SOFiSTiK AG
Georg Pircher
Discovery Call 1
28 July 2026, 13:00 UK / 14:00 CEST, 30 min
Get the pain first-hand. Leave with the working session booked.
Everything ECG knows about Georg's problem arrived second-hand through Tom. Georg has never written one sentence about it himself. The deck he has seen promises that you bring a first-pass target map to this call. So run it in this order: he states and sizes the pain in his own words, you sketch the map out loud and let him correct it, then you book the working session live before goodbye.
Pre-flight
Before the call
Eight days of silence since his RSVP. Nothing else has ever been sent to him.
- Where: Google Meet dxd-kkdv-srt, dial-in (GB) +44 20 3937 0775 PIN 156718273. All attendees accepted. Invite went from dan@enquirerai.com.
- What he has seen: only the deck, sofistik-georg.enquirerconsulting.com, sent 16 Jul and again in the invite. Skim it before the call so you never contradict your own slides.
- The map to share on screen: sofistik-buyer-map.enquirerconsulting.com. Live Reachable Buyer Map with banded counts (3,000+ US bridge specialists, 20 to 25k engineering leaders, 50k+ principals, 4,000+ BIM/VDC exact-title, 3,000+ Italy). This IS the promised first-pass map. Prospect-safe: no pricing, no stats, no client names.
- His window: he offered Tuesday 14:00 to 15:30 CEST. You hold the first 30 minutes. Your hard stop is 14:20 UK, Protexxa sync at 14:30 UK. If it runs hot, book the session rather than overrun.
- No-show cover: nothing has gone to him since 20 Jul. A one-line "Looking forward to 14:00 CEST" from dan.reeves@busenq.com this morning removes the risk. Your call.
- Identity note: the email thread ran from dan.reeves@busenq.com, the invite from dan@enquirerai.com. If he mentions it: same Dan, group mailboxes.
- Phone history: none. +43 316 68087412 is SOFiSTiK's public listing, we have never called him.
- Spelling, if you write anything: SOFiSTiK, lowercase i's. He has 25 years in this company's orbit and will notice.
The room
Who you're meeting
He is the loudest individual voice at SOFiSTiK. 11,191 LinkedIn followers, posting weekly.
Georg Pircher
- Role
- Director International Business Development. Not board. Board is Frank Deinzer and Stefan Maly.
- Base
- Graz office, Styria, Austria. Writes from Georg.Pircher@sofistik.de. Fluent, non-native English. Keep sentences short.
- Career
- 25+ years in structural software. RM Bridge at TDV in Graz 1996 to 2005, then ran ABES Pircher & Partner (a SOFiSTiK distribution partner) 2005 to 2012, then SOFiSTiK international sales. A bridge man to the bone.
- Very active. Last three posts: eLearning platform launch (27 Jul), bridge deck automation with TEDDY and Excel VBA (23 Jul), the 39-year anniversary (22 Jul). In 2023 he posted a GPT-4 "talk to your structural model" tutorial. He is AI-curious, not AI-skeptical.
- How he got here
- Tom Hardy's LinkedIn outreach. Georg replied 8 Jul, they spoke 16 Jul. He declined the magazine feature and asked for the AI lead-gen. Via Tom, unconfirmed: pain is "struggles to get leads, and the right ones", and "onboarding plus monthly was OK".
SOFiSTiK AG
- What
- German FEA, CAD and BIM software for structural and bridge engineering. Deep Autodesk Revit and Rhino integration. Bridge is the crown jewel.
- Size
- ~100 staff, 5,000+ customers, 11 locations, HQ Nuremberg. Own site states 19 million revenue (currency unstated). Founded 1987.
- Ownership
- 51% Mensch und Maschine Software SE since 2019, founders and management hold 49%. Not Nemetschek. Nemetschek owns SCIA, a competitor.
- Expansion
- Subsidiary-led, mostly one person per country: North America (Knoxville TN, 2021, Andres von Breymann, one employee on LinkedIn), India 2023, Italy Oct 2025, plus Finland, Middle East, Southern Africa.
- GTM today
- Pure demand capture: 30-day trial, webinars, YouTube, newsletter, resellers, conferences. Dynamics 365 CRM with no demand-gen stack around it. Zero open sales, BD or marketing roles.
- Fresh news
- SOFiSTiK 2027 released ~25 Jul with no press engine behind it. New eLearning platform just launched. Next event: Short and Medium Span Bridges conference, Vancouver, 4 to 7 Aug, next week.
First 90 seconds
Open on his words, not Tom's
No deck tour. He has read it or he hasn't, either way the deck is not the call.
Georg, good to finally meet you. Tom gave me the one-line version, but I'd rather hear it from you. Can we spend the first ten minutes on how SOFiSTiK actually wins new customers today, market by market? Then I'll show you the first pass of who we would go after for you, and you tell me where it's wrong.
Then stop and let him talk. If the moment fits, one light line: "The way we met is the product working. Tom's message to you was written for you, one person. You answered it." That is a true story and the whole pitch in one breath.
Discovery spine
Ask in this order
Numbers in amber map to the Call 1 sheet. Deepen with "tell me more" and "give me an example".
Walk me through how a new customer arrives today. Trial download, webinar, a reseller, a conference, a referral? Roughly what share does each bring?
Get the channel split in his words before you characterize anything.
Q1/Q6. Over-reliance on capture and partners
Tom told me the hard part is getting leads, and the right ones. Did he get that right? Which half hurts more, the volume or the right ones?
This converts hearsay into first-party pain. Make him own the sentence.
Q4. Volume vs quality diagnosis
Who is "the right one"? Which firms, and who inside them actually decides a software switch, the principal, the head of engineering, the BIM lead?
Feeds the map section directly. Mirror his vocabulary back.
Q2. Buying committee, roles
North America is five years in with one person on the ground. Italy is brand new. What has each market taught you about waiting to be found?
The subsidiary-led expansion is the wound. Let him describe the funnel lag himself.
Q6/Q7. Markets opened faster than pipeline
Vancouver is next week. How much of the year's new business rides on conferences like that, and what happens between them?
Make him count the conference dependency out loud. Do not attack it, it works, it just does not scale or schedule.
Q7. Trade-show reliance, senior time
What does a won customer look like, in first-year value and how long the decision takes?
You need this for the arithmetic later. Licence economics and cycle length, his numbers.
Q3. Deal value, cycle length
Have you ever tried to systemize outbound, a tool, an agency, an SDR? What happened?
Past failures predict today's objections. A "no, never" is its own answer: the channel is untouched.
Q8. Prior attempts, why they stalled
When someone downloads the trial or joins a webinar, who follows up, and where does that name live?
They run Dynamics 365. Ask, do not assert the stack. The eLearning platform just launched with no visible capture path, same question applies.
Q9. CRM graveyard, no owner
If warm conversations with the right firms started landing every week, market by market, who on your side takes them?
Bandwidth test. One-person subsidiaries can drown in success. This sets up the operator and handoff layer.
Q15/Q16. Capacity to receive
Besides you, who would be involved in bringing something like this in? And what has to be true in six months for you to call it the right decision?
Authority plus the success definition, verbatim. His answer is the headline of the proposal.
Q17/Q19. Deinzer? MuM? Capture his words
Synthesis checkpoint, say it back
"So the picture I'm hearing: the product sells itself once you're in the room, the trial and the webinars catch the people who already found you, but nobody is choosing who to get in front of, market by market. Is that fair?"
The promised deliverable
The first-pass map, out loud
His deck promised this. Deliver the shape today, the named list at the working session.
01
Markets
The one or two he names today. Obvious candidates: North America, five years in with one person, and Italy, opened October 2025. Home DACH stays untouched unless he asks.
02
Firms
Structural and bridge engineering consultancies, infrastructure and AEC design firms, detailing and precast specialists, contractors with real in-house engineering teams.
03
Roles
Principals and partners, heads of engineering, BIM managers and leads. The people who actually choose analysis software, researched engineer by engineer. No bought spray lists.
Say it this way
Here's the first pass. Structural and bridge consultancies, and the design firms with real engineering teams, in the one or two markets you care about most. The people we write to are the principals, the heads of engineering and the BIM leads, because that's who chooses the software. Every message is written for one engineer after the AI has read their work. Replies land with your team warm, and your CRM stays the system of record. Tell me which markets, and where that picture is wrong.
Forcing question
"If we proved one market first, which one would make the strongest case inside SOFiSTiK?"
Internal only
The offer shape to hold in your head
Press B before any screen share. Nothing here is said as a number today.
This is an engine-led deal, not the medical four-month unit
- What the evidence says they need: demand generation only. Their capture layer is genuinely good (trial, webinars, YouTube, docs, forum). The gaps are the right-fit map, the outbound engine, and the warm handoff into a CRM someone actually works. Do not pitch SEO, PR or web. Their weakness is not the website, it is that nobody is choosing targets.
- Commercial shape: onboarding build fee plus monthly run. That is the exact shape Georg already told Tom was acceptable. Say the model, never the number: "a fixed fee to stand it up, then a monthly to run it, scoped to what you need."
- Internal anchors, never spoken: comparable software-sector client runs at 5k GBP per month on the run side, ten seats framing. Dan's stated value anchor for a new client of that shape is 10k GBP per month. The four-month full-unit anchor (80k to 100k GBP) stays in reserve only if discovery opens much bigger gaps.
- Expansion logic: land the engine on one or two markets, prove it, then widen market by market. Each country MD is a future expansion seat.
If he pushes for a price today, adapted from the approved reply
It depends on what we'd actually build for you, so a number now would just be wrong. We run it as a fixed fee to stand it up, then a monthly to run it, scoped to what you need. Give me the working session and I'll give you a straight answer for your situation.
Scope note
"Onboarding plus monthly was OK" is Tom's relay, not Georg's written word. Treat it as a hypothesis to confirm, not an agreed term. And it caps nothing: scope is set by what discovery finds.
Claims discipline
What you can say, and how
Frame every number as "we have achieved, on strong campaigns". Never a forecast.
The deck numbers
$1M+ new business sold by clients. 3,500+ qualified conversations generated. 100,000+ decision makers reached. Tim Rath, COO, Innovative Radiology quote. Repeat these verbatim only, nothing new in writing.
The software comparable
A UK software-services company on this engine, all time since March: 12,000+ invites, 2,700+ accepted at 23 percent, 600+ replies, 177 interested conversations. Never name the client. State it as all-time, relationship-wide.
This meeting
Tom's individually written LinkedIn message reached a director with 11,000 followers who ignores sales noise for a living, and he booked a call. The mechanism sold itself once already.
Live responses
Keep the frame when challenged
Short answer, then back to diagnosis.
Engineers don't answer sales messages.
Agreed, they don't. Templates die on this audience, which is exactly why every message is written for one engineer after the AI reads their work. You answered Tom's. That is the standard, not the exception.
We grow through resellers and partners.
Keep them. Partners are credibility and reach, but they are not a controlled pipeline of the accounts you actually want. This runs alongside the partners, the trial and the webinars. Nothing gets replaced, and you own it at the end.
We already have a CRM and webinars.
That layer converts people who already found you. It cannot choose who finds you. We add the choosing layer, demand generation, and hand it over working, wired into the CRM you already run.
Send me a proposal with prices.
Use the approved price deflection in the offer shape section. Model, not number, then route to the working session where the answer is specific to what discovery found.
Is this just an agency?
No. We design the engine, staff it, run it until it works, then hand it over. You own it, including the playbook and the person running it. An agency rents you activity forever. We build then hand over.
We could do this in-house.
You could, over time. The honest cost is the ramp: lists, messaging, deliverability, follow-up discipline, all at once, while your team ships 2027. We stand it up proven, and at the end it is in-house, because you own it.
Can you even do this in Europe, GDPR?
For European targets the engine runs LinkedIn-first, one-to-one messages to named professionals, with suppression discipline built in. The compliance boundary is part of the build, per market. Happy to go deep on it in the working session.
Why did Tom pitch a magazine and now this?
Two parts of one group. The magazine is the media arm. You asked about the engine, so you got the founder of the engine. Same group, different tool for what you actually wanted.
Information discipline
Hold back, verified kill-list
These came out of adversarial verification on 16 Jul. Press B if sharing the screen.
Do not say these
"Struggles to get leads" is Tom's relay. Ask "did Tom get that right?", never "you told us that".
TDV was Heinz Pircher's firm and RM Bridge now sits with Bentley. His relationship to Heinz is unconfirmed. If he raises the lineage, ask with genuine interest. Never open it yourself.
Overstated. The source says not legally mandatory. If BIM mandates come up, let him teach you.
Unconfirmed as their reference. Bosporus and Leverkusen bridges are the safe ones.
51 percent Mensch und Maschine, founders hold the rest. Saying Nemetschek names their competitor's owner. Autodesk is a partner, never pitch around or against Autodesk.
No number today, even though Tom relayed the shape was fine. And no SEO, PR, video or web talk. Engine, map, handoff. That is the pitch.
Last five minutes
Book the working session live
No discovery call ends without the next call locked. Invite sent before you hang up.
Close on the named list, not on a proposal.
Georg, useful thirty minutes. Next step is a working session: I bring the map back as a named list for [his market], firm by firm, we walk it together, and you tell me where it's right and where it's wrong. If it fits, we agree scope and a start date there, and I'll give you straight commercial answers in that session. I can do [two windows]. Which works? I'll send the invite now so it's locked.
Then three quick captures before goodbye: the one pain sentence in his words, confirmed back. The best way to reach him between now and then. Who else should be in the session, his North America or Italy lead, or Deinzer if the decision runs through the board.
After the call: post-call Note to EspoCRM record 6a5928ff4ba512ef5 (stage to Discovery 1 Held), and the pod chat one-liner. The record is flagged stale since 20 Jul, this clears it.