{
  "id": 6425438,
  "title": "Selling to Corporate Giants – Tessa Clarke on taking 3.5 years to land Tesco",
  "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/09/09/selling-to-corporate-giants-tessa-clarke-on-taking-3-5-years-to-land",
  "topic": "business",
  "section": "Business",
  "published": "2026-09-09T13:52:25.000Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "City AM",
    "slug": "city-am",
    "url": "https://www.cityam.com/selling-to-corporate-giants-tessa-clarke-on-taking-3-5-years-to-land-tesco/"
  },
  "original_language": "en",
  "account": "Tessa Clarke spent three and a half years trying to secure a deal with Tesco, while another major retailer took six years and a third is still in pilot stage after eight years. At the SCALE Summit in London, Tessa Clarke discussed the challenges of selling to large corporations with HelloFresh co-founder Hamish Shephard. She emphasized that it is a slow process that rarely follows the founders' original plan, and suggests that betting everything on closing one big commercial relationship is an unnecessary risk. Tessa advises that scaleups should gather evidence first and prove their concept on a small scale before approaching large corporations. She also stressed the importance of gaining internal support at the C-suite level before engaging with large corporations, as the pace of deal negotiations accelerates once a commitment is made. Tessa further highlighted that a personal introduction to a CEO may not necessarily speed up the process, and suggested that the sales team should work on building relationships with lower-level employees while the founders directly approach top executives.",
  "summary": "Tessa Clarke spent three and a half years trying to sign Tesco. Another large retailer took her six years and a third is still at the pilot stage after eight. In a fireside chat at SCALE Summit in London, Tessa talked to HelloFresh co-founder Hamish Shephard about the reality of selling into large corporates. It’s [...]",
  "key_points": [],
  "editors_take": null,
  "illustration": null,
  "coverage": {
    "outlets": 1,
    "also_reported_by": []
  },
  "ai_generated": true,
  "disclaimer": "Summaries, key points and the editor’s take are written by software from other outlets’ reporting and may contain errors — always check the linked original."
}