, with a record of who read it. If it isn't useful, I'll say so."

Order of attack

  1. Week 1Fernham Homes and The Menu Partners in the same week. Both can decide fast; you need a first logo and a first invoice before Barratt takes you seriously.
  2. Week 1–2Barratt London introduction requested. Supplier onboarding forms started the moment you have a name.
  3. Week 4–8Two live customers, one Barratt pilot agreed. Now the outbound list (Chapter 7) has a story: "live with a housebuilder and a caterer in the South East".