Prepare.

We’ll be heading into some sticky situations arm-in-arm, so you need to trust us (and vice versa). Call us old-fashioned but we like to break bread with the people we work with. That’s why - following an initial introductory call - we like to consummate all our client relationships with a two-hour* lunch meeting.

In this phase, we want to get a high-level understanding of your current state, including your business model and current routes to market, so we can start to curate the right blend of services to help you get to market as quickly as possible.

In this half-day or full-day session, we’ll assess, document and stress-test the foundational assumptions of your go-to-market strategy, including your resourcing and budget plans, high-level competitive analysis, customer personas, value proposition and brand positioning.

You might have mapped out some or all of these elements beforehand but our team brings a unique export lens to your assumptions that often result in changes to your strategy or tactics to address international markets.

Following the Discovery workshop, we’ll pull together some coherent findings and recommendations to help inform the rest of the Prepare process.

Led by our exceptional team of experienced data analysts and planners, the Initial Research phase is a deep-dive into the details of international expansion. This phase typically takes between 30 and 45 days, depending on the complexity of the markets or segments you are playing in.

The Initial Research phase includes detailed research into global market trends, regulatory and commercial requirements for market entry, pricing and competitive landscape, value chain mapping and “white space analysis” to help assess a product opportunity across different markets.

Throughout this phase our team use cutting-edge tools — many of them proprietary to Katabolt — to gather evidence and validate (or debunk) your assumptions so we can adjust them accordingly.

Following the Initial Research phase, we will come back together as a group for a half-day workshop.

During this session, we’ll present a draft export plan, including recommendations for entry into specific markets or regions, an initial build of distributor / reseller criteria, and a clear plan for how to resource your in-market launch activity.

When you have full confidence in your export plan, we can work with you to present the plan to other stakeholders such as your board of directors, and/or assist with pulling together a business case for funding from the public or private sector.

Once all stakeholders are agreed, we press go 🚀…and move into what we call the Sustain phase.