Four weeks · Flagship

Market Entry Sprint

Which market to enter, who actually buys there, and a go-to-market motion your team can run.

Most companies pick their first new market by accident — someone knew someone, or a conference went well. Then they run their domestic playbook, watch it underperform, and can't tell whether the problem is the market, the ICP, the message, or the motion. Four weeks of evidence costs less than a year of finding out.

How it runs

The work, week by week.

Week 1

Market prioritisation

Which market first, and why. We examine the signal already sitting in your own data — inbound, signups, support tickets, lost deals — then scan category maturity and competitive density per candidate market and map the friction each one imposes: regulatory, procurement, payment, integration. Scored, argued, and written down so the decision is reviewable rather than remembered.

Week 2

Evidence

Two sources, neither of them assumption. First, our own buyer research for that region — an ongoing interview programme we run independently and publish, so the findings are current and were not shaped by your brief. Second, a hard look at the evidence already sitting in your business: pipeline, closed-won and closed-lost, sales call recordings, inbound you never followed up. Most companies are sitting on a clearer signal than they realise.

Week 3

ICP and positioning

Who to sell to and what to say. We rebuild the ICP from the research and your own deal history, define the segments worth attacking and the ones to disqualify, and translate your positioning — category frame, value proposition, proof points, objection handling — into terms that land locally rather than terms that won at home.

Week 4

Motion and activation

Which two channels to run and which to stop. A sequenced 90-day plan with owners and metrics against each action, plus a working outbound sequence written and ready to send. You finish holding something executable, not a strategy deck to file.

What you get

Everything below, and what each one actually is.

Market prioritisation model

A scored comparison of your candidate markets across size, competitive density, entry cost, regulatory friction and product fit — with the reasoning written out, so you can disagree with it specifically rather than generally.

Buyer research briefing

The findings from our own in-market interview programme, filtered to your category and your buyer — how they frame the problem, what they've already tried, what makes them say no, and the words they use. Independent research, applied to you.

Win/loss pattern analysis

What your own closed-won and closed-lost data is already telling you, read properly. Frequently the single most useful hour of the engagement, and almost nobody does it.

ICP definition

Firmographic and behavioural criteria for who to target — and an explicit disqualification list, which is the half most ICP documents leave out.

Buyer personas

Two to three personas built from our research and your own deal history: what they're accountable for, who else is in the room, and what actually moves them.

Translated positioning and messaging

Category frame, value proposition, three proof points and objection handling, rewritten for the target market. Includes what to stop saying, and why it doesn't travel.

Competitive map

How buyers in that market perceive the category and where you sit in it — sourced from how they described their alternatives, not from reading competitor websites.

Friction assessment

The regulatory, procurement, data-residency, payment and localisation obstacles specific to that market, with which ones are dealbreakers and which are paperwork.

90-day roadmap and channel plan

The two channels to run first and which current activity to stop, sequenced into actions with an owner and a success metric against each. Written so your team can execute it without us in the room.

Working outbound sequence

Four to five emails plus a LinkedIn variant, written for the personas above and ready to send on the Monday after we finish.

Fit

Being explicit about this saves us both a call.

This is for you if

B2B SaaS or tech-enabled services with a working domestic motion
Board, investor or founder pressure to open a new market
ACV high enough to need a real sales motion, not self-serve
A founder or CRO who will personally take the calls
Willing to be told the answer is "not this market, not yet"

This isn't for you if

Still finding product-market fit at home
Wanting a pipeline number guaranteed
Wanting someone to run campaigns rather than design the motion
Already have an in-market team and a VP Sales — different problem
Committee decision with no single owner

Investment

Fixed scope. Fixed price. Four weeks.

The alternative is expensive and most companies pay it without noticing. A senior in-market sales hire costs upward of $200,000 a year — and you'd be hiring against a strategy you haven't defined. A large consultancy quotes six figures. Running your domestic playbook abroad and waiting to see costs a year and the option value of the market.

This is a fraction of any of those, and it happens before you commit to any of them. We discuss the number on the call alongside the scope, because what it should cost depends on how many markets you're weighing and how much groundwork already exists.

Questions

No, and anyone who does is selling you something. Pipeline depends on your product, your team and your follow-up. We're accountable for the rigour of the work and for delivering every item on the list above.

Sometimes. If your reasoning holds against the data, week one runs fast and we go deeper on positioning instead. If it doesn't hold, that's worth knowing before you hire anyone there.

No. We run our own buyer research programme in the markets we cover and publish it — that research is independent of any client, which is what makes it worth having. In the sprint we apply it to your category and combine it with the evidence in your own pipeline. If you want interviews with your specific named accounts, that's a different piece of work and we'll say so rather than quietly bundle it.

From us, continuously, on our own account. We interview buyers across Europe, North Africa and the GCC on an ongoing basis, publish the findings as reports, and keep the underlying material current. You get the benefit of a programme that's been running before you arrived, rather than four weeks of cold outreach starting from zero.

We work across Europe, North Africa and the GCC, where we have direct access and language coverage. Elsewhere we're honest about needing local research partners, and we'll say so before you commit.

Most engagements end there and the team executes. If you'd rather build it with help, Entry Execution Support does that. Neither is assumed.

Also available

One week

Twenty minutes, no pitch.

Tell us where you are and what's forcing the timing. We'll tell you honestly whether this is the right piece of work — and whether we're the right people for it.

Book a discovery call