Vetting help to expand into a new province without spreading thin

Expanding into a new province can feel like duplicating your business overnight. The temptation is real: hire someone fast, trust their track record elsewhere, and move. What usually breaks down is simpler than it looks. A strategist who nailed Gauteng expansion doesn't automatically understand the property tax incentives in the Western Cape, or the exact supplier chains that make sense in KwaZulu-Natal. Worse, you discover mid-execution that their "proven playbook" was never tested against your actual product margins or local competition. You end up with a glossy plan, no provincial relationships, and cash spent on guesses.

The fix isn't more vetting meetings. It's asking for the right proof before you commit, and checking it with people who actually operate where you're going.

Trace their footprint in the target province

Start with the registers. Ask the strategist for a list of every expansion they've advised into your target province in the past five years. Not national expansions—provincial ones. Search the CIPC database for any businesses they may have founded or where they're a close affiliate; check if they're registered with the South African Institute of Professional Accountants (SAIPA), the South African Institute of Management Consultants (SAIMC) or relevant sector bodies depending on what they claim to specialise in.

If they've done this before in your province, they should have a traceable footprint: past clients willing to speak on record, relationships with local suppliers or landlords, and probably a sense of who regulates or influences the sector locally. If they haven't, that's not automatic disqualification—but it changes the engagement. You're not buying proven local knowledge; you're buying a planning discipline they need to apply fresh. That costs differently.

Next, ask for three references who expanded into that specific province on their advice. Don't take warm introductions; ask for names and phone numbers, and call them cold if you can. Ask each reference one concrete question: "What did your strategist get wrong about the province that you had to fix yourself?" Evasive answers or "nothing really" are red flags. Good advisers know their blind spots and flag them upfront. When you speak to references, verify they're real—ask them to send you a copy of an email they received from the strategist during their engagement, or ask a detail only someone in that deal would know.

Spot-check their provincial assumptions before signing

Before you engage, ask them to outline their top three assumptions about doing business in your target province. These might be about tax treatment, cost of premises, labour availability, competitive intensity, or logistics. For each assumption, ask: "Where did this come from?" They should cite a specific conversation with a local operator, a recent site visit, a municipal resource, or published data—not a general sense or a previous province's pattern.

Take those three assumptions and verify two of them yourself. Phone a business in your target province that does something adjacent to what you do—not a direct competitor, but someone in a related sector. Ask whether the strategist's assumption holds. If the assumption is that commercial rental in a certain node costs R80/m², ask a local agent whether that's current. If they've assumed a particular regulatory approval takes four weeks, contact that regulator's office and confirm the turnaround.

What you're checking is not whether the strategist is perfect—it's whether they've done ground-truth work or whether they're recycling logic from somewhere else. A strategist who's worth paying will welcome this. They'll have sources they can point you to, and they'll actively correct their own assumptions when you find better data.

Finally, before signing, ask them to itemise how their fee or scope changes if a key assumption breaks. If they've assumed you can hire experienced staff locally but it turns out you can't, or if a competitor moves faster than expected, what happens to the plan and their advice? This forces them to own the risk and shows whether they're thinking in scenarios or just a linear story.

When you're ready to move forward with a strategist you've properly vetted, Strove can help you find others in the space to stress-test your choice or explore alternative approaches in parallel.