An action plan turns your diagnosis, your market and your offer into tasks with an owner, deadline, cost and indicator. It is organized in a schedule with a critical path and presented in a few pages to whoever must decide.
Goal: Build an action plan with a SMART goal, critical path, budget with contingency and indicators, and present it starting with the figure that decides.
You already have a diagnosis, a market and an offer. The action plan turns them into tasks: what will be done, who will do it, when, how much it costs and how you will know it was done. It starts from a SMART objective: specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound. “Export more” is not one. “Ship a trial order to Chile in seven months” is. Each action has an owner with a name, not a department.
The schedule puts the actions in order over time. First identify what depends on what: you cannot send samples without a technical sheet or close an order without approved samples. The chain of tasks that sets the final date is the critical path: if one of them slips, the whole plan slips. The others have slack. Mark milestones, verifiable facts such as “sheet ready” or “order confirmed”, and leave a buffer before each one: paperwork and buyers' replies usually take longer than expected.
The budget adds up two different amounts. One is the preparation investment, which is not recovered with a sale: tests, certifications, labels, sales material, samples and trips. The other is the working capital of the order, which comes back when you get paid. Add a contingency, a reserve for unforeseen events (for example, 10% of the investment), and compare the total with the cash you can commit. The difference is what you must finance. How to obtain that money is covered in the course on Finance, Costs and Payment Methods.
Without indicators, a plan is a wish list. Process indicators measure effort: buyers contacted, samples sent, meetings held. Result indicators measure what was achieved: confirmed orders, shipments and sales in US$. Each one has a target and a date. Review the plan once a month and set decision points with their plan B: what you will do, for example, if there is still no order in month 6. Also note the main risks and a response to each.
The presentation puts the plan in a few pages so that others can decide: partners, a financier, a support program or your team. There is no single format. A useful structure: a one-page executive summary (what you sell, where, how much you invest and what you need), diagnosis and gaps, market and position, offer, actions and schedule, budget, indicators and risks. Start with the figure that decides. Separate the data that has backing from the assumptions: a plan with visible assumptions inspires more confidence than one that hides them.
| Who reads it | What they want to know | What to highlight |
|---|---|---|
| Partners or family | How much money they will put in, when they get it back and what risk they run | Investment, estimated payback time, risks and plan B |
| Bank or financier | Whether the business generates cash to pay and how much it needs to finance | Amount you request, cash flow, capacity of the offer and expected sales |
| Support program | Whether the project is serious, measurable and has a responsible team | Objectives, indicators and schedule. Read the program's rules first, because each one asks for something different |
| Your team | What each person does and by when | Actions with an owner, deadline and deliverable |
Result: The plan sets 2 shipments to Chile in 12 months (US$ 14,560 FOB), a preparation investment of US$ 7,810 and a financing gap of US$ 4,330, with monthly review and decisions in months 6 and 12. The first year is one of investment: the return will come with the regular orders.
20/07/2028
The traceability rule under the FSMA law requires additional records for the foods on the FDA's Food Traceability List, and it reaches foreign companies that produce food for consumption in the US. The original compliance date was 20/01/2026. According to the FDA's official page, the agency proposed extending it by 30 months, to 20/07/2028, and an act of Congress ordered that the rule not be enforced before that date. The same page still shows the old date in one of its sections.
Note in your schedule the dates of the destination's rules and confirm them at the official source: dates move and a page can be left with old data.
Source: FDA – FSMA Final Rule on Requirements for Additional Traceability Records for Certain Foods
2026
According to the FDA's official page, the Bioterrorism Act requires the agency to receive prior notice (Prior Notice) of all food, including food for animals, that is imported or offered for import into the US. The notice is filed before the cargo arrives, generally by your importer or their agent, with data on the product, the manufacturer and the shipment. Without an adequate notice, the food may be held or refused on arrival. For the exporter it is one more milestone in the schedule: it depends on delivering their data on time.
Ask your importer what data it needs for the prior notice and add it to your list of documents, with its own deadline.
Practise with the calculators, the COMEX Simulator and the review questions on the main page.
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