A promising meeting with a ministry. A well-connected intermediary. Favorable market conditions on paper. In international business development, it is easy to read these signals as momentum. Over eight years with Orofino Pharmaceutical Group, an Italian pharmaceutical manufacturer, working to open markets in the UAE, Syria, Iraq and Tunisia, I learned how often they are not.
The hardest part of international business development is not always opening doors. It is knowing which doors are worth walking through.
Opportunity is not readiness
Syria and Iraq taught me the most. In both, it quickly became clear that entering a market takes far more than identifying a commercial opportunity. Regulation, bureaucracy and the search for trustworthy relationships mattered as much as the product itself.
A market can look compelling in a presentation: a clear need, a supportive official, a gap competitors have not filled. The reality emerges only once you start working through its institutions, registration requirements and business networks. That is where you discover whether a market is open in practice, or only in principle.
Opportunity and readiness are two very different things. Confusing them is one of the most expensive mistakes a company can make.
A cooperative partner is not a verified partner
In unfamiliar markets, the local partner often determines whether you succeed. Over time, I learned to judge partners less by their promises or their connections, and more by how they worked. Were they willing to cooperate? Did the process become smoother with them, or more complicated? Could they genuinely help navigate regulatory requirements?
A good partner makes a complicated process more manageable. A poor one adds uncertainty to an environment that already has plenty.
But there is an important distinction here. A cooperative partner is not necessarily a verified, trustworthy one. Goodwill, responsiveness and an easy working relationship are valuable, yet they say little about a company's legal standing, financial capacity or regulatory track record.
Relationships matter enormously in international business. They should complement independent due diligence, never replace it.
Governments move at their own pace
Working with health ministries and public institutions added another layer. Public buyers often moved considerably slower than private companies, particularly where regulatory and compliance requirements were involved. Even genuine interest did not guarantee a predictable timeline.
For a business, that matters. Patience is part of the strategy, and so is compliance. Companies that plan around the pace of a private negotiation will find their timelines, cash flow and internal expectations under pressure.
Time is a commercial resource
One of the most recurring frustrations was investing significant time and effort in negotiations, only to see a potential deal canceled. Those experiences changed how I think about progress. Momentum in discussions does not mean a transaction will materialize.
The lesson was to assess feasibility early, before the investment of time becomes hard to walk away from. Every negotiation that was never viable consumes resources that could have gone to one that was.
Trust does not depend on a shared language
My work also meant interpreting between French, Italian and English in negotiations. Language differences sometimes created real communication challenges. But transparency and a genuine willingness to cooperate often overcame them.
Speaking the same language does not automatically create trust, just as speaking different languages does not prevent it. What builds trust is clarity about intentions, consistency in follow-through and, again, information that has been checked.
Three things to do first
For a company considering an African or Middle Eastern market today, I would start with three steps:
- Research the market thoroughly, including how its institutions work in practice, not only what its regulations say.
- Conduct serious due diligence on potential partners, independently of how cooperative or well-connected they appear.
- Understand regulatory and compliance requirements before making significant commitments, and plan timelines around them.
Don't let the excitement of entering a new market outrun your understanding of its realities.
The real cost of skipping the work
Due diligence is often treated as a delay, a box to tick before the real business begins. My experience suggests the opposite. In unfamiliar markets, due diligence is not what slows business down. It is what prevents companies from wasting time, resources and opportunities on deals that were never commercially viable in the first place.
Connections can open the door. Due diligence tells you whether to walk through it.