What selling 11,000 pies taught me about B2B sales

In November 2021 I started Nonna Tina’s, an Italian-inspired pie business in Sydney. The idea was simple: take Nonna Tina’s pasta sauces and put them in pastry. Nonna Tina, Concettina, was born in Calabria in 1935, and her cooking is the reason the business exists.

I had spent years selling software to businesses, and I assumed pies would be a completely different game. They weren’t. Since then we’ve sold more than 11,000 pies and catered for teams at companies like TikTok, Stan, Airtasker and DocuSign. Almost everything that worked was something I already knew from B2B sales, just with pastry.

1. Let them taste it

Before we sold a single pie, the prototypes went to taste testers. My first dough, a Maltese pastizzi-style pastry, tasted great but couldn’t be made at scale, so we switched to puff and shortcrust. Feedback first, scale second. It’s the same idea behind design partners in software: let real buyers shape the product before you build it for everyone.

Corporate catering worked the same way. Nobody orders lunch for a whole office from a menu they’ve never tried, so we offered office managers sample packs. Getting the pies in front of the people who would eat them was the fastest way to an order. That’s a free trial or a good demo in software terms: lower the risk for the buyer and let the product do the selling. If your sales process asks buyers to commit before they’ve experienced anything, you’re making it harder than it needs to be.

2. Find the person who actually buys

In corporate catering, the CEO doesn’t pick lunch. The office manager does, and their reputation is on the line every time they book a supplier. Make them look good and they’ll book you again and recommend you. B2B is the same. The person with the title isn’t always the person who runs the process, and the champion who has to live with the decision matters as much as the one who signs it. I cover this in more depth in Know your buyer.

3. Let someone else say you’re good

Telling people your pies are great is marketing. A medal is proof. At Australia’s Best Pie & Pastie Competition 2023, run by the Baking Association of Australia with more than 1,500 entries, our Bolognese pie won gold in the Flavoured Beef Pie category, and our Chicken Boscaiola and Eggplant Parmigiana both took silver.

Other people’s reactions did just as much. Former NRL players Willie Mason and Justin Horo filmed themselves trying a Chicken Boscaiola pie, and the You Wouldn’t Pod crew taste-tested the range live on their podcast. A 60-second clip of someone else enjoying your product beats any ad you can write about yourself.

Third-party credibility (awards, reviews, case studies, a recognisable client list) does more selling than anything you say about yourself. It’s also exactly what AI assistants look for when they decide who to recommend, which is why it features in our guide to getting recommended by AI.

4. The event is the easy part

One trade expo gave us more than 300 buyer leads. The expo was the easy part. The value was all in the follow-up: fast, personal, and organised enough that no lead went cold. I’ve seen the same pattern at every software event I’ve worked: the companies that win are rarely the ones with the biggest stand, they’re the ones with a follow-up plan before the doors open. It’s why always a next step, always a follow-up is one of my 22 sales principles.

5. Repeat orders beat new orders

We built up 35 corporate catering clients, and the business got easier the moment they started reordering without being chased. Retention is the cheapest growth there is. In software we call it net revenue retention. In catering it’s just “they booked again”. Either way, the work you do after the first sale decides whether you have a business.

6. Know your story in 60 seconds

In 2024, Nonna Tina’s was one of 30 businesses selected to pitch to Gordon Ramsay and Janine Allis on Food Stars. Nothing sharpens your pitch like knowing you’ll get one shot in front of people who have heard thousands.

Ours fitted in a breath: Nonna’s pasta sauces, in pastry, with more real filling in every pie. By our own measure, our pies ran at about 55% filling to 45% pastry, when the industry average sits nearer 35:65. A clear story with one number people remember. If you can’t explain who you help, why it matters and why you, in under a minute, your buyers will struggle to explain it to their boss.

The lesson underneath all of it

Selling to businesses isn’t about the product category. It’s about lowering risk for the buyer, making your champion look good, proving it with someone else’s words, following up properly, and keeping the customers you win. Pies or platforms, it’s the same job. If you want the full version, it’s all in my Sales Philosophy.