Business Development 2015 - 2016

Outsource Kosovo

Business Development B2B Partnerships

The challenge

Kosovo had good developers, designers, and marketers. What it did not have was a way for a company in Germany or the US to find them and believe the work would be good. The talent was real and completely invisible from the outside.

What I did

I ran business development, which sounds like a title and was mostly conversations. Qualify the prospect, run a discovery call that gets past a budget number to an actual scope, structure the agreement, and say no when the fit is wrong. Behind that, a front door: a web presence that made the case to an international buyer without overselling, and an intake pipeline that scoped leads before anyone burned a week on them.

Results

  • A repeatable pipeline: lead comes in, gets scoped, gets matched to the right local product, web, or marketing people
  • Agreements that defined who does what, what done means, and what happens when it slips, which is where outsourcing relationships usually break
  • A qualification step that filtered bad-fit work early, because a bad match costs twice: once on the project, once on the reputation of every other supplier here

Kosovo has a lot of good developers, designers, and marketers. What it did not have was a way for a company in Germany or the US to find them and believe the work would be good.

Outsource Kosovo existed to close that gap. I ran business development, which sounds like a title and was mostly conversations.

Finding prospects was the easy part. The hard part was the discovery call, because most companies asking about outsourcing do not actually know what they want. They know a number they want to spend and a problem they are tired of. Getting from that to a scope somebody can deliver takes real questions and the willingness to say no when the fit is wrong. A bad match costs you twice: once on the project, once on the reputation of everyone else here.

I structured the agreements too. Who does what, what done means, what happens when it slips. Boring documents that prevent expensive misunderstandings.

The other half was the front door. A web presence that made a case to an international buyer without overselling, plus an intake pipeline that qualified leads before anyone burned a week on them. Lead comes in, gets scoped, gets matched to the right local product, web, or marketing people. Simple system, deliberately, because a complicated one would not have been used.