Reading a market you cannot afford to visit

You have four markets on a shortlist and the budget to visit one of them. Most founders treat that as a travel problem. It is a reading problem. You can learn most of what separates a real market from a flattering one without leaving your desk, and the airfare is better spent confirming what the desk already told you than finding it out cold. The skill is knowing which questions the desk can answer and which ones only the ground can.

What a market will tell you for free

Start with what is already public, because a surprising amount is. Trade data is the clearest signal and the cheapest. In 2024 the United States became New Zealand's second-largest goods export market, taking NZ$9.0 billion, according to Stats NZ. When New Zealand companies are already selling into a market at that scale, the demand, the freight, the payment path and the compliance path are proven before you spend a dollar. Where your peers already go is the best free evidence you will find.

NZTE goes further for its members, building you a ranked list of your most promising export markets from its own data. If you have access to it, that is your first cut done for you. Add the free public datasets on market size, growth and incomes, and you can size and sort a shortlist before lunch.

The proxy data that stands in for a plane ticket

Public statistics tell you a market is big. Proxy signals tell you whether it is pulling, and you can read them from here too. Look at what people in that country type into a search engine when they have the problem you solve. Count who is advertising for the role that owns that problem. Read your competitors' customer logos, case studies and pricing pages, which quietly reveal who is buying, at what size, and for how much. Sit in the review sites and forums where buyers say what today's options get wrong.

None of it is proof. Each is a proxy for one question: is there a pull here, or only a population? A market can be large and still want nothing you sell.

Who should you call before you book a flight?

Data gives you the shape of a market. People give you its temperature, and that is where a desk-bound read finally has to reach for a phone. Before you spend on travel, spend an hour each with three kinds of person. Call a New Zealand company already selling there and ask what surprised them. Call an in-market advisor, or an NZTE contact on the ground, and ask what they would not do again. Then call three or four of the buyers you think you want, not to pitch, but to ask how they solve this today and what would make them change. Those calls cost nothing but your time, and they kill more bad markets than any spreadsheet does.

What only the ground can tell you

The desk is honest about size and pull. It goes quiet on the things that actually decide a market. It cannot tell you whether polite interest turns into a signed order, how long the real buying process runs once procurement is involved, whether the incumbent is loved or just entrenched, or whether a warm meeting means yes or means nothing. That is what a visit is for. Go to confirm a decision you have very nearly made, not to make one you have been avoiding. This is the read you do before you pick a market, not the picking itself, and not the validation that comes after you have chosen.

So which market earns the airfare?

Rank the shortlist on the desk first. Use the free trade and market data to size it, the proxy signals to see where the pull is, and the calls to test the top two hardest. By the time you book a flight, you should be travelling to one market with a thesis you are trying to disprove, not three markets you are hoping to tell apart. The plane ticket is the most expensive research you will buy, so buy it last. Which of your shortlisted markets could you rank tomorrow without leaving your chair?

Sources. The United States becoming New Zealand's second-largest goods export market in 2024, at NZ$9.0 billion: Stats NZ, overseas merchandise trade ("US now New Zealand's second largest export partner"). NZTE building members a ranked list of their most promising export markets: New Zealand Trade and Enterprise (myNZTE). The method for reading a market from a desk - the demand signals, the proxy data, the local calls, and what only a visit can settle - draws on my own experience helping New Zealand tech firms assess offshore markets, not a single study.

Nick Burns is a fractional CRO for New Zealand B2B tech companies, at home and expanding internationally. He co-founded Emendo and sold it to McKesson, then the 14th-largest company on the Fortune 500, and has since helped 60+ tech companies grow sales.