ABOUT RONALD
Three decades of building partnerships across borders.
Belgian industrial engineer, based in Cascais, working in six languages across Europe and beyond, and teaching what I do.
What I do
I'm a strategic consultant. I bring contractors and subcontractors together so complex technical industrial projects get delivered. Contractors come to me when they need partners and people they can trust on site. Subcontractors come to me when they're ready for international work and want the right doors opened. I run that as Ronald Goovaerts Cross-Border Industrial Partnerships.
I also teach it. Ronald Goovaerts Sales Engineering Academy is where junior technical sales engineers learn to stop chasing deals, read the whole room and get paid, working on their own live deals with me.
Track record
1988 to 1994.
Sales engineering for analytical scientific instruments, into environmental, chemical, pharmaceutical and petrochemical labs. Recognized as Best Sales Engineer in Europe at Fisons.
1997 to 2017.
ROGO-decor. Twenty years building and running cross-border distribution across Portugal, Spain and Brazil.
2007 onward.
JCI Senator #66894, and International Training Fellow #111.
2014 to 2023.
Link2Europe. Executive recruitment and subcontracting partnerships between Belgium, the Netherlands and Southern and Central Europe.
2017 to 2023.
Link4Projects. Sourcing industrial subcontractors, visiting each one in their home country before recommending them.
2023 onward.
Incasometal. International business development for industrial equipment manufacturing.
2025 onward.
Lesico Process Piping. Strategic business consultant on industrial piping projects.
2026.
Ronald Goovaerts Cross-Border Industrial Partnerships and Ronald Goovaerts Sales Engineering Academy.
How I got here
I left a comfortable research job at the university because of a job advert. It said something like, if your ambition is to earn a lot of money and decide how much you work, reply now. So I replied.
I walked into that first sales job with an engineering degree and no idea what to do with a customer in front of me. More questions than I could answer, every meeting. My first manager sat with me one day a week and went through my live projects, what went well, what didn't, and why. When I failed badly, he took me to lunch, we cleared our heads, and then we went back to work. In a few years I went from zero commercial experience to being recognized as Best Sales Engineer in Europe at Fisons.
Then I moved to Portugal, and the habits I grew up with in Belgium and the Netherlands didn't land the same way there. Directness read as rude, and "yes, of course" often meant "let's talk again in three weeks." So I learned to read the culture, because I had to. I built a distribution business across Portugal, Spain and Brazil and ran it for twenty years.
Not everything went well. When the crisis hit in 2013 I lost €250,000. Accounts blocked, young kids at home, my parents helping us keep the house. A year and a half later I'd paid the bank back and started building again. Years after that I lost a €1.5 million contract by trusting a subcontractor's yes without checking it. Those two are the reason I verify everything now, and the reason I teach it first.
When COVID came, my business dropped from 100 to 20 percent almost overnight. I kept the relationships warm through it, and when the market came back, the work came back with it.
Today I bring contractors and subcontractors together on projects from €500K to €5M, across 15 countries, mostly in Europe and sometimes as far as Canada and Africa. Some weeks I'm on a site in France or Belgium. Some weeks I close a deal on a video call from Cascais.
What I believe
People do business with people. Every project I've won came from trust built before anyone talked price. That's the only reason, in my experience.
Competitors are colleagues. There's more than enough work for everyone who does it well. I share what I know, and I'm happy to train people who'll do what I do.
Verify before you trust. I check the partner, the certificates and the current customers before my name goes on anything. I learned that one the expensive way.
Protect the long game. A deal is a consequence. The relationship, and all the work behind it, is the real asset, so I never trade it for one signature.
Outside the work
I'm a lifelong learner, I study something new every day because it keeps the mind young. I go to the gym every day, because the muscle you train is the one you can count on when things go wrong. I speak six languages, and I'm curious about people, genuinely, with no agenda.
I like the days when I walk the dog early and someone interesting stops me for two hours. And I like the projects that come in because I put my heart in the conversation, more than any I ever chased.