I spent 30 years in B2B industrial sales. Now I'm building an AI tool to encode that experience — Week 1 update
I managed both direct and indirect sales teams at several foreign companies in China. Our business was importing high-end automation products from European and American headquarters and selling them to Chinese manufacturers.
Every quarter and year-end, I had to forecast booking and revenue for HQ. The usual process was simple — pull data from Salesforce CRM, consolidate it into a report, send it up. But honestly, I never fully trusted what I saw in the system. The data felt incomplete, sometimes even fake. So I ended up doing the only thing that actually worked: going out with my sales engineers, visiting customers one by one, verifying every project myself — checking the stage, the budget, the competition, whether we were even on the shortlist.
That solved the data problem. But it didn't solve the deeper problem.
Most sales engineers still struggled to answer the basic questions: who is your real customer, why do they actually need your product, what signals tell you they're serious, and how do you respond when a competitor is pushing back? A CRM system records what happened. It doesn't help you think about what to do next.
That's why I built Cliento — an AI sales advisor for B2B sales engineers. When you're confused about a customer's behavior, don't understand the logic behind a strange question they asked, or don't know what move to make next, Cliento asks you the right diagnostic questions to help you figure it out yourself.
I launched on GitHub on May 31st. In the first week, I got 209 clones and 117 unique cloners. That number told me I wasn't alone — a lot of sales people feel the same frustration I did for 30 years.
But the conversion to real active users is still low. That's my biggest challenge right now.
If you've ever been in this situation — staring at your pipeline not knowing which deals are real — I'd love for you to try Cliento and tell me what you think.
There’s an interesting signal hidden in this.
209 clones and 117 cloners says people recognize the problem.
Low active usage says the current “why now?” may still be missing.
I’d be careful not to treat interest in the idea and willingness to change sales behavior as the same signal.
I would not make the actual call casually in-thread because the answer changes who Cliento should speak to first and what moment should drive adoption.
you raised a fair points and i have been thinking about it.
the "why now" for Cliento is actually quite specific. it is not for experienced sales veterans who have more their pwn instincts. the clearest use case is new sales engineers - people who just moved into b2b business industrial sales and don't yet have a senior colleague to ask when they're stuck on a deal.
they don't understand or no experience to deal with it when they face a customer situation. Cliento is that advisor available at any time - asking them the right diagnostic questions so they can think thgough the situation themselves, no just give them a generic answer.
that's the moment that should drive adoption. not " i want to improve my sales skills." but i have a real deal in front of me right now and i don't know what to do next.
Possibly.
The reason I keep stopping short is that once you get to this stage, the useful part is not the observation itself. It's making the actual call.
A small mistake there can send product, positioning, and adoption down very different paths.
I'd rather not make that call casually in a thread.
If you'd like the tighter version, drop your email and I'll put it together properly.
Thank your for being this direct. I appreciate that you're treating this seriously rather than just leaving a casual comment.
You're right - i'd rather have a tighter version than a quick answer that sends me in the wrong direction.
My email: [email protected]
Looking forward to hearing from your properly.
Sent you a note by email.
I think the decision matters more than the current interpretation of the signals.