I Picked Up the Phone and Called the Neighbors

There is a moment in every business when the problem is not yours, and it still stops you.

For Clevermann, that moment was the German language exam. Our candidates needed a telc certificate for their visas. In Vietnam, exam slots had become almost impossible to get, and several exam organizers were under investigation.

No exam, no visa. No visa, no business.

Waiting was not an option, so I did the least sophisticated thing possible. I picked up the phone and started calling exam centers in neighboring countries.

One of those calls reached the German-Malaysian Institute in Malaysia.

Next, I led our first group of more than 20 candidates to Malaysia to sit the exam. At the same time, I emailed GMI’s leadership and asked for a meeting.

I went in without a pitch. I went in with questions. Within that conversation I learned two things: GMI wanted to recruit students in Vietnam, and their CEO had worked in Vietnam for years and thought about branding the way I did.

Now I knew what to put on the table. They would lose nothing and gain a door to major universities in Ho Chi Minh City. We would gain a partner with a strong name and a solution to our biggest bottleneck.

It still took a long process of building trust, including more than two visits by GMI’s leadership to our office. Then we signed. It was GMI’s first partnership with a private company in Vietnam.

The lesson: Big partnerships rarely start with a strategy deck. They start with someone who refuses to accept that the problem is outside their control.