Software Business in the Middle East

Part One

Networking Events

There are plenty of different Networking Events in Dubai. Networking Event is a kind of meeting with many different people who came there to tell about their business, and see what other people’s business is.

Well, I would assume that people would come to see what other people’s business is, but very often people come there to tell about their business only and see if they can get you as a customer. I am not sure if this is typical for Networking Events in Dubai or if it is the same in any country. Sometimes it feels very bad when you talk to somebody and as soon as he understands you are not going to be his customer, he loses interest talking to you the same second. Especially it happens with Real Estate people as nowadays it is only the lazy one who does not try to work with selling the apartments and villas in Dubai.

I used to come to some of the most popular Networking Events in Dubai.

1). Xing (previously known as OpenBC) - it’s a very big community of people based on Internet forum. As soon as you change your location in the profile as Dubai or UAE, the country moderator will invite you to participate in the Networking Event next month. Normally they have about 100-200 people there. Time to time they invite speakers to talk about different things, like business etiquette – to send thank you e-mail to the person you met on the event and so on.

I think Xing has such Events in every country, not only UAE.

2). AmeInfo Networking - organized by the largest news portal in UAE. There are also pretty many people coming there, but I would not tell anything special about this Event. Just a good place to come and meet many different people.

 3). CNet Dubai - I think this is the best Networking Event in the city. The meetings are very well organized they way to motivate people to talk to each other. The guy who organizes the Event, Roger Wilkinson, is very enthusiastic, he always prepares some kind of game so that you are simply forced to meet many people – for example, find out one person from UK, one from India, one from Germany and so on. Then they have a draw to find winners who take home pretty nice prices – like round trip for two to Paris or dinner for two in five-star hotel.

What I’ve learned so far from those Networking Events:

• It is very good place to learn about hundreds of different businesses in the city when you have just arrived. Who knows, maybe you can find some of your customers over there. At least you might get very good contacts that could help you now or in the future.
• If you have very specific product, it is very unlikely you get any customers over there – like our customers are healthcare organizations and healthcare professionals, but it is not many of them who come to such events. But you might get partners or simply find out people who will like your ideas and who will support you by helping with their own contacts.
• You get sick from the people who’re hunting like crazy for the customers trying to sell you stuff like new house, or printing of your business cards, or insurance for your car or anything else.

RegNow has sent e-mail with the link to their new developer resource. I think this kind of resources is much needed for the startups - they give you tips about pricing, upgrades, marketing and so on. You will learn this information yourself, of course, as soon as you start developing and selling your own product, but if you read it in advance, it might help you to avoid making mistakes in basic things.

This post of Max Kraynov reminds me one meeting some time back with a guy, who’s decision maker in one of the large healthcare organizations in UAE. We met and exchanged our business cards. I explained what I wanted and he asked many questions. While he was listening, he used my business card as a toothpick – really, he was picking in his frontal and even masticatory teeth! Well, I didn’t care much about it as long as I got a help from his side. I just wondered from what village in the middle of Jungle this guy came from.

This comes to the entire issue of how people run business here. Some points from my experience comes here.

Replies on E-mails

It happens pretty rare that you get replies on your e-mails. If you want to send your proposal to the potential customers, I think this is the most stupid idea. You’re simply wasting your time. People usually read their e-mails, but reply very rarely. Sometimes you will get reply after several days or even weeks.

In case you already have deals with particular companies, they will answer your e-mails of course, as you are already in business with them. But otherwise you would expect to get no answer and be prepared to make a follow up call.

Company E-mails

I think the majority of people in UAE use their personal e-mails on Yahoo or Hotmail for communication in their daily work. It is normal to see private e-mails on their business cards, even if they work for Ministry of Health or for a large company.

Importance of Personal Meeting

The most important way to communicate is to meet people. Phone calls work fine, but just for making appointments. We have a potential customer in Saudi Arabia now. They saw the program and they run the full trial with it. They said they liked the software and most likely they will want to get it for all their doctors. They said they liked numbers in the proposal. But they also said they wouldn’t move forward with the decision until they meet with us face to face.

Another example – our customer in Fujairah (this is another Emirate in UAE in about 100 km from Dubai). It is small pharmacy with one computer. They wanted to buy our program but they also wanted to meet before. So you go there just to sell software with price of $135.95.

Importance of Company Web Site

It seems like nobody really cares if your company has a proper web site. It sounds odd. We spent much time making our company web site, and then I was surprised when it did not have any value as people here used to make their impressions from meeting face to face with you. Probably our web site helped us just to confirm to our customers that we’re real company with real contact details, but I am not sure that anybody from our customers has ever visited our web site.

Instead, this site helped us to get some partners and very interesting contacts from Europe and USA.

This thing is going to be changed soon. More and more customers ask us where they could read about our product on the Internet. Sorry, nowhere yet. But the upgrade is on its way.

Business Cards

As already said, folk sometimes have no idea what they would do with your business card when they are sitting in front of you. It happened to me only once to see how my business card is used as a toothpick, but pretty often you might see your card left on the table after the meeting.