I help technical founders grow sales with confidence, so the business stops depending on you to win every deal.
The customers who use it love it. The market clearly wants what you've made. But every push for growth still lands on your desk.
The real problem isn't you. It's that your growth depends entirely on you.
That's the bottleneck. It's stressful, it carries real risk, and it's lonely at the top of it. The good news is it's fixable, and I've sat exactly where you are.
In 2002 I co-founded Emendo, a healthcare analytics company that improved patient flow in hospitals around the world. I trained as an industrial engineer, not a salesperson. But someone had to sell, so it became me, from our very first deal through to multimillion dollar international contracts.
The truth? For a long time I was selling as if my life depended on it, learning entirely by doing. It was stressful and it was lonely. I made just about every mistake going.
Then I worked out a handful of simple fundamentals that changed everything. In late 2012 we sold Emendo to McKesson, a Fortune 10 healthcare company, delivering around 15x returns to our investors.
I stayed on with the acquirer until 2015. Since then I've helped 40+ tech companies across New Zealand and the wider world do the same: grow sales without burning out the founder. I also chair The Clown Doctors NZ Charitable Trust and mentor founders through their own version of the climb. Giving back matters to me. It's part of how I work.
I keep this simple. Five steps, every time.
We find where your growth actually breaks. Pitch, pipeline, process, people, tools. You walk away with a clear picture, in priority order.
We turn that into a roadmap you can act on. The few things that matter most, in the right sequence.
We construct the sales engine side by side. The pitch, the process, the CRM, the playbook your team can actually follow.
We run it on real deals. I'm in the trenches with you and your team, winning live, not theorising from the sidelines.
Your team takes the wheel. By the time I step out, growth no longer depends on you being in every deal.
Simply put: no mystery, no lock-in. Just a clear path to a sales engine that runs whether or not you're in the room.
Start with the Audit and we'll work out which one fits where you are now.
Get confident selling, fast, using your real pipeline as the classroom. Learn by doing, on the deals that matter.
Senior sales leadership, part time, without the full-time VP price tag. I run your sales day to day, coach the team, and report to your board.
Fix the CRM, tooling and dashboards so you have clean data and systems your team actually uses. HubSpot, Zoho, Salesforce, Apollo.
Rebuild your value proposition, narrative and target market so you're not pitching into the wind.
A practical, hands-on program that teaches founders and small teams the fundamentals of selling technology.
Taking great tech beyond New Zealand is its own challenge. New markets, new buyers, new rules, and plenty that doesn't translate from the home market. It's also the work I love most, and it's a big enough job that it has its own home.
A selection of the founders and teams I've helped grow.
AFAM had 20+ years and a strong reputation, but growth was organic and hard to repeat. Working together, they put real structure under their sales: target sectors chosen on data, a repeatable approach, and the confidence to take ground from a larger competitor. They came away able to run that growth engine themselves.
SwalTech, a New Zealand clinical-tech team, had never sold outside the country. With Nick embedded as their first sales resource, and on the plane with them to Australia, they built a commercialisation approach, a CRM and a segmentation strategy, closed their first international sale, and stopped seeing sales as something to fear.
"Nick came directly into the executive team and made connections across the whole business while setting up and leading the commercial function. A pleasure to work with."
"Nick brings a wealth of knowledge and experience across all areas of growing and scaling a tech business, and his practical and empathetic approach makes him amazing to work with."
"He's an amazing sounding board, guiding us through the complexities of sales cycles. And if you ever need pitch coaching, ask Nick. His coaching helped us win multiple awards."
"Before doing the sales programme I was not very confident in selling. Nick has given me more confidence in selling and in my approach to business."
I joined the Marketing 4 Business Podcast to talk through the simple selling fundamentals behind a multimillion dollar exit, including the Clean Sheet Selling approach I still use today.
Let's be honest about the risk. Most tech companies don't make it. Many founders end up putting personal savings, even the family home, on the line to keep going. That's a heavy thing to carry.
You don't have to carry all of that alone.
That's more than a calmer business. It's the freedom to build something that lasts, make the difference you set out to make, and have real choices about your future.
A short, free guide drawn straight from what turned me from a terrified technical founder into someone who closed multimillion dollar deals. Read it in 15 minutes. Use it this week.
A free 30-minute session. Tell me where you are and where you want to get to. Together we'll pinpoint the top 3 things stalling your sales growth and the order to fix them.
It's yours to keep and act on, whether or not we work together.
No pitch. No pressure. Just a clear, useful conversation.
Prefer email? nick@nickburns.nz
Or call +64 21 379 793