01 — Programme Outcome Map & Business Diagnostic
Programme: International Sales, Distributor Development & Cross-Border E-commerce
1. What you will learn
In this lesson you will learn how to turn a general wish to export into three measurable ninety-day outcomes, and how to test with arithmetic whether those outcomes are reachable with the activity you can actually generate. You will also learn to run a short diagnostic across the eight capabilities an exporting business needs.
2. The idea explained
An outcome map is a short written statement of what will be different in ninety days, expressed so that an outsider could verify it. Each outcome needs four things: a baseline, a target, an owner, and a review date. Without a baseline you cannot tell whether anything moved. Without an owner, in a business of three or four people, the task belongs to everyone and therefore to nobody.
The mistake almost every first-time exporter makes is to write an outcome that depends on someone else saying yes, such as appointing a distributor. Whether a distributor signs is not within your control. What is within your control is the number of qualified distributor candidates you approach, the quality of the sample pack you send, and the speed with which you answer their technical questions. Write outcomes around the things you control, and let the orders follow or not follow.
The arithmetic test is what separates a plan from a hope. Take your intended outcome, work backwards through your conversion rates to the activity it requires, and compare that activity with what you can physically do. If the required activity is three times your present capacity, you do not have a plan, and you have found that out on day one rather than on day ninety.
The diagnostic runs across eight capabilities: product readiness for the destination market, costing and pricing discipline, compliance and documentation, logistics and freight, buyer identification and qualification, negotiation and contracting, working capital, and after-sale service across a distance. Rate each from one to five on evidence, not on confidence. Any capability at two or below is a constraint, and constraints do not respond to effort spent elsewhere.
Be clear-eyed about outcomes. A well-built outcome map improves your odds of learning something useful in ninety days. It does not entitle you to an order, and many businesses complete a first quarter of disciplined export work with no order and a great deal more knowledge.
Apply it
3. How to apply it in your own business
Write three outcomes today, each with baseline, target, owner and review date, and each expressed in activity you control rather than a decision someone else must make.
Run the backward arithmetic on each one. State the conversion assumptions you used, label them clearly as assumptions, and note where you will get real figures to replace them.
Then complete the eight-capability diagnostic and circle the lowest two. Your first month of work belongs to those two, regardless of which lessons you find most interesting.
Worked example
4. Worked example
Meera has never exported and wants one confirmed export order within ninety days. She currently receives about six enquiries a month from her marketplace listing.
She has no export conversion data, so she borrows her domestic figure of three per cent from enquiry to order and writes beside it that this is an assumption to be replaced.
Working backwards, one order at three per cent requires one divided by three hundredths, which is about thirty-four enquiries. Over ninety days she will receive about eighteen enquiries at her present rate of six a month. Eighteen enquiries at three per cent is about half an order.
The arithmetic has told her something important before she spent anything. To have a fair chance at one order she needs about thirty-four enquiries in ninety days, which is roughly eleven a month, nearly double her present flow. Alternatively she needs her conversion to improve, which she cannot rely on because she has no export experience to improve from.
So she rewrites the outcome. Instead of one confirmed order, her first outcome becomes raising qualified export enquiries from six to twelve a month by the end of the quarter, with herself as owner and a review on the last Friday of each month. Her second becomes sending five complete sample packs with a full specification sheet and a costed quotation. Her third becomes completing her landed cost sheet at three delivery terms.
All three are within her control, all three are measurable, and if an order arrives it will arrive as a consequence rather than as a target she can only hope for.
5. Common mistakes and how to fix them
The first mistake is writing outcomes that require another party to agree. Fix it by expressing outcomes as activity and quality you control.
The second is skipping the backward arithmetic, which is what turns an ambitious target into a discovered impossibility on day ninety. Fix it by computing the required activity before committing to the target.
The third is borrowing a conversion rate and then forgetting it was borrowed. Fix it by labelling every assumption in writing and scheduling its replacement with measured data.
The fourth is working on the capability you enjoy rather than the one scoring lowest. Fix it by letting the diagnostic choose the first month's work.
Key takeaways
6. Board summary
An outcome needs a baseline, a target, an owner and a review date, or it is not an outcome. Write outcomes around activity you control, never around a decision a distributor or buyer must make. Work backwards from the target through your conversion rates to the activity required, and compare it honestly with your capacity. Label every borrowed conversion assumption as an assumption and schedule its replacement with measured data. Score eight capabilities from one to five on evidence, and give the first month to the two lowest.
Check your understanding
7. Practice and self-check
Question one: What four elements must a written outcome contain? Answer: a baseline, a target, an owner and a review date.
Question two: Why is appointing a distributor a poor outcome to write? Answer: because it depends on someone else agreeing, which is outside your control.
Question three: Meera wants two orders instead of one at a three per cent rate. How many enquiries are required? Answer: two divided by three hundredths is about sixty-seven enquiries.
Question four: Over ninety days, how many enquiries a month is that? Answer: about sixty-seven divided by three, which is roughly twenty-two a month.
Question five: Her conversion turns out to be two per cent, not three. How many enquiries does one order require? Answer: one divided by two hundredths, which is fifty enquiries.
Question six: Name any four of the eight diagnostic capabilities. Answer: any four of product readiness, costing and pricing, compliance and documentation, logistics and freight, buyer qualification, negotiation and contracting, working capital, and after-sale service at a distance.
Question seven: What should you do with a capability scored at two? Answer: treat it as a constraint and give it your first month's work, because effort elsewhere will not relieve it.
Question eight: What honest expectation does this lesson set? Answer: that a disciplined first quarter improves what you learn and may well produce no order at all, and that no order is promised.