Every month I receive proposals from Chinese companies that want to sell in Latin America. Most are not ready. Not for lack of product or money: for lack of decisions. These are the five signs I look at before accepting a project.
1. They have already decided which country comes first
"Latin America" is not a market. It is twenty countries with different prices, taxes, selling languages and platforms. The company that says "we want the whole region" has not started thinking yet. The one that says "Mexico first, then Colombia" has a plan that can be executed and measured.
2. They have someone who can sign without asking Chongqing
When I took a micro-drama app into six countries, what made the contract possible was that the representative in China had the authority to approve budgets and changes. If every decision takes two weeks to cross the Pacific, the market moves before the company does.
3. They accept that content is rewritten, not translated
This is the clearest sign. The company that asks "how much does it cost to translate our materials?" does not understand the region yet. The one that asks "how would we have to tell this in Mexico?" does. In the Chongqing project we wrote more than 300 videos from scratch and the result was 8.2 million organic views.
4. They have a KPI that is not "visibility"
Installs, cost per install, sales, retention. A number that can be written into the contract and reviewed every month. When the KPIs are in the contract, the renewal is not a conversation: it is a result.
5. They are willing to come
The companies that close are the ones that send someone. The meetings in Chongqing with 19 representatives of 15 organizations worked because there was physical presence on both sides. If a company is not willing to put a person in the region during the first quarter, it is not ready to sell there.
What I do with this list
If a company meets three of the five signs, the project can be built. If it meets one or none, I say no and explain what would have to change first. Saying no in time is part of the job.