How to Sell to Mining Companies Before the Portal Opens

To sell to mining companies, reach the site buyer first and corporate procurement second. The people who feel the problem work at the mine. They are maintenance superintendents, plant managers, reliability engineers and HSE (health, safety and environment) managers. The people who run the vendor process sit in procurement and control the supplier portal.

At the largest miners, strangers cannot get into that portal. Access to BHP's contract system comes by invitation from BHP Procurement (BHP). Newmont makes a company a registered supplier only by invitation (Newmont).

I have no mining client case to show you, and I won't invent one. What follows combines the miners' own supplier pages with how we build outbound for industrial companies. The route has four steps:

1. Map who at the site uses what you sell, and who in procurement approves the vendor.
2. Get your prequalification file ready before the first email goes out.
3. Open a conversation with the site contact on LinkedIn, then follow up by email.
4. Register when procurement invites you, with the paperwork already done.

Before any of that, check that mining is big enough for your deal size. Run the deal-size and market-size math before anyone writes copy: the market-sizing check shows how.

Who actually buys at a mine site?

A mine buys in two places. The site feels the pain: a pump that eats wear parts, a conveyor that stops the plant, a hazard the safety team flagged. Procurement owns the process: approved vendors, tenders, contract terms and purchase orders.

Titles change from miner to miner, and at some operations a mining contractor runs the site and controls the budget. So I skip title lists and start from the jobs a supplier already won, asking who actually pushed each one through. Then I search for those exact titles and cut the bare "manager" label.

Decision rule: if nobody at the site knows your name, start at the site. If one site already buys from you, write to the category manager and name that site in the first line. A message written for "the mining industry" reaches nobody in particular.

How does mining supplier registration really work?

At large miners, registration is where a deal ends up, not where it starts. Someone inside has to want you first.

BHP lists several ways in. They include an invitation to tender, innovation challenges and, for local and Indigenous suppliers, a Local Buying Program (BHP). Behind them sits GCMS. BHP uses it to run tenders for goods and services worldwide and to manage all its commercial contracts (BHP GCMS supplier guide).

New suppliers onboard in GCMS, BHP's contract system, and open an SAP Business Network (Ariba) account, the e-trading platform. A free standard Ariba account is the minimum for trading electronically with BHP (BHP).

Newmont asks suppliers to complete a Supplier Risk Prequalification Survey every year and states that prequalifying does not guarantee future work (Newmont). It pays only for work covered by a valid PO (services can also run on a service order), and it is moving supplier transactions onto the SAP Ariba Network.

• A vendor number with no sponsor at a site is an empty account. Registration is never the goal of your sales effort.
• Never start a trial, a delivery or a paid site visit until a PO or service order number is in writing.

Why do mining suppliers need outbound before the portal?

Invitations come from people. A category manager sends the link because a site asked for you, or because a tender opened in your category and your name was already familiar. Outbound is how your name gets there.

Mining punishes vague offers. "Industrial solutions for mining" describes a company. "Reline crews for SAG mills at copper and gold operations" is an offer a maintenance superintendent recognizes in one line. I ask suppliers to commit to one offer and one buyer for 12 months before they judge the result. I explain why in the case for a single offer to a single buyer.

The first message sells a conversation. Nobody at a mine buys a pump or a service contract from a cold email, and pitching the whole company in message one buries the reason to reply. Ask for 15 minutes about one problem.

Set your target to match. Calls come out of conversations, so my monthly target is conversations started.

Which compliance checks block mining deals early?

A site contact who wants you will still hand you to a screening process.

Rio Tinto says suppliers may be pre-screened to prove they meet baseline standards, anti-corruption and ethics among them (Rio Tinto). Its Supplier Code of Conduct sets expectations on safety, human rights, ethical business, Indigenous and local communities, the environment and legal compliance.

After an award, it may ask for details of your safety practices, your insurance and the qualifications of your company and staff, and it says it may decline suppliers who fall short.

BHP makes its minimum requirements for suppliers a precondition for any business (BHP). Those requirements include its health, safety, environment and community (HSEC) standards, plus human rights and business conduct. Anyone working on a BHP site has to set up a contractor profile to use its Learning Management System.

Some buyers run the screening through a third party. ISNetworld gathers, checks and tracks contractor and supplier data on safety, health, sustainability, finances and procurement (ISNetworld). Its own review team checks the documents against regulatory and hiring client requirements.

A real questionnaire shows how specific this gets. Torngat Metals' prequalification form covers several areas (Torngat Metals):

• previous mining project experience
• your HSE management system
• a written code of conduct and anti-bribery policy, and whether staff are trained on it
• any dealings with government officials
• proof of at least CA$5 million in commercial general liability insurance

Prequalification readiness checklist for your sales team, before the first email:

1. Insurance certificates at the highest limits your target mines name.
2. A written HSE management system you can send as one file.
3. Your code of conduct and anti-bribery policy, with training records.
4. A project list with mining work first, then your closest industrial or construction jobs.
5. Qualifications and inductions for everyone who would go on site.
6. A free standard SAP Ariba account, set up before anyone asks.
7. An account on any screening platform your target mines name.
8. One person who owns the file and can answer a survey within days.

Have your broker and lawyer confirm insurance limits and policy wording. This is not legal advice.

What should a mining supplier message say first?

If mining outreach gets no replies, check the offer before the list. Once it is built around one buyer and one use case, the same sending volume produces more replies.

The first touch follows four rules:

• One use case at one type of operation.
• One proof point inside the message. I put a past result straight into the email instead of linking to a brochure.
• One small ask: 15 minutes about one problem.
• Short, plain and human. A maintenance planner deletes anything that smells like a template in two seconds.

I go deeper on proof placement in fitting a case study into one line of a cold email.

Here is an invented illustration, not an SCG result: a reline contractor writing to a maintenance planner.

Subject: reline hours at your concentrator

Hi Daniel, you plan the mill relines at the concentrator, so every extra shutdown hour lands on your schedule. On our last reline at a copper concentrator, pre-staged liners and a second shift handed the mill back ahead of schedule. Our crew already holds the inductions copper sites ask for. Would 15 minutes next week be useful, before your next shutdown plan is locked?

It names one job, one past result, one site requirement and one ask, in under 70 words. The LinkedIn connection note can be shorter still:

Hi Daniel, my team works with maintenance planners at copper and gold concentrators on mill relines. Good to connect.

How should mining suppliers build the target account list?

Large miners are few, and each one runs many sites. I start every industrial list from the companies already paying the supplier.

Then I look for mine operations that match them on commodity, size, mining method and region.

A short list of famous names will not carry you. Volume negates luck. I treat 50 to 100 perfect-fit contacts a month as a bet on timing, because at any moment people are busy, away or not buying. You need quality and volume together, and in mining volume comes from depth: several titles per site, every site a miner runs, mid-tier miners, and the contractors that run operations for owners.

How I build the list:

• Titles: keep maintenance, reliability, plant, HSE and procurement category titles. I remove assistant, associate and plain manager titles from every list.
• Sources: I build from Sales Navigator, Apollo, ZoomInfo, UpLead and RocketReach, never from a scraped or bought file.
• Verification: my team verifies every address and keeps the bounce rate under 0.5%.
• Territory: give each parent miner to one rep, along with every site contact under it. Procurement usually sits centrally, and two reps writing to the same category manager looks careless.

My step-by-step for the build is in making a lead list worth sending to.

What does a realistic mining supplier outbound plan look like?

Treat site outreach, procurement outreach and portal registration as three separate jobs. Each has its own trigger.

Here is each step in practice:

1. Map the buyers. Use the titles above and give each miner one owner in a CRM. Any CRM works as long as every lead has an owner.
2. Prepare the file. Finish the readiness checklist. Set up SPF, DKIM and DMARC on every sending domain before volume goes out.
3. Open conversations. Connect on LinkedIn first, so the email arrives after a LinkedIn touch. Plan at least 5 to 6 touches across both channels, with real days between them. The third follow-up tends to land. Running LinkedIn and email as a single sequence covers the handover.
4. Register on invitation. When a site contact asks procurement for you, send your file that same week.

Judge the first months by conversations started with site contacts. Mines buy on their own procurement calendar. Your job is to be the familiar name when the invitation goes out.

This week, pull the last five jobs you won at a mine or heavy industrial site. Next to each, note who first asked for you, by job title. That page is the start of your list.

If you want help reading them, book a call and we can do it together.