A day in the life of a translation Business Development Manager

Rodrigo is an Enterprise Business Development Manager, helping large global manufacturers with their multilingual requests. Originally from Portugal, Rodrigo has over 10 years’ experience in translation and localisation. In this blog, we find out more about his role.

How long have you been working at Capita TI?

I have been with Capita TI for 2 and half years, since late 2015.

Describe your current role

With a clear focus on large enterprise accounts, my role is to pair clients’ translation requirements with Capita TI’s language solutions, through a unique service delivery model supported by our in-house technology. This is achieved through developing new long-term partnerships based on trust and a solution driven approach. A key part of my role is to respond to RFPs (Requests for Proposal) for potential customers. It’s normally through these benchmark exercises that our prospects and clients evaluate the quality of our services, and decide whether or not to use our translation solutions.

Over the last 2 years, I’ve been focusing on supplying translation solutions for the manufacturing industry.

What do you do on a typical day at Capita TI?

My day starts with a strong black coffee. Responding to emails from clients about projects, contacting new prospects via phone and producing proposals sum-up the main tasks in a typical day for me.

What is the most challenging aspect of your job?

The most challenging aspect of what I do is linked to the length of the sales cycle. Large corporations do not go to market or change their providers very often. Sometimes you actually have to wait for 2-3 years until the next tender/RFP comes. This is why I consider every opportunity “THE opportunity”.

What do you enjoy most about your role?

Diversity is probably the key word. Diversity is one of the most exciting characteristics of the translation industry. We are in touch almost every day with different stakeholders from different industries that require different content types to be translated, and each of these come with their own challenges.

I also love the technology aspect of the job, and how, when used properly, technology can break barriers and help us to find solutions for complex challenges.

How did you get into the job?

I guess a lot of the people say the same: “pure chance”. My background is in business administrations, so nothing specifically pointed towards a career in the language industry. In 2005, I responded to an interesting advert asking for a Business Development professional in the language industry, and that’s how and when the journey started.

Do you speak any languages?

I speak Portuguese, English, Spanish and scratch the surface of French.

What advice would you have for newcomers into the industry?

This is one of the industries out there where you can enjoy yourself the most. I normally say that this is the industry where art and culture meets business. It’s hard work to do sales, because the differentiating factors are few. But it also opens up the opportunity for people with the right mind-set and work ethic to actually make a difference.

What would you love to be doing if you weren’t in your current role?

I’d be playing tennis on my own island, while enjoying a healthy amount of piña coladas.

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