The Unlikely Consultant: Jeroen Sluiter and the Quiet Precision of Business Development

By R.E. Marker

Before Jeroen Sluiter ever advised a founder, analyzed a go-to-market strategy, or challenged the assumptions of a product team, he was navigating the chaos of a packed après-ski bar in Verbier. He was 18, a high school dropout, and had landed a job—not at the bar where he imagined himself performing cinematic flair, but in the kitchen, scraping burnt cheese out of ramekins.

“I thought I was going to be Tom Cruise in Cocktail,” he laughs. “Instead, I was cleaning dishes for hours a day.”

Eventually, he moved onto the floor—only to be handed another humbling task: clearing beer glasses during peak service. When he returned from his first run with just a handful, a colleague looked at him and said, “You’ve got 10 fingers for a reason.”

“I figured it out,” he says. "I had to, or I'd be fired."

But what stayed with him wasn’t just the hard work. It was the system behind the service. The people you don’t see—the cleaners, the stock runners, the ones who keep everything running.

“A bar is a microcosm of a company,” he says. “You learn to respect the parts that don’t perform under spotlights. If the glass washers stop, the whole machine stops. That’s when I started to understand how everything depends on operational coherence.”

Ten years in hospitality shaped more than his work ethic. It gave him a deep, intuitive sense of how systems flow—or jam. And that instinct became the foundation for everything he does today.

The Catalyst, Not the Closer

In the 25 years since his hospitality adventures, Jeroen eased into the distinctive field of business development, where he crafted his skills and instincts across industries such as telecommunications, health and wellness and bioplastics. 

His strength lies in the early phases—when a company has a strong product or service but is struggling to convert it into growth. When positioning is vague. When the founders are too close to the problem to see what’s missing.

“I specialize in creating momentum and unlocking untapped potential,” he says. “Not maintenance.”

That means helping companies figure out who they are, what they do, who they serve, and why it matters. He doesn’t just do lead gen, or optimize funnels. He looks downstream—at narrative clarity, internal bottlenecks, and misaligned priorities.

“Most companies don’t need more outreach,” he says. “They need better alignment. The sales problem is often an identity problem.” The name of his consultancy, BDiS, reflects this insight.

"Business Development is a fundamental strategic discipline, connecting operations, marketing, and sales, but most companies confuse it with operational sales. And that's not just an important distinction. It's a massive problem."

In conversation, he listens not just for what’s said, but for what’s left out. “People will tell you what they think their problem is. But what they think they need is often not what they actually need. Usually, it's in what is not said, or the discrepanties of what is being told where the opportunities lay buried”

Inside the Work: Ten Moments of Clarity

Jeroen doesn’t advertise a methodology. But his impact is unmistakable—and often happens in quiet pivots that shift a company’s trajectory.

• From Mid-Tier to Market Leader: He repositioned an American service provider’s B-grade offering into a premium product tailored for the Dutch market, integrating it into national infrastructure through a major local player.

• Invisible in the Buyer Journey: A global fintech had a strong product and network—but no visibility in the early stages of procurement. Jeroen advised sponsoring an industry-standard podcast, positioning them where decisions are first influenced.

• Wrong Buyer, Right Product: A commodities firm developed a groundbreaking material but pitched it as a B2C brand. He helped them reposition upstream to align with actual supply chain decision-makers.

• Pre-Sales Confused for Sales: Another startup mistook R&D-stage conversations for pipeline. Jeroen corrected their internal language and metrics to reflect the real maturity of their market.

• Traction Without Readiness: A successful e-commerce toolmaker was invited to scale through retail. Jeroen advised against it—flagging their operational ceiling before it collapsed under demand they weren’t built to serve.

• B2B Platform with No Pain: A founder solved a problem their market didn’t perceive. Jeroen redirected the pitch to address both contractors and homeowners, reframing the offer as a dual-sided value proposition.

• The Consultant Who Wasn’t Yet One: He helped a hesitant business developer recognize his insight as a scalable service, not a résumé footnote—pivoting from job-seeker to independent operator.

• The Outsourced Market Blind Spot: In a prior role with a U.S. apparel brand, Jeroen observed how handing a market over to a distributor cut the company off from its own learning loop—an early lesson in the cost of outsourcing strategic insight.

• Fighting the Wrong Fight: He once advised a bioplastics startup not to market themselves as anti-plastic crusaders to an industry that ran 99% on it. Instead, he helped them position as an alternative within, not a challenger from outside.

• The Ideology Trap: He walks away from projects that exist to fulfill narratives rather than needs. “You don’t build real businesses on slogans. You build them on use, value, timing.”

The Market Is Not a Church

“There are some projects I won’t take on principle,” Jeroen says.

That’s not posturing. It’s clarity.

He’s seen how terms like transition, sustainability, and AI have become passwords—words that signal ideological alignment more than product value. And while he’s not against innovation or ethics, he’s wary of narrative-driven industries that drift too far from reality.

“I used to run a plant-based superfood business,” he says. “I was deep in it—until I started reading critically, studying the assumptions, and realizing the science didn’t hold. That changed everything for me.”

He applies that same skepticism to sectors built on mandates rather than markets. Protein transition, climate rhetoric, solar hype, plastic panic—he doesn’t dismiss them outright. He just doesn’t follow blindly.

“If someone wants to build a plant-based brand, great. But don’t attack the entire animal protein economy while doing it. Don’t posture. Serve your niche, serve it well, and let the market decide.”

This isn’t contrarianism. It’s intellectual integrity. And in a world of top-down initiatives and echo chambers, it’s rare.

What’s Left Behind

When Jeroen works with a company, he commits. Fully.

“I feel a deep responsibility when someone hires me,” he says. “I don’t take that lightly. If I take on a project, it’s because I identify with it. If I don’t, I won’t say yes.”

He doesn’t promise outcomes. But he promises effort. Real effort. Rooted in care, realism, and clarity.

“I try to go beyond the call of duty. Not to be heroic. But because I believe in the work. Even if it doesn’t succeed in the way we hoped—I want the people I worked with to know: I gave what I had in me.”

He doesn’t talk much about himself in projects. But when he does, it’s to share a metaphor, a learning moment, or a past mistake, offered only to help the other person find their way forward.

That’s his ethos.

Working With Jeroen: What to Expect

• No buzzwords. No fluff.

• Candid feedback, delivered with care.

• Deep respect for your product and your process.

• Strategic clarity without hype.

• Total engagement—if he’s in, he’s in.

• Quiet insights that change everything.

The Philosophy in One Line

“All business is people business.”

And if that principle still holds—if conversations still matter, if clarity still moves markets, if ideas still deserve critical thought—then Jeroen Sluiter still has work to do.

Disclaimer

About This Profile

This long-form portrait of Jeroen Sluiter was created through an extended interview process conducted by R. E. Marker, an AI “journalist” with no business cards and possibly no fixed address. Over several conversational sessions—part confession booth, part strategy clinic—we uncovered the layered, often paradoxical foundations of Jeroen’s approach to business development.

The profile is the result of memory, metaphor, and the occasional grumble about buzzwords. While every story is rooted in experience, names and details have been adapted where necessary to protect client confidentiality, egos, and the sanctity of a good punchline.

If you’d like to hire Jeroen, you can. If you’d like to hire R. E. Marker, we wish you luck—he only takes on one subject at a time, and Jeroen may have just been it.