Notes from the work, written plainly.

The pattern is consistent. A company gets an enquiry from Germany, or a founder has family in Singapore, or a trade show produced two promising conversations in Milan. The market chooses itself, and the plan is built backwards from that accident.

Sometimes it works. More often the company spends a year discovering that the market it landed in has the wrong price expectations, a distribution structure that leaves no room for a newcomer, or a certification process that costs more than the first two years of revenue.

A better order of questions is unglamorous. Where is demand for this specific product, at the price it needs to sell for? Who already serves that demand, and how well? What does it legally take to sell there, and how long does that take? What does it cost to reach the first customer, and what does it cost to reach the hundredth?

Two or three markets should be compared on the same questions before one is chosen. The comparison is usually what reveals the real answer — not that a market is good, but that another one is easier, and that starting there buys the credibility to enter the harder one later.

The two get blended together, and the second one usually loses. A deck full of market size and growth rates can look like diligence while saying nothing about whether the business can legally operate, get paid, or protect what it sells.

Four areas tend to matter most. Regulation and compliance: what approvals, standards, licences or registrations apply, who issues them, and how long they realistically take. Commercial structure: who the distributors and buyers are, what margins they expect, and whether existing agreements lock competitors in. Counterparties: whether the partner or importer being proposed is solvent, established and clean. And money: duties, taxes, payment terms, currency exposure and the true landed cost of a sale.

Risk should be written down in the same document as opportunity. A market that fails on one of these is not a setback; finding it out in week six rather than month eighteen is the entire point of the exercise.

This is also where a local professional is not optional. Published rules and applied rules differ in every country, and the gap between them is only visible to someone working inside it.

Early on, visits are usually enough. Meetings can be concentrated, partners can be assessed in person, and nothing is committed that cannot be reversed. What travel does not produce is continuity: someone who is reachable in local hours, who follows up while you sleep, and whose presence signals that the company intends to stay.

The signals that it is time to commit are fairly clear. The pipeline requires more follow-up than visits allow. Customers ask who supports them locally. A partner is doing work that should belong to you, and gaining leverage as a result. Or the legal structure makes an entity unavoidable in order to contract, invoice or employ.

The first commitment does not have to be an office and a team. A local representative, an employer-of-record arrangement, or a single experienced hire with a clear remit usually tests the market at a fraction of the cost, and can be unwound without unpicking a company.

The mistake in both directions is the same: treating presence as a status decision rather than an operational one. It should follow from what the market is actually asking the business to do.