An action-packed week in the life of a business development executive at Inzpire
03 Feb 23
InzpireBlogInzpire Culture
The activity of our business development (BD) team focuses on increasing Inzpire’s revenue from overseas contracts. They do this by engaging directly with current and potential customers overseas and by partaking in trade shows abroad, either stand-alone or collaboratively with our partners. This is all while developing wider relationships with UK government overseas trade representatives and the defence attaché network, who provide us with valuable business winning support.
With that in mind, Business Development Executive Alistair Howard talks us through a pretty typical overseas Inzpire BD trip, this time taking in German and Belgian engagements...
Toot toot; all change at Cologne Germany.
In trying to be economical, the week’s activity is pretty whistle-stop; fly-out Tuesday, meetings with QinetiQ (QQ) Germany Wednesday morning, on to Brussels, meetings Thursday, fly home in the evening. The bookings - flights, hotels, trains, buses (I love a bus) - are all mine to arrange. Hotels are generally speed booked, which is fine, but I have stayed in a few ‘Fawlty Towers’ type hotels as a result. Feel free to ask about the double-decker-bus-conversion hotel debacle anytime!
So, back to the trip and the first engagement with QQ Germany; a 120-ish-person organisation delivering several capabilities. They are looking for support from Inzpire in several areas including: our GECO Mission Support System; our Joint Terminal Attack Controller (JTAC) Mission Training Device (MTD); intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR); and other training and consultancy areas. They’re a great team, and there’s lots of potential for collaboration. Some of the meeting is to further develop previous discussion, and some to explore new collaborative activity. Follow-on activity will be tech-level discussion with Inzpire’s Mission Systems Division (my GECO knowledge only goes so far), and a show-and-tell session for Compact Agile Simulation Equipment (CASE) JTAC with QQ Germany representatives in Farnborough.
Discussing the virtues of the GECO Mission Support System with QinetiQ GmbH.
The second stop, Brussels, is for a meeting with the Belgian MOD, accompanied by my Belgian commercial intermediary (CI) Arrow Consultants. We engage CIs to represent us overseas, to promote our capabilities, and to help develop business opportunities. My CI in Belgium is outstanding, and worth a few words here. Arrow’s founder was Air Commodore Dennis Mitchell who was originally posted to Belgium after WWII to re-build the Belgian Air Force. His son Michael is Arrow’s current CEO, and his son Dennis is one of the company BD execs. They are a great team and extremely well connected to the Belgian MOD; rightly so. We’ve delivered ISR training in Belgium already, and this visit is all about electronic warfare (EW) training and their interest in GECO.
Meeting with Belgian MOD aircrew.
I really enjoy presenting GECO to interested parties. This time to a wide-ranging team from the Belgian MOD; a front-line pilot, a test-pilot ex-squadron commander, a logistics representative, the team in charge of mission systems, and those in charge of future capability development. After a two-hour session that squeezed my GECO knowledge to the limit, we’ll follow-up with some written Q&A, and then hopefully with deepening interest a meeting led by one of our GECO tech-experts (Sweety or Nick from Mission Support Systems and Services).
A concluding note from Brussels Airport
I’m now at Brussels Airport for the flight home, slightly weary after covering so many miles by aircraft, bus, car, train and taxi. I should be home by 9pm tonight, aside there’s a rolling flight delay, and I'm looking forward to the weekend. And what’s resulted from the trip? Significant BD activity to support QQ GmbH with two key contracts. The completion of final stages of negotiation on an EW training contract, and first-contact discussion with a new potential customer for GECO. The people along the way have been fabulous, and magnificently hospitable, and here’s a significant observation to finish on; all the folk I have engaged with (amplified by Michael from Arrow) have expressed their appreciation to Inzpire for taking the time to travel to meet and present face-to-face…. everyone seems threadbare with VTCs!
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