You don't have a contacts problem
You don't know the market yet
“That’s a hope, not a growth strategy”
I say some version of this to a few companies every month who want help growing by “leveraging my network” or “getting access to my contacts.” Usually they’re from another sector trying to break into ADS, or from another region trying to get into the UK or European market.
There are plenty of consultants who offer this. And I get the appeal. But it’s almost always solving for a symptom of the problem, not the problem itself.
What’s actually being asked
When a company asks for my network access in a new market, what they mean is: can you use your relationships to help us make sales?
Sometimes that means introductions. But often it goes further than that. What they’re really asking is: can you be our sales rep in this market, because you have the relationships we don’t? Carry the conversation, manage the relationship, and get us in front of the right people.
The problem with that is twofold.
First, I have no stake in their product or their delivery - I can’t represent something I don’t own or really have any say in. Second, and more fundamentally, a sale in ADS isn’t closed by a warm introduction. It’s closed by the company demonstrating, over time, that they understand the market, the buyer’s problem, and how their product fits into it.
Behind all of this, there’s usually a missing piece - a growth strategy built on a genuine understanding of the market. Which segments? Which buyers, and why them? How do they actually buy? What will make this company different here? What will it take to win?
Most of the time, none of that has been worked through. The strategy is: we’ve decided to expand into this market, and we need doors opened.
That’s a hope, not a growth strategy.
What a warm introduction actually is
In ADS especially, a warm introduction carries both parties’ names on it. I’m not just connecting two people - I’m signalling to someone I’ve spent years building trust with that the company I’m sending them is worth their time. That signal only works because it’s selective and there is no sales-driven agenda there.
If the company doesn’t know the market well enough to have a credible positioning and a conversation, the introduction doesn’t help them. It makes things worse. They’ve used a one-time asset and left an impression that’s hard to undo.
And if it goes nowhere - because the product isn’t right for the market, or the proposition doesn’t land - they’ll blame me and my network. Not the product. That’s a dynamic I’m not willing to set up.
So when someone asks me to open doors as the first move, my answer is always the same: you’re not ready for it (yet).
The work that comes first
(skip this at your own risk)
Growing into a new region or sector in ADS requires understanding the market at a level most companies underestimate.
Who actually buys what you’re selling, and how? What does the competitive set look like from the buyer’s perspective? What are the qualification requirements, the security considerations, the domestic content expectations that shape procurement decisions here? Where is there genuine gap?
That research produces a hypothesis: here’s where we think we fit, here’s why, here’s what would need to be true for this to work. From that, you can build a real strategy - a roadmap for how you test the hypothesis, what early conversations you’re trying to have, what you’re trying to learn, and how you’d adjust if the market pushes back.
This is hard work, and usually gets skipped. Companies arrive wanting to execute before they’ve finished thinking.
The ones that get it right treat early market conversations as structured tests, not sales attempts. They go in to learn - to find the gap between what they assumed about the market and what’s actually true. Where does the proposition land well? Where does it need reframing for UK or European buyers? What operational realities hadn’t they accounted for?
That process is what builds the picture you need. And it’s what makes you ready for introductions - because by the time you’re asking for them, you know exactly what conversation you need to have.
Government programmes, matchmakers, and trade bodies
I call these the key enablers. Early on, they can help you have exploratory conversations while you’re still forming your hypothesis.
But their real value comes once you have a clear hypothesis, a tested proposition, and a genuine sense of where you fit. At that point, they accelerate something that’s already moving.
The same applies to network introductions. At that stage, you’re not asking someone to take a punt on an untested proposition. You’re asking them to shortcut a process you’ve already done most of the hard work for.
That’s a completely different conversation.The companies that skip the work don’t just fail to grow into the market. They make it harder for themselves later. Burned introductions don’t reset. A bad first impression in a market travels. And the expectations set by “we just need the right doors opened” are almost impossible to manage when the doors open and nothing is ready behind them.
Doing this properly - the research, the hypothesis, the tested proposition - isn’t the slow route. It’s the only route that actually leads somewhere.
More next month.
If you’re trying to grow into ADS - or into a new region - and you’re not sure whether you’ve done enough of this thinking yet, it’s worth a conversation.