Diagnostic

MEA Readiness Scorecard

Thirty questions for companies weighing a Middle East entry — or already in the region and not where they expected to be. Scored on what is true, not on how confident you feel.

connektionsmea.com · MEA Readiness Scorecard

Most expansion decisions are made on conviction and reviewed on revenue. In between sits an eighteen-month period where the things that decide the outcome were settled before anyone arrived: who owns the region, what the board was told to expect, which country comes first, and whether anyone is actually here.

This scorecard asks about those things. Every answer is a statement of fact you can check against your own company rather than a confidence rating, because confidence ratings produce scores of forty-five and expansions that fail anyway.

Readiness is not additive. Six dimensions, ten points each, sixty in total — but a strong average does not survive a hole. Several conditions cap the result no matter what the arithmetic says, because they are the conditions the first real deal will find. They are listed below, before you start, so nothing in the result is a surprise.

Ten minutes

Thirty questions across six dimensions, plus one at the top about where you are today.

Nothing is collected

No email, no account, no answers stored. The result is worked out in your browser and stays there.

Yours to keep

Copy a link that carries your answers with it, or print the completed sheet for the people who have to agree with you.

Scripting is off, so this page will not score itself. The point value of every answer is shown beside it. Add your six dimension totals, then read the bands and the capping conditions in the two tables below.

How it is scored

Bands

ScoreBandWhat it means
0–20Not ReadyEntering now would cost you the option later.
21–34Partially ReadyThe intent is real. The sequence has not been decided.
35–46Ready with SupportThe fundamentals hold. The plan is what is missing.
47–60Fully ReadyWhat you need is a person, not a study.

Conditions that cap the result

Each of these overrides the arithmetic. If one applies to you, the result is held at the band named beside it however the six dimensions add up.

The dangerous score is not the low one. A company scoring in the twenties usually knows something is missing.

The score that costs money is the middle one: strong enough to justify the decision, weak enough to make the first eighteen months expensive.

0 of 30 answered

Before you start

Where are you today?

This does not change the questions. It changes what the result points at.

0What do you have in the region today?

One

Product Readiness

Does the product survive contact with a Gulf buyer?

Not whether the product is good. Whether it can be bought here — hosted where the regulator requires, supported in this time zone, and priced against a budget that was not built for your commercial model.

/ 10

1Your reference customers, compared with the accounts you would pursue in the Gulf
2Localisation — language, documentation, contracting
3Where the data sits
4How your commercial model handles the way the region buys
5Support cover

Two

Commercial Engine

Can the sales motion carry a longer, relationship-led cycle?

A machine tuned for a ninety-day cycle and inbound volume does not slow down gracefully. It reports the region as underperforming in month seven and closes it in month eleven.

/ 10

6Who owns the region
7The longest sales cycle you have actually closed and kept
8How you would build pipeline in a market with no inbound
9Channel capability
10Pricing a first deal as an entry deal

Three

Procurement Reality

Can you actually get to contract, and get paid?

This is where competent entries die. The product wins, the sponsor is convinced, and then eleven months pass between verbal agreement and first invoice — through vendor registration, legal review, a local-entity requirement nobody checked, and a payment cycle that was never modelled.

/ 10

11Gulf enterprise or government contract terms
12Local entity, agent or partner-of-record requirements
13What your cash position tolerates
14Registration, prequalification and formal tendering
15Compliance documentation

Four

Market Choice

Do you know where you are starting, and why?

There is no Middle East buyer. There is a Saudi buyer with a programme budget, a UAE buyer with a procurement calendar, and a Qatari buyer with neither. A plan that does not name a first country cannot be sequenced, costed or staffed.

/ 10

16Which country comes first
17Which buyer
18Who currently holds the budget you want
19Where the money would come from
20What your view of the market is built on

Five

Organisational Commitment

Will the company still be doing this in eighteen months?

Most regional entries are not abandoned because they failed. They are abandoned because the clock they were given was shorter than the market’s. The question is not whether the company is enthusiastic. It is what has been written down.

/ 10

21Money
22Sponsorship
23What the board has been told to expect
24What happens when it is slower than planned
25Decision rights

Six

Presence and Proximity

Is anyone actually here?

The region is not hostile to remote vendors. It is indifferent to them. Access, standing and the meetings that matter are functions of being present often enough that people expect to see you again — which is a different thing from visiting.

/ 10

26Time your company has spent in the region in the last twelve months
27What is planned for the next twelve months
28Relationships in the region
29What a buyer would find if they looked you up locally
30How you expect to meet the buyer

Your result

Your result appears here once all thirty questions and the opening question have been answered.

* Your answers are written into the link itself, after the #. Browsers never send that part of an address to a server, so nothing here is stored on this site and no result reaches us unless you choose to send it. Open the link again on any device and the scorecard comes back filled in.

If a dimension came out low, these were written about it

Would you rather just talk?

A scorecard is a structured way of asking questions you could also ask out loud. If the result above described your position, a conversation will get you further than the next article.

Begin the conversation