Today I was working with Erik from our team with a US client on implementing a trial for our online FDI lead generation solution DealMaker. The client informed us that he was about to outsource lead qualification and processing services from an FDI professional services provider. Outsourcing parts of the sales and marketing process is a trend in FDI promotion business development. The clients problem was that he received to much online inquiries to handle and most of them where considered to unserious to spend scarce agency capacity on them.

We debated if one should pump the water out or fix the dam. In real life FDI Agency work it is not that simple nor black or white. However, we do believe that the right online economic development strategy and FDI promotion and acquisition should prevent that unrealistic or unserious opportunities filter through. We also believe that the FDI inquiry response process can be optimized such that the workload of the inquiry response is minimized without the  risk of turning down serious opportunities. Finally, no agency wants to leave a bad impression if the requestor is serious but the requested solution or services are simply not in your portfolio. For these situations a delegation or link to another platform may be an elegant exit arrangement.