Corina Goetz

What the West gets wrong about the Gulf.
Saudi Arabia • UAE • Qatar
20+ years working with Gulf clients | CEO, Star-CaT | The Gulf Desk

[Corina Goetz @starcat_corina]

The question international companies need to answer in Saudi Arabia is changing.

It is no longer only:
What can you deliver?

It is:
What will remain after you leave?

A trained Saudi team?
Knowledge held inside the Kingdom?
New intellectual property?
A capability Saudi Arabia no longer needs to import?

That question will shape who wins the next Saudi opportunity.
We explore the shift every week in The Gulf Desk:
https://t.co/MFM5iHc5le

[Corina Goetz @starcat_corina]

Two thirds of UK goods will enter the Gulf tariff-free on day one of the new trade agreement.

So will your competitors'.

A 5% duty coming off a British car isn't an advantage. The car parked next to it gets cheaper on the same morning.

The agreement changes the economics of selling into the Gulf.

It doesn't give a Gulf customer a reason to buy from you.

That part is still yours to build, and nobody is negotiating it away on your behalf.

https://t.co/NnKiMlw1KQ

[Corina Goetz @starcat_corina]

There was a time when Middle East experience opened doors on its own.

Then it had to be Gulf experience.

Now it increasingly has to be Saudi expertise.

And the uncomfortable part is this. The more experienced the executive, the more likely they are to carry the wrong map with confidence.

Twenty years in Dubai gives you genuine expertise. It also gives you a tempo, a network of intermediaries and a mental model of how the region works, all of it formed in a different country.

Nobody sends you an email to tell you your map is out of date.

[Corina Goetz @starcat_corina]

An executive with 20 years in the Gulf told me this week that he was not sure whether the people he would meet in Saudi Arabia would be wearing kanduras.

Kandura is the Emirati word.

In Saudi Arabia, it is a thobe.

He had done nothing wrong. He lives in Dubai. He is very good at his job.

But 20 years of real Gulf experience had given him a Dubai vocabulary, and he was about to walk into a Saudi room.

He caught it himself, before I said anything.

That is the part that impressed me.

https://t.co/FBBPibiLPh

[Corina Goetz @starcat_corina]

Before you contact a Saudi prospect, look at your LinkedIn profile through their eyes.

Would they immediately understand:

– Why you are relevant to them? – What you know about their market? – Whether you bring something genuinely valuable? – Why they should trust you?

Finding the right person is no longer the difficult part.

Looking like the right person to contact them is.

https://t.co/DROSQwLDbK

[Corina Goetz @starcat_corina]

AI found my Saudi prospects before my coffee was ready.

That is both exciting — and slightly dangerous.

Because faster prospecting does not automatically create better business development.

You still need to know:

Who genuinely matters. Why they might care. What to say. And whether your online presence makes you look credible when they investigate you.

AI can create the list.

Judgement turns it into a pipeline.
https://t.co/DROSQwLDbK

[Corina Goetz @starcat_corina]

Saudi Arabia is modernising. But it is not becoming more Western.

If anything, it is becoming more confidently Saudi.

Twenty years of international experience? Excellent. A brilliant Western case study? Useful. A huge network in Dubai? Potentially valuable.

None of it automatically makes you relevant in Riyadh.

"I've worked in the Middle East for 20 years" is no longer the differentiator it once was. Understanding what Saudi Arabia needs now is.

This is what I teach on 7 September.

[Corina Goetz @starcat_corina]

A British CEO has just been replaced by a Saudi executive at one of Saudi Arabia's most ambitious projects.

Michael Dyke, the British CEO of New Murabba, has been replaced by PIF executive Sabah Barakat as Acting CEO.

The lesson isn't that Saudi Arabia no longer wants foreign expertise. It clearly does.

The real question is sharper: as the Kingdom builds its own, what are you bringing that it cannot increasingly provide for itself?

I unpack exactly this in my Masterclass on 7 September.

https://t.co/DROSQwLDbK

[Corina Goetz @starcat_corina]

A Western business asks AI what it should know about Saudi Arabia.

A Saudi business is now training AI on what Saudi Arabia is.

Two different relationships with the same technology.

One is a user. The other is an author.

Over the next decade that distinction will matter more than the tools.

https://t.co/DROSQwLDbK

[Corina Goetz @starcat_corina]

Everyone is worried AI will replace their sales team.

In the Gulf, the more likely outcome is that it makes them wrong faster.

AI will find you a name in Riyadh in seconds. It will not tell you that the name is the wrong person to approach first, or that the message you have drafted reads as presumptuous to someone who has never met you.

Speed applied to poor judgement is not an advantage.

The people winning here use AI for the preparation and their own judgement for the approach.

[Corina Goetz @starcat_corina]

I use AI every day to find prospects in Saudi Arabia and the UAE. Names, companies, decision-makers, in about fifteen minutes.

Then I stop, and do the part it cannot do.

Who to approach first. What to know before making contact. How to write to someone so it does not read as another Westerner trying to break into Saudi.

I am teaching both halves live on Monday. Ninety minutes, small room by design, so everyone leaves with their own list and a stronger profile.

Twenty-five years of Gulf work, combined with the tools I use now.

https://t.co/DROSQwLDbK

[Corina Goetz @starcat_corina]

I asked AI for the dates of Ramadan.

It gave me a date three weeks out.

Three weeks.

I knew better, so I caught it. Had I not, I would have sent a client a calendar built on a date that would have told every Gulf counterpart in that room we had not done the work.

AI almost always has an answer. People find that reassuring. It is the part that should worry them.

A confident wrong answer is more dangerous than no answer at all.

[Corina Goetz @starcat_corina]

Just sand.

That is how a man described the Gulf to me this week.

He has not seen the mountains of Asir, where it rains in summer and the old houses are painted.

He has not seen the Omani coastline, or the wadis behind it.

And the sand he means is the Empty Quarter, which is the largest continuous sand desert in the world.

You do not have to love a place to do business there.

It helps if you have bothered to look at it.

[Corina Goetz @starcat_corina]

The most expensive assumption a Western company can carry into the Gulf is that wealthy clients do not care what things cost.

They care.

They have been sold to by the best companies in the world. They know precisely what good looks like, and roughly what it should cost.

Wealth does not make someone easier to sell to.

It makes them harder, because they have more comparisons than you do.

[Corina Goetz @starcat_corina]

A British man spent five minutes today telling me how much he knew about the Middle East.

By minute five I knew he did not.

He talked about dealing with the sheikhs.

He told me money basically did not matter to them, and that they would pay whatever he asked.

Then he said there is nothing there anyway. Just sand.

The sand he was dismissing is the Empty Quarter.

The largest continuous sand desert on earth.

He did not know that either.

[Corina Goetz @starcat_corina]

Saudi is just sand and desert.
Really?

[Corina Goetz @starcat_corina]

One of the biggest mistakes Western luxury businesses can make right now?

Assuming globalisation means Westernisation.

Saudi customers are younger, wealthier, extraordinarily well travelled and increasingly sophisticated in what they expect from brands.

But that doesn’t mean Saudi identity is disappearing.

In many ways, it’s becoming more visible and more confidently expressed.

And that changes how you sell.

Because adapting to the modern Gulf customer isn’t about making your proposition more Western.

It’s about understanding how global sophistication and cultural identity now exist side by side.

That affects your marketing.
Your customer experience.
Your communication.
Your team.
And ultimately, whether that customer chooses you again.

The modern Gulf customer has changed.

I am running a masterclass how you can adapt better and find more clients combing Social Media, AI and Culture.
Comment ‚unlock‘ to save your seat.

The question is whether your luxury strategy has changed with them.

[Corina Goetz @starcat_corina]

Your highest-value Gulf customer may never complain.

They may never tell you that a boundary was crossed.

They may simply not come back.

I learned this very early in my career looking after Gulf royalty and high-value families in London.

Privacy wasn’t an added luxury.

It was part of the product.

Knowing when not to take the photograph.
Knowing what not to repeat.
Knowing when you hadn’t been invited into a conversation, even though you could hear it.

And this is something Western luxury businesses can easily underestimate.

We spend enormous amounts of time training teams to create memorable moments.

Sometimes the most luxurious thing you can do is make sure a moment is never shared at all.

Discretion creates trust. And trust creates loyalty.

If the Gulf customer matters to your revenue, your team needs to understand that distinction.

[Corina Goetz @starcat_corina]

Most Western companies have a Gulf strategy.

Very few have a Riyadh strategy, an Abu Dhabi strategy and a Dubai strategy.

That distinction looks small in a board deck.

Across a table, it can cost you the room.

Because success in one Gulf market doesn't automatically translate into relevance in another.

I wrote today's Gulf Desk about the question I think more leadership teams need to ask:

Which Gulf capital is your "Gulf strategy" secretly built around?
https://t.co/n6F4uMvB1W

The answer may be more revealing than you think.

[Corina Goetz @starcat_corina]

If your company's Middle East strategy deck has one slide headed "GCC", I'd look at it again.

Not because the Gulf markets have nothing in common.

They do.

But Riyadh, Abu Dhabi and Dubai are increasingly competing for many of the same things:

Capital. Talent. Tourists. Global brands. Attention.

Your strategy should probably notice.

Today's Gulf Desk is about why having one "Gulf strategy" may already be a problem.
https://t.co/n6F4uMv3co