Symptoms you may be seeing
- New buyers reach you only through references and old contacts.Buyers who do not know you cannot find, read or trust enough on your website to put you on a shortlist.
- You hear about large projects after the shortlist has been made.Contractors and consultants shortlist from what they can check on screen: capacity, past jobs, approvals.
- A smaller competitor is invited to quote where you are not.His website states what yours leaves out. Buyers judge the size of a supplier by what is written, not by what is true.
The moment it matters
A consultant is asked to accept your make on a project like one you have supplied before. He wants to see that earlier job: what, how much, for whom, and how it went.
What the buyer sees
A slider of twenty logos: car makers, a metro corporation, two public sector companies. No name is written in text. The "Our Clients" page shows the same logos, larger.
He cannot tell whether you supplied the car maker a plant's worth of material or a single repair, last year or fifteen years ago.
What it costs you
Proof of similar work is often what moves a supplier from "possible" to "shortlisted", especially for contractors and consultants who carry the risk of recommending you.
When a buyer asks an AI assistant which companies have supplied a kind of project, the assistant looks for pages that say so in words, and a logo has none.
What the buyer is asking at this point
"Have you done a job this size before?"
He is checkingThe real question behind capacity. Proof beats claims.
A good answerA project page for a job of similar size, with the tonnage, area or quantity and the year.
"Who are your main clients?"
He is checkingWhether companies like his, or bigger, buy from you.
A good answerClients named in text with their permission, or described by sector and size where they may not be named.
"What did you supply to them, and when?"
He is checkingWhether a logo means a plant's worth of material or one repair order.
A good answerProject pages: what, where, for whom, why you were chosen, one figure and the year.
All 62 questions industrial buyers ask, with good answers →
Check your own website in two minutes
- Are your main clients named anywhere on the site in text, not only as logos?
- Is there at least one page that describes a supply: what, where, for whom, the year and a quantity?
- Where a client may not be named, is the job still described, by sector and size?
What good looks like
- Project pages: what was supplied, where, for whom, why you were chosen, and one figure (tonnage, area or quantity), with your own photographs.
- Clients named with their consent, or described by sector where they may not be: "a Japanese two-wheeler maker's plant in Haryana".
- Each project linked from the products it used, and each product page showing the projects behind it.
- Five or six well-described projects to begin with, then one more each month.
How this gets put right
This problem rarely comes alone. It usually shares a cause with others on this list: a website written once, years ago, without the facts the plant and the sales team hold. Patching one page at a time seldom changes what a buyer concludes.
The AI Search Visibility Blueprint shows how far your own site has this and every related problem, how Google and the AI assistants read it today, and what to correct in what order. A Website Transformation rebuilds the site from your own documents so the whole set is put right together, and measures what moves each month.
Written by Arun Agrawal, founder of EbizIndia and author of Before the Buyer Calls, a free guide to what industrial buyers check on a supplier's website.