Most companies entering the United States do not fail on product or price. They fail because the commercial model that worked at home assumes a trust chain that does not exist in the new market, and nobody budgets for rebuilding it.
I am Andre Magrini. I ran the commercial operation in Brazil and then in North America inside the same company, which is a different thing from advising on the crossing. From 2019 to 2022 I took the Ag Growth International Brazil operation from roughly $35M to more than $150M, and from 2022 to 2025 I was Director for North America covering the United States and Canada. I am based in the Greater Chicago area and hold a US green card.
What actually breaks when a company crosses the border
| What leadership assumes | What actually happens |
|---|---|
| The product needs localization | The product is usually fine. The buying process is what is different |
| We need a US salesperson | A rep with no channel and no references produces meetings, not revenue |
| Our references will carry over | A US buying committee cannot verify a customer it has never heard of, in a market it does not follow |
| We will use the same channel model | US distributor economics, inventory expectations and margin structures are frequently incompatible with the home model |
| Pricing translates | Landed cost, freight, duties, warranty exposure and payment terms move the floor, sometimes past viability |
| We can run it from headquarters | Time zone plus signature authority plus no local presence equals a sales cycle that never closes |
The item that costs the most is the third one. Trust does not translate. A buyer in Ohio evaluating an unfamiliar supplier from Sao Paulo is not being provincial: they genuinely cannot check you, and the cost of being wrong lands on them personally. Every serious US market entry plan has to answer how the buyer verifies you, and most plans do not even name the problem.
Who this is for
- Latin American B2B companies (Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, Chile, Colombia) building revenue in the United States, whether the first US dollar or the first US team
- European or Israeli companies where the North American number has been missed two years running and the diagnosis is still unclear
- Private equity and growth funds with a portfolio company whose US expansion thesis has stalled
- US and Canadian companies building a real channel into Latin America, which is the same problem pointed the other direction
Should you hire a US VP of Sales, open a subsidiary, or use a fractional CRO?
| Your situation | What to do | Why |
|---|---|---|
| No US revenue yet, no validated channel | Fractional CRO first | Hiring a VP to discover the model is the most expensive way to run an experiment |
| Some US revenue, all founder-sourced | Fractional CRO | You have signal, not a system. The gap is repeatability |
| Validated channel, predictable pipeline | Hire the VP of Sales | Now the job is execution and management, which needs someone full-time |
| Legal or tax structure is the blocker | Neither. Get counsel first | No revenue leader fixes an entity problem |
| Board wants US revenue next quarter | Reset the expectation | A realistic first cycle is two to four quarters. Anything faster is luck, and luck does not compound |
The honest version: a full-time US VP of Sales costs roughly $295,000 to $320,000 fully loaded before equity, and the average Chief Revenue Officer tenure in the US is 25 months, among the shortest in the C-suite. Hiring that role to answer questions you have not answered yet means you are paying a premium to run a discovery project, and if it fails you lose the year, not the quarter.
What the first ninety days look like
Days 1 to 30. Establish what is actually true in the US. Who buys, through what channel, at what landed price, against which incumbent, and what they need in order to believe you. The output is a written statement of the commercial model with the assumptions marked as verified or unverified.
Days 31 to 60. Build the trust chain. This is the part almost nobody plans. References a US buyer can actually check, a channel partner whose name carries locally, a proof point in the right vertical, and a way for the buyer to reduce their personal risk of choosing you. Without this, price becomes your only argument, and price is the worst argument a new entrant can make.
Days 61 to 90. Instrument and hand over. Pipeline stages that reflect the US cycle rather than the home country cycle, a forecast the board can read, and a defined trigger for when to hire the full-time leader.
Common questions
Do you speak Portuguese and Spanish?
Portuguese is my native language. I work in English daily in the North American market. Spanish is workable for commercial conversation.
Are you based in the US or in Brazil?
Greater Chicago, with a US green card. I work US time zones. That matters more than it sounds: much of what breaks in cross-border expansion is simply that decisions wait sixteen hours.
What does it cost?
Market benchmarks in 2026 run $10,000 to $18,000 per month for companies between $3M and $10M in revenue, and $15,000 to $25,000 between $10M and $25M, structured as a retainer with a six-month minimum. Detail on the cost page.
How is this different from a market entry consultancy?
A consultancy delivers a market entry study. I take the revenue seat and run the motion, which means I am accountable for the number rather than for the document. If what you need is a study, a consultancy is cheaper and I will tell you so.
Start with the constraint
Tell me where the US number is breaking. If the problem is the commercial model, that is my work. If the problem is the product, the entity structure or the capital, I will say so in the first reply.
Last updated: August 24, 2026.