These are some of the questions you need to answer: Be honest – if you are not honest with your answers, you are only hurting yourself. You may also want to get one or two other persons to complete this checklist (perhaps another person from inside the firm and someone outside the firm that you know well and that knows your firm well, and that will give you an honest evaluation).

In this checklist, we have listed the questions that you need to consider on the left-hand side. In the “score” column, you must give your firm a score of 1 to 10 (with 10 being the highest). Under the “yes/no” column indicate a “yes” if you think that your firm can answer “yes” with confidence to the questions, otherwise leave it blank if it is a “no”.. Under the additional explanation heading you need to justify the score you have given yourself with a small explanation – you need only write down a sentence or two for the sake of clarity. At the bottom of the checklist, add up all of your scores, as well as all the “yes’s”. Your total score should at least be above 60 and you should also have a “yes” for all of the questions – if not, then you need to first focus on improving that area of operation of your current business before going into exports.