Earlier this year we met with the head of marketing and sales at an overseas-based fashion brand. They were ready to open a location in California and wanted to go deep on execution: ad creative, channel selection, budgets, even direction on photography and video for the U.S. audience.
Before any of that, one question needed an answer first: How did they know anyone in this market wanted their product?
That wasn’t a rhetorical question. I was being literal.
And it’s the same question that trips up many companies eyeing the U.S., regardless of what they sell. The instinct is to skip straight to execution. The U.S. market is enormous, the opportunity looks obvious and everyone wants to know what the launch plan will look like.
The better path starts somewhere else entirely.
If this sounds like where things stand for your own U.S. plans, the Grand Slam Blueprint is built for exactly this stage. It replaces guesswork with a structured process for validating who wants what you sell before a dollar goes toward campaigns or creative.
The size of the U.S. market creates pressure to act big and act now.
Once a company decides the U.S. is a priority, the questions tend to come quickly: Which channels should we use? How much should we spend on advertising? What should our U.S. website look like? Do we need new photography? What should our LinkedIn strategy be?
These are legitimate questions. They are also usually second-stage questions.
Creative, advertising, content production and channel selection feel like progress because they produce something tangible. You can see the new campaign. You can review the photography. You can watch the traffic numbers climb.
The problem isn’t that companies move quickly. The problem is that they often start at the wrong end of the process.
Building execution before confirming demand means investing in the mechanics of selling before understanding whether the market wants what you’re selling, who wants it and how they buy.
The right sequence matters more than the right speed.
Before launching a campaign, at Beyond Borders Marketing we recommend starting with a structured, low-volume outreach effort designed to generate actual conversations with potential U.S. buyers.
That can include discovery calls, direct outreach and conversations with people who fit the early assumptions about the company’s target market.
The objective isn’t to sell. It’s to learn.
Three questions matter most at this stage:
Your assumptions about your Ideal Customer Profile may be based on experience in your home market. Those assumptions can be useful starting points, but they aren’t proof that the same customers exist in the same form in the U.S.
People may describe their problem differently in the U.S. They may use different terminology, search for different solutions or rely on different channels to find providers.
Some opportunities can move from first conversation to revenue relatively quickly. Others involve long qualification periods, multiple stakeholders, certifications, procurement requirements or established relationships.
That distinction matters before we build a marketing & sales plan around a particular segment.
Think of it like a doctor running diagnostics before writing a prescription. Skipping the diagnosis and immediately prescribing a treatment would be a questionable approach.
The same is true of launching a campaign before understanding the market.
Discovery isn’t simply a preliminary step before “real” marketing begins. Done properly, it changes the strategy itself.
Early conversations help validate or correct assumptions about your Ideal Customer Profile.
A company might believe its best U.S. opportunity is one segment because that segment performs well in its home market. But conversations may reveal that another segment has a more urgent problem, fewer barriers to purchase or a stronger willingness to consider a new provider.
That information is far more valuable when you discover it through 20 conversations than after spending $40,000 trying to reach the wrong audience.
Discovery also helps identify the language buyers actually use to describe their problems. That language can later inform website content, search strategy, advertising, sales materials and thought leadership.
Companies entering the U.S. often know their own competitors very well.
They may know which companies compete with them in Germany, Austria, Italy, the Netherlands or wherever they are headquartered. What they don’t always know is how U.S. buyers define the competitive landscape.
A buyer may compare your company with a direct competitor, an alternative technology, an established distributor, an internal solution or simply the decision to do nothing.
Early conversations surface those alternatives.
They also reveal what buyers need to believe before they will consider an overseas-based company. In some markets, that might be local service. In others, it’s inventory, technical support, certifications, references or simply confidence that someone will answer the phone when something goes wrong.
Those insights can change everything from positioning to sales support.
Not every U.S. opportunity has the same sales cycle.
One segment may make decisions in a few weeks. Another may take six months. A highly regulated market could take a year or more.
Knowing that difference early changes how we plan resources, budgets and expectations.
It also prevents a common mistake: treating every opportunity as if it should produce revenue on the same timeline.
Discovery gives us evidence for deciding where to focus first.
The question companies often ask is, “How should we enter the U.S. market?”
But there is a bigger question underneath it:
What should the U.S. become for the business?
There are at least two paths worth considering.
The U.S. can become a distinct market with its own strategy, resources, customer base and potentially a dedicated U.S. presence.
That can eventually mean local employees, inventory, offices, distributors or other infrastructure.
For some companies, that is exactly the right long-term direction.
There is another possibility that doesn’t always get enough attention.
A company may be able to generate U.S. leads and revenue while continuing to serve those customers from its existing operations overseas.
If the product can be sold, delivered and supported remotely, opening a U.S. office may not be necessary at the beginning.
In fact, generating meaningful U.S. revenue without immediately building a large local cost structure can be a very strong outcome.
It can improve margins. It can reduce risk. And it can give the company evidence about the market before making a larger investment.
That isn’t a consolation prize. It may be a smarter way for the business to mature in the U.S.
The important point is that we shouldn’t decide between these models based on assumptions.
The discovery data should help make the decision.
Setting an ambitious U.S. revenue target isn’t inherently a bad idea.
Doubling U.S. revenue or growing it five to ten times over 12 to 18 months may be entirely reasonable for a company with the right market conditions, resources and customer demand.
The problem comes when the number is established before anyone has spoken with a buyer.
At that point, the target is often a guess dressed up as a plan.
If we don’t yet know which segment is most responsive, what buyers value, how long the sales cycle is or how much friction exists in the buying process, a revenue forecast has very little evidence behind it.
Early in the process, better indicators are the number and quality of discovery conversations and the strength of the signals coming from them.
Once those signals exist, revenue forecasting becomes much more grounded.
The first 90 days of a U.S. market initiative don’t need to be dominated by campaigns.
They can be used to:
Only after that groundwork should campaigns, content, paid advertising and broader marketing efforts take center stage.
The objective isn’t to delay execution.
It’s to make execution smarter.
Let’s go back to the fashion brand from the beginning.
The head of marketing and sales who asked about ad creative, photography, video and channel selection wasn’t asking the wrong questions.
Those questions would eventually need good answers.
They simply weren’t the first questions that needed to be answered.
The first question was whether there was enough demand in the U.S. to justify the investment, who that demand came from and what those buyers actually needed.
That is the shift we believe companies should make when evaluating the U.S. market.
Talk first. Launch second.
The Grand Slam Blueprint provides a structured way to run this discovery phase, helping companies move from assumptions to evidence and walk away with a validated Ideal Customer Profile, a value proposition built around U.S. buyer needs and a practical 90-day go-to-market plan.
Because the most expensive campaign is the one that successfully reaches people who were never going to buy.
If you’re ready to validate demand before you spend on campaigns, talk to our team about running a structured 90-day discovery phase.
There isn’t a universal number, but a focused discovery phase can often produce meaningful signals within the first 60 to 90 days. The goal isn’t to achieve mathematical certainty. That would require a rather inconvenient amount of time. The goal is to gather enough evidence from qualified conversations to understand demand, customer fit, competitive position and buying friction before making larger marketing investments.
Yes. Whether that works depends on the product, service requirements, industry regulations, customer expectations and logistics. For some companies, the U.S. can initially function as a lead generation and revenue channel while customers continue to be served from existing overseas operations. This can provide a lower-risk way to validate demand before investing in a larger U.S. presence.
A market entry strategy addresses the broader question of how a company will establish and grow in the U.S. It can include customers, operations, pricing, distribution, local resources and marketing & sales. A lead generation strategy is narrower. It focuses on creating opportunities with potential buyers. A company can use lead generation as its first step into the U.S. without immediately building the infrastructure of a standalone market.
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