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Why Your Healthcare Market Entry Strategy Isn't Working.
- Michael Colling-Tuck
- Oct 6
- 10 min read
Updated: Oct 8
The Champagne Tradition
When hot air balloons were first invented in 18th century France, rural communities thought aliens had descended from the sky.
Farmers watched these massive, colourful objects float down into their fields and panicked. Some ran.
Others grabbed weapons. The balloon pilots needed a way to signal they came in peace.
Their solution? Dangle champagne from the basket as they descended.
The message was clear: "We're not invaders. We bring gifts. We respect that this is your land."
It worked. The champagne built trust. Farmers helped pack away the balloon, hauled heavy equipment onto trailers, and became part of the ballooning community. Some fields became regular landing sites—trusted bases where balloonists could launch again and again.
The tradition still exists today. And it contains everything most healthcare manufacturers get wrong about market expansion.
The balloonists didn't hire a local guide and tell them "find us somewhere to land and let us know how it goes." They studied the wind patterns themselves. They chose the landing site. They brought the champagne. They built the relationship directly.
The local farmer helped with logistics, but only after trust was established.
Your market expansion should work the same way.
Why Market Expansion Keeps Failing: The Partner Dependency Trap
Here's what I've actually seen happen when healthcare manufacturers enter new markets...
You sign a distribution agreement with a partner who has "strong relationships" in Germany. You brief them on your product. You provide some marketing materials. You set revenue targets. Then you wait.
Three months later, you ask how it's going.
"We're having conversations. Lots of interest. These things take time in this market."
Six months later, you ask for a pipeline review.
"We've presented to several accounts. Very positive feedback. A few trials starting soon."
Nine months later, you ask about actual revenue.
"The regulatory approval took longer than expected. And you know how cautious German procurement is. But we're optimistic about Q2."
Twelve months later, you've spent €150K supporting a partner who's generated €40K in revenue and has no sustainable pipeline.
You blame the market. You blame the partner. You consider switching distributors.
But the problem isn't the partner. The problem is you handed them responsibility for something they were never equipped to do: strategic market entry and demand creation.
What Your Partner Actually Does (vs. What You Need)
What you need for market expansion:
Strategic identification of key opinion leaders who influence market adoption
Sophisticated demand creation that builds awareness in target segments
High-level relationship building with influential healthcare professionals
VIP engagement strategies that position your innovation as category-defining
Content and thought leadership that establishes clinical credibility
Events and experiences that create peer advocacy and adoption momentum
What your partner actually does:
Calls their existing contacts and asks if they want to evaluate your product
Sends your brochure to procurement departments they've worked with before
Attends local conferences with your booth materials and collects business cards
Follows up on inbound inquiries when healthcare professionals contact them
Provides local logistics, regulatory support, and order fulfilment
Your partner is built for distribution, not demand creation.
They're excellent at fulfilling orders, managing inventory, handling local regulatory requirements, and providing technical support. They know the market's procurement processes. They have established relationships with hospital administrators.
But they don't often run sophisticated LinkedIn campaigns targeting interventional cardiologists. They don't create thought leadership content that positions your innovation as advancing clinical outcomes.
They don't host VIP invitation events that make key opinion leaders feel strategically chosen.
And they're certainly not bringing champagne.
The Consequences of Outsourcing Market Entry
1: Your partner sells to who they know, not who matters
Your partner has relationships with mid-tier hospitals they've worked with for years. Those relationships are built on reliable service and competitive pricing—not on introducing breakthrough innovations to influential early adopters.
So they approach the accounts they're comfortable with. The ones who'll take their call. The ones who've bought from them before.
These aren't the key opinion leaders who will drive market adoption. These are the late-majority buyers who'll consider your innovation after everyone else has already validated it.
Your partner is selling to their comfort zone, not your strategic targets.
2: Your innovation gets positioned as "another product option"
Your partner doesn't understand how to position breakthrough innovation. They understand how to position product features against competitor specifications.
So when they present your innovation, it sounds like: "Here's a new device with these technical advantages over existing options. Would you like to evaluate it?"
Not: "Here's how leading institutions are solving this clinical challenge. Let me show you the outcomes data and introduce you to surgeons who've transformed their practice."
Your partner is doing product comparison, not category creation.
3: You lose control of your brand narrative
Every conversation your partner has with prospects shapes how your innovation is perceived in that market. Every email they send. Every presentation they deliver. Every follow-up they make.
And you have no visibility into, and much less control over, those interactions.
Your partner's sales rep just told a department head that your device is "like the competitor's but cheaper." Another rep emphasised features that the clinical team doesn't care about. A third promised implementation timelines you can't deliver.
Your market entry is being defined by people who don't understand your strategic positioning and you won't find out until the damage is done.
4: Key opinion leaders never hear from you
The healthcare professionals who will drive adoption in this market, the innovative surgeons, the department heads at influential institutions, the thought leaders who speak at conferences, aren't in your partner's contact list.
They're not existing relationships your partner can leverage. They're strategic targets who need to be deliberately identified, researched, and approached with tailored value propositions.
Your partner doesn't have the capability, or frankly, the incentive, to do this work.
They get paid when orders come through. Cold outreach to hard-to-reach opinion leaders doesn't generate near-term commissions. So they focus on warmer leads and easier conversations.
Meanwhile, the people who could actually drive market adoption never learn about your innovation. Or worse, they hear about it third-hand from your competitor who DID approach them directly.
Consequence 5: Your partner reports activity, not progress
Every quarterly review sounds the same:
"We attended three conferences and collected 150 contacts. We've sent product information to 45 hospitals. We're in discussions with 12 potential accounts. Several trials starting next quarter."
It sounds like progress. It's activity metrics.
But "discussions" don't convert. "Interest" doesn't create revenue. "Evaluations" drag on indefinitely because there's no strategic engagement creating urgency.
Your partner is generating the appearance of market presence while you burn budget waiting for momentum that never materialises.
Why You Keep Choosing Partner Dependency Anyway
If this is obviously broken, why does every healthcare manufacturer do it?
1: It feels faster
Hiring a partner looks like instant market presence. One contract signature and suddenly you have "German distribution." You can tell your board you've entered the market. You can report it to investors.
Building your own demand creation infrastructure, identifying targets, running campaigns, hosting events, building relationships takes longer to show results.
So you choose the strategy that creates the illusion of immediate presence over the strategy that creates actual market traction.
2: It feels cheaper
Distribution agreements don't require upfront investment. No hiring clinical specialists. No budget for events. No content creation costs. Just give the partner some margin and let them figure it out.
Of course, twelve months later you've spent €150K in partner support, marketing materials, and "market development funds" with minimal return. But those costs accumulated gradually, so they felt manageable.
Strategic market entry requires concentrated upfront investment. Which feels expensive even when it's actually more cost-effective than slowly burning budget on partner dependency.
3: It feels like their problem, not yours
When your partner isn't generating results, you can blame market conditions, partner capability, or competitive dynamics.
When you own demand creation directly and it doesn't work, there's nobody to blame but your own strategy and execution.
Outsourcing market entry feels like risk mitigation. It's actually accountability avoidance.
4: You don't believe you can do sophisticated demand generation in markets you don't operate in
How do you identify key opinion leaders in a market you've never sold in? How do you run effective campaigns in languages you don't speak? How do you host events in cities you're not based in?
The assumption is: we need a local partner to navigate local complexity.
But in 2025, that assumption is outdated. You can:
Identify influential healthcare professionals through LinkedIn, publication databases, and conference speaker lists
Run sophisticated targeting campaigns to specific segments in any market
Create localised content with native speakers and market expertise you hire as needed
Host VIP invitation events anywhere in the world
Build direct relationships with key influencers before ever setting foot in the market
Local partners are valuable for logistics, regulatory support, and order fulfillment. But demand creation?
You can... and should... own that directly.
The Modern Reality: You Can Control Market Entry
What's changed in the last decade:
LinkedIn gives you direct access to key opinion leaders in any market. You don't need a partner's contact list. You can identify and reach interventional cardiologists in Munich, department heads in Paris, and innovative surgeons in Amsterdam without ever relying on distributor introductions.
Digital campaigns let you target precisely by speciality, institution, geography, and even specific accounts. You're not dependent on your partner's email list or their conference presence. You can create awareness exactly where you need it.
Content positions you before conversations happen. Educational videos, thought leadership articles, clinical insights shared on the right channels, you can establish credibility and start building relationships long before anyone picks up the phone.
Virtual and targeted in-person events create high-value engagement without requiring permanent local infrastructure. Bring key opinion leaders to YOUR event. Control the experience. Build the relationships directly. Then hand qualified, engaged prospects to partners for fulfillment.
Analytics show you what's working in real-time. You're not dependent on your partner's quarterly reports about "activity." You can see who's engaging with your content, attending your events, and expressing genuine interest.
The technology exists for brands to own demand creation and hand qualified leads to partners for conversion and support.
What Strategic Market Entry Actually Looks Like
Stop appointing a partner and hoping they figure it out. Start building demand yourself, then giving qualified opportunities to partners.
Phase 1: Target Identification (Months 1-2)
You, not your partner, identify the key opinion leaders who will drive adoption:
Map the top 50 influential healthcare professionals in your target speciality and geography
Identify the institutions where innovation gets adopted first
Research their clinical priorities, recent publications, and speaking topics
Understand who influences whom in this market's peer networks
This isn't guesswork. This is systematic research using LinkedIn, publication databases, conference speaker lists, and market intelligence.
Your partner can provide input. But you own the targeting strategy.
Phase 2: Direct Engagement (Months 2-4)
You run sophisticated demand creation that builds awareness and interest:
LinkedIn campaigns targeting your identified VIPs with clinical insights, not product pitches
Educational content addressing the problems they're trying to solve
Thought leadership positioning your innovation in the context of clinical advancement
Case studies and outcomes data from existing markets that build credibility
You're not selling yet. You're building awareness with the people who matter, establishing your brand as a serious player in advancing their field.
Phase 3: VIP Invitation (Months 4-6)
Here's where you bring the champagne:
You host an exclusive event, virtual or in-person, designed specifically for the influential healthcare professionals you've identified.
Not a product launch. Not a sales presentation. An invitation to be part of something significant.
Examples:
"Innovation Summit: Advancing Outcomes in [Clinical Area]" with peer presentations and your innovation as enabling technology
"Surgeon Advisory Board: Shaping the Future of [Procedure Type]" where key opinion leaders influence your development roadmap
Factory or R&D facility tour with hands-on simulation experience for select innovators
"Clinical Excellence Forum" bringing together leading practitioners to share techniques—featuring your technology
The event makes them feel chosen. Strategic. Part of an exclusive community advancing their field.
They're not prospects. They're partners in innovation. They're the landowners you're asking to help you unload the balloon, after you've brought champagne and explained why you chose their field.
Phase 4: Qualified Handoff (Months 6+)
Now, and only now, do partners take over:
After the event, you've built direct relationships with key opinion leaders. They understand your innovation. They've experienced it. They're interested in exploring adoption.
These are qualified, warm opportunities, not cold contacts your partner has to educate from scratch.
You hand them to your partner with context:
"Dr. Schmidt attended our Innovation Summit, completed hands-on training, expressed strong interest in implementing at his institution. He's expecting your follow-up to discuss logistics and procurement pathways."
Your partner now does what they're good at: navigating local procurement, handling regulatory requirements, managing implementation logistics, providing ongoing support.
But the demand creation, the relationship building, the strategic positioning, the VIP engagement - you owned that.
The Difference This Makes
Traditional approach:
Sign partner agreement
Brief partner on product
Wait for partner to generate leads
12 months later: minimal revenue, no pipeline, vague promises
Strategic approach:
Identify 50 key opinion leaders in target market
Run 3-month engagement campaign building awareness and interest
Host VIP event for top 20 influential prospects
Hand 15 qualified, warm opportunities to partner
12 months later: 5-8 accounts implemented, sustainable pipeline, peer advocacy building
Same market. Same timeframe. Completely different results.
Because you didn't outsource market entry to a partner who was never equipped to do strategic demand creation. You owned the champagne moment yourself.
The Honest Truth About Partners
This isn't anti-partner. Partners are essential for market expansion, in their proper role.
Good partners provide:
Local regulatory expertise and compliance navigation
Established logistics and fulfillment infrastructure
Technical support and service capabilities
Procurement relationship management
Implementation and training execution
What partners cannot provide, and were never designed to provide, is sophisticated demand creation that establishes your innovation with key market influencers.
Expecting your partner to identify, target, and engage the influential healthcare professionals who will drive adoption is like expecting the farmer to launch the hot air balloon.
That's not their job. It's yours.
The balloonists brought the champagne. The balloonists chose where to land. The balloonists built the relationship.
Then the farmer helped with the logistics.
Your market expansion should work the same way. Own demand creation. Build relationships with key opinion leaders directly. Host the VIP experiences that make them feel chosen.
Then hand qualified opportunities to partners who can execute locally.
Stop waiting for partners to bring you leads. Start bringing them qualified opportunities they can convert.
Here's how you can start...
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