Notes from the field
Marketing operations, CRM and revenue systems, B2B partnerships, market entry and client retention. Field notes from Türkiye, India, the Gulf, Southeast Asia and Eastern Europe, written from the road rather than the textbook.
How to Find the First 40 Companies to Call in a New Market
A named list beats a market report. Here is the method for turning hiring signals into the first 40 companies worth calling in a new country.
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Five Things Worth Checking Before You Pick a Country, and Three Everyone Checks That Don't Matter
GDP growth and ease-of-doing-business rankings rarely predict market entry success. Five things that actually do, from two years running 30-country operations.
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Distributor, Direct Sales, or Agent: Which Fits Which Situation
Built a partner agent network from zero across India and South/Southeast Asia. Here is how to choose between distributor, agent, and direct sales models.
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Why Purchased Market Research Reports Sit on the Shelf, and What to Do Instead
A 40-page report on retail or banking trends rarely gets acted on. What analytics work in Dubai taught me about the missing link between insight and action.
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The First 90 Days in a New Market: A Week by Week Plan
A concrete week-by-week plan for the first 90 days entering a market, built on a cadence of roughly 15 calls a week, sustained over two years.
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Why Job Postings Are the Strongest Sales Signal
A job posting is a company committing real budget to a timeline. Why hiring data beats every other signal for finding companies ready to buy or expand.
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How to Find the Decision Maker Without Spending a Dime
No paid database, no subscription tool. Practical, free ways to find the actual decision maker in a new market, tested at trade fairs across Asia.
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How to Tell a Good Target List From a Bad One
Most target lists fail before the first email goes out. Here is how to score list quality with real numbers, not gut feeling.
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Apollo, Sales Navigator, and the Free Tools: What Actually Works
A real comparison of Apollo.io, LinkedIn Sales Navigator, and free tools like Hunter, based on actually using all three for market entry work.
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How to Write a Cold Email That Actually Gets a Reply
Real cold email examples from market entry work, plus the structure that gets replies instead of silence.
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What to Say in 300 Characters: The LinkedIn Connection Note
Real LinkedIn connection request examples that use every character with purpose, from building a partner network across two continents.
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Follow-Up Messages: How Many, How Far Apart, What to Say
A real follow-up sequence and cadence built from 1,500+ outreach calls, with example messages you can use as-is.
Read more →The Technical Setup That Keeps Cold Email Out of Spam
SPF, DKIM, DMARC, domain warm-up, and sending limits explained the way I actually set them up for market entry campaigns.
Read more →What to Cover on the First Call, and How to Split 30 Minutes
A real structure for a first market entry call, minute by minute, built from working retail, airline, hospitality, and banking clients.
Read more →Who Actually Buys in the Gulf: The Specification Chain and Who Holds the Budget
In the Gulf, the developer rarely holds the budget. A real buyer map from an attractions project: who specifies, who pays, who vetoes.
Read more →Finding a Partner in India: Why the First Three Meetings Go Nowhere
Why a warm first meeting in Delhi or Mumbai rarely leads anywhere. Notes from building a partner network in India from zero.
Read more →Exporting from Turkey: What the European Buyer Expects, and What They Never Ask Out Loud
CE marking is not one stamp. What a European industrial buyer really checks before signing, and what Turkish exporters miss.
Read more →Building an Agent Network in Southeast Asia: The Real Cost and the Real Timeline
Southeast Asia is not one market repeated six times. The real cost and timeline of building a partner agent network there.
Read more →Running Marketing Across 30 Countries From One Desk: What Actually Works
Two years running marketing across sixty offices in thirty countries: what stayed local, what moved to the center, and why.
Read more →Before the Trade Fair: How to Get Appointments Booked, and How to Behave on the Floor
The fair is mostly decided before the doors open. How to book real appointments in advance and behave on the floor.
Read more →Running One HubSpot Instance Across 60 Offices
Pipeline design, custom properties, permissions and the adoption work that decides whether anyone actually uses the CRM. Plus the two things I would do differently.
Read more →The CRM Implementation Checklist I Wish I Had Started With
Twenty steps in the order the decisions actually arrive: what to settle before you buy, what to migrate, what to leave behind, and why parallel running kills rollouts.
Read more →Marketing to Sales Handoff: Where the Leak Actually Is
Most B2B pipelines leak at the handoff, not at the top. The four places it happens, the metrics that tell the truth, and the thirty minute meeting that fixes most of it.
Read more →The Marketing Plan That Survives Ten Time Zones
One shared view, filled in locally. What each office reports, the asynchronous cadence behind it, and how off-plan markets surface in month two instead of quarter three.
Read more →Loyalty Programmes: Why Most of Them Buy Nothing
Most programmes discount the customers who would have bought anyway. What to measure instead, tiers people actually care about, and the B2B version nobody calls loyalty.
Read more →Why B2B Clients Actually Leave (And the Boring Habits That Keep Them)
Clients rarely leave over price. The real churn signals, the month three problem nobody plans for, and the unglamorous habits that keep accounts renewing.
Read more →Doing Business in India: Seven Things Nobody Tells You
Two years living and working in India. Why business starts at the third meeting, how price sensitivity gets misread, and what actually builds trust.
Read more →How to Build a B2B Partner Network From Zero
150+ partnerships later: how to find the first ten partners, what to offer them, how to onboard at scale, and why signed partners is the wrong metric.
Read more →Selling in the Gulf: How B2B Deals Actually Close
From 250+ companies reached across the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Türkiye: who has to vouch for you, why the two markets are not one, and when speed actually arrives.
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Doing Business in Türkiye: What Foreign Companies Get Wrong
Meeting culture, why olur is not yes, invisible hierarchies, payment terms that decide deals, and the calendar that quietly kills quarters.
Read more →What I Actually Do in a New Market (And What I've Stopped Doing)
An afternoon with a tour operator in Sri Lanka taught me more than six weeks of research. Thirteen countries later, here is what survived, and the three habits I dropped along the way.
Read more →Two Years in Asia: Building Across Borders
Thirteen countries, 105+ B2B partnerships and an MBA in India. A photo essay on two years of global operations, business development and partnership building across Asia and Eastern Europe.
Read more →What 150+ Partnerships Across 3 Countries Taught Me About Trust
Speed impresses, but consistency wins. Five lessons from building B2B partner networks in Türkiye, India and the UAE, and why the relationship really starts after the contract is signed.
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