01 — Practice notes from Point Souttar

Carry a brief that survives first contact.

Most expansion decks die in a supplier meeting. Siteworkbase writes the field version: who buys, who blocks, what price the second market will actually wear, and which partner you can live with for eighteen months.

Open the programmes

Glass-walled meeting rooms in a city office used for expansion planning — Field rooms, not theatre

The partner scorecard from the Mandate programme stopped us signing the first distributor who answered the phone.

Mara V. · operations lead, Adelaide fabrication

I still think the homework load is heavy. I also stopped quoting Perth prices in Darwin after week four.

Client in industrial chemicals

The Channel Mapping intensive was blunt about our brand story. Useful, slightly bruising.

Tom R. · Brisbane

Rated 4.2 on the cohort sheet we were given — not a podium number, an honest one.

Platform note · Mandate cohort 12

Programmes

Work you can take into a room

Short, supervised programmes rather than a slide library. Each one ends with a document you can hand a board, a banker, or a sceptical plant manager.

Notebooks and market maps spread across a timber table

Flagship · 12 weeks

The Market Entry Mandate

Destination filter, channel options, a pricing corridor, and a ninety-day landing plan for a second Australian state or an export beachhead.

Read the syllabus

Advisors speaking with a client across a conference table

Intensive · 6 weeks

Channel Partner Mapping

How to list, score, and walk away from distributors who look busy and sell nobody’s product but their own.

See listing

How the work is taught

Four habits we insist on

Name the buyer, not the TAM
We start with three named accounts or buyer types in the destination. If you cannot name them, you are still at home.
Price last, corridor first
A range with floor, stretch, and a “walk away” line. Discounting to win a logo is treated as a design fault.
Partners as a cost centre
Margin given away is modelled like rent. Students leave with a term sheet they can actually defend.
A kill date on the calendar
Every mandate includes the date you stop spending if the leading indicator has not moved. Romantic expansion is expensive.

41 mandates taken through landing

7 destination markets on the current board

16 week median field cycle

2017 practice opened in South Australia

Next conversation

If the second market is already on the board agenda, send the brief as it stands.

We reply within two working days. If the fit is poor we say so, and we will point you to a public reading list rather than invent a programme.

Write to the practice