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, then the 14th-largest company on the Fortune 500, delivering around 15x returns to our investors.
I stayed on with the acquirer until 2015. Since then I've helped 60+ 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.
Whatever stage you're at, there's a way in - from a first look at what's holding sales back, to running your whole revenue engine alongside you.
Free - about 6 minutes
See where your sales engine is leaking, in about six minutes.
Free
The 5 shifts that grow tech sales without more of your hours.
Free - 30 minutes
Bring your scorecard result. We'll agree the one thing to fix first and map your next two or three moves in order. You keep the plan, whether or not we work together.
From $1,500 NZD ex GST
The plan, done for you: a scored assessment, a 90-minute read-out, and a prioritised, costed 90-day plan you keep.
Guarantee: we find at least 3x the fee in recoverable revenue, or you don't pay.
From $6,000 - 4-6 weeks
Rebuild your value proposition, narrative and target market so you're not pitching into the wind.
From $6,000 - 4-6 weeks
Fix the CRM, tooling and dashboards so you have clean data and systems your team actually uses. HubSpot, Zoho, Salesforce, Apollo.
From $790 - self-paced
A practical, hands-on program that teaches founders and small teams the fundamentals of selling technology.
From $1,800 / seat - live
Learn it live with a small group, working on your real deals.
From $600 / month
A monthly group clinic, playbooks and dashboards, a community, and your questions answered between sessions.
From $2,000 / month
Everything in the Clinic, plus a monthly 1:1, a quarterly plan, and direct access. Limited spots.
From $7,995 / month - 2-3 companies at a time
Senior sales leadership, part time, without the full-time VP price tag. I run sales day to day, coach the team, and report to your board.
Ready to take it global? Explore nickburns.world →
Get your current scorecard and we'll work out where you are and what fits.
Prices are in NZD and exclude GST. They're indicative - your exact scope is set after the Scorecard.
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.
Founders usually want to know one thing before we talk: have I done the job they need doing? Here is the honest answer, grouped by the kind of work rather than the year.
I take the sales leadership seat for a fixed period and run it day to day.
A product that works, and no repeatable way to sell it yet.
What to charge, how to structure it, and how to move people onto it.
The plumbing underneath the selling. Clean data and a pipeline you can trust.
Getting the company to say the thing that makes a buyer stop.
A product that works at home and an ambition somewhere else.
Sometimes the answer is one person getting better at a job nobody trained them for.
The view from the table, and the papers that get taken seriously at it.
Companies appear under more than one heading where the engagement covered more than one kind of work. Tell me what you are trying to fix and I will tell you straight whether it is something I have done before.
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. Bring your scorecard result and we'll agree the one thing to fix first, then map your next two or three moves in order.
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