growthmatters BY LAWRENCE TEPPERMAN

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The U.S. Attempt
Post-Mortem

Twelve questions about what actually happened to your American plan. You get the read on the spot — which step your deals died at, whether you have a motion or a relationship channel that ran out, and whether the constraint really is budget. Nothing is stored, nothing is sent, and you don't have to give me an email to see the answer.

This is a diagnostic instrument, not advice on any particular decision, and it does not create an advisory relationship. It reflects patterns from twenty-five years of selling into the United States and from the U.S. entry attempts I have seen up close — it is not a substitute for legal, tax, employment or investment advice.

Why this exists

Most U.S. post-mortems get done in the wrong room. The hire has left, the board wants an explanation, and the explanation that survives the meeting is almost always “we hired the wrong person” — because it is the one that requires nobody to admit the plan was never tested.

These twelve questions are the ones I ask in a first conversation, in roughly the order I ask them. They are designed to separate three things that look identical from the inside: a motion that hasn't been found, a relationship channel that has run out, and a genuine timing problem. The three have completely different answers, and treating one as another is how a second attempt fails the same way as the first.

The read comes back whether or not you ever speak to me. If it tells you that your motion is already working, it says so, and the right advice is to hire into it rather than pay anyone for a rebuild.

The instrument, in full

The twelve questions

If you would rather read them than answer them, they are all here. These are the questions I ask in a first conversation, in the order I ask them.

01

Who do you sell to?

The only hard boundary in this method. Everything after this is diagnosis.

  • Businesses — we sell B2B
  • Consumers
  • Government or the public sector
  • Both businesses and consumers
02

Have you put anyone — or anything — into the U.S. market yet?

A hire, a founder on a plane, a reseller, an agency. Anything that was supposed to produce American revenue.

  • We hired someone U.S.-based to own it
  • A founder has been running it part-time from Israel
  • We used an agency, reseller or channel partner
  • Not yet — we're planning it
03

How did that go?

The honest version, not the board version.

  • The person or partner is gone, or on the way out
  • Still in place, but U.S. revenue isn't close to what we expected
  • It's working — U.S. revenue is growing predictably
  • Too early to tell, or we haven't started
04

How many U.S. customers are paying you today?

Paying. Not pilots you're not charging for.

  • None
  • One to three
  • Four to ten
  • More than ten
05

Where did those U.S. customers come from?

Trace the first conversation back to its actual origin.

  • People we already knew — investors, friends, the founders' network
  • Inbound we can't really explain
  • Outbound or marketing we ran deliberately, and could run again
  • We don't have U.S. customers yet
06

Which slice of America did you choose?

Region, vertical, company size and channel each behave like a separate country.

  • A specific region, a specific vertical and a specific company size
  • A vertical, but across the whole United States
  • “U.S. enterprises” or “U.S. mid-market”
  • Whoever replies
07

Can you name the exact job title of the person who signs — and is it different from the title that evaluates you?

In U.S. enterprises these are almost always two different people, measured on different things.

  • Yes to both, and we speak to the signer
  • We know the title, but we mostly talk to the evaluator
  • We're mostly talking to the people who'd use it
  • Not with confidence
08

What makes a U.S. deal start?

Not what makes it close — what makes it begin.

  • A specific, observable event we actively watch for
  • A round of outreach, and then we wait
  • Somebody introduces us
  • We don't know
09

When a U.S. deal stalls, do you know which step it died at?

Champion, economic buyer, security review, procurement, legal, reference call.

  • Yes — we can name the stage and the reason
  • Roughly
  • No — they just go quiet
  • We haven't had enough U.S. deals to tell
10

How far has your furthest U.S. deal actually gone?

The real ceiling of your current motion.

  • All the way — security review, procurement, legal, signed
  • Into procurement or security review, then it stalled
  • Good meetings, then “send me something”
  • We haven't had a real U.S. sales conversation yet
11

What do you believe is actually stopping you in the U.S.?

One answer. The one you'd give privately.

  • We don't yet know how Americans buy our kind of product
  • We need more budget and more people on the ground
  • The product needs more work first
  • Timing — we just haven't focused on it
12

The last time a U.S. plan didn't deliver, what did you conclude?

The conclusion you drew matters more than the failure itself.

  • The plan was wrong — built on assumptions we never tested
  • We hired the wrong person
  • We didn't put enough money behind it
  • We haven't had a U.S. plan fail yet