Our Methodology
73% of healthcare launches miss forecast. We fix the structure behind that.
Not by working harder. By diagnosing what is actually broken before recommending anything. Healthcare used to run on relationships. Access has fallen from 80% in 2008 to about 24% today. Clinicians research before meetings. Committees, not individuals, now make buying decisions. The playbook changed. Most go-to-market strategies have not.
Most healthcare companies have a demand problem disguised as a sales problem.
When results decline, the response is predictable. More reps. More training. Better CRM. New sales leader. The activity metrics improve. The results do not.
Because the problem isn’t execution. It’s physics.
HCPs give a supplier roughly 12 minutes a slot, and around 36 minutes a week to all suppliers combined. Access has fallen from 80% in 2008 to about 24% today. Buying has moved from individual clinicians to committees of five to fifteen stakeholders. The information asymmetry that made reps valuable has collapsed. Clinicians can find everything online.
73% of healthcare launches miss forecast. Not because the products aren’t good. Because go-to-market hasn’t adapted to how healthcare buys now.
We diagnose before we prescribe. Here’s why.
Most agencies start with a capabilities deck. We start with questions, some uncomfortable.
Twenty years across orthopaedics, ophthalmology, anaesthetics, wound care, pain management, and diagnostics taught us something: the problems repeat. The surface looks different: a stalled launch in Germany, a failing congress strategy in the US, a patient marketing programme that generates awareness but no bookings. Underneath, the same handful of structural failures appear again and again.
Cross-speciality pattern recognition
A medical device company struggling with adoption often has the same messaging architecture failure as a pharma company missing forecast. We've seen both. That cross-pollination means we diagnose faster and more accurately than a specialist who's only worked in one vertical.
The chain metaphor
Commercial performance in healthcare is a chain: positioning, messaging, sales enablement, digital presence, advocate programme, measurement. When results decline, companies fix the link they can see, usually the sales team. But a chain breaks at the weakest link, not the most visible one. Our diagnostic process walks the entire chain before recommending where to intervene.
Honest assessment, not optimistic scoping
If the problem is pricing, we'll say so. If the product needs clinical evidence before marketing will work, we'll say that too. If another agency is a better fit, we'll tell you. The triage exists to save everyone's time, including ours.
The framework
The 3 E’s: Empower. Evolve. Equip.
A demand generation system built from twenty years inside operating theatres, procurement meetings, and boardrooms. Tested across forty-seven product launches. Proven by the companies that outperform.
01
Empower your sales team
Before they go into the field, they need messaging that's been tested, a playbook they'll actually use, objection responses that work, and materials that support rather than burden them. We can't compensate for a bad product pitch with good marketing. We need a good pitch that resonates. Then we amplify it.
02
Evolve your digital presence
Content working while your reps are asleep. 83% of HCPs prefer digital channels for initial product information. They're researching before meetings. If you're not present in that research phase, you're not on the shortlist when the meeting finally happens. You run 20 approaches, work out which 5 convert, refine to 2, then run those. Iterative. Not hope-based.
03
Equip your advocates
Your best salespeople are not the ones you pay. They're the clinicians who already use your product and believe in it. They're having conversations in rooms you'll never be invited to, influencing decisions you'll never see. The question is whether those conversations are happening about you, and whether what's being said is accurate, positive, and compelling.
The sequence matters. Empower before Evolve. Evolve before Equip. Each phase creates the foundation for the next.
How we work with you
Four stages.
Fees begin at stage four.
The process is the same whether you’re a startup founder or a global enterprise. The depth changes. The honesty doesn’t.
Triage
Free · 30 minutes · With the founder
You tell us where you are. We ask questions about your market, your team, your numbers, your competition. Some of those questions will be uncomfortable. That's deliberate. By the end of thirty minutes, we'll both know whether there's a genuine fit. If there isn't, we'll say so and point you somewhere better. No follow-up calls from a sales team. No 'just checking in' emails.
What you get
Clarity on whether we can help, and if so, which part of the chain is most likely broken.
Diagnosis
Free · Delivered within one week
We go away and assess your market positioning, commercial situation, competitive landscape, and digital presence. Then we come back and tell you what we found. Where the chain is broken. What's working that you should protect. What we'd prioritise if it were our money. Many clients tell us the diagnosis alone was worth the conversation.
What you get
A written diagnostic summary. The honest picture.
Prescription
Free · Delivered within two weeks
One proposal. One price. Clear scope. No hourly rates that expand. No phases to be scoped later. No caveat-laden estimates that balloon on contact with reality. A document you can take to your board, your procurement team, or your co-founder with confidence. We agree what success looks like at this stage, not after the work starts.
What you get
A board-ready proposal with fixed pricing and agreed success metrics.
Treatment
Fees begin here
The work starts. Every engagement includes measurement. We agreed what success looks like at stage three, and we hold ourselves to it. No black boxes. No 'we need another quarter to see results.' Live dashboards where relevant. Monthly reviews as standard. Quarterly strategic check-ins on longer engagements.
What you get
The work, the measurement, and the accountability. The same senior team from triage through to delivery.
30 minutes. No fee. No pitch.
Compliant creativity
Regulation isn’t a wall. It’s a creative parameter.
Every claim in healthcare carries medico-legal weight. Every brochure, conversation, and slide. You cannot say what would persuade. You can only say what you can prove. Most companies respond by playing it safe, and produce work nobody notices.
SAFE is our framework for working within regulatory boundaries creatively. It’s the methodology that gets bolder work approved, not rejected. SAFE stands for Substantiated (every claim is evidence-backed), Accessible (patients and clinicians can act on it), Focused (one message, done well), and Engaging (memorable within compliance).
Built in partnership with the University of Bath, our approach to patient messaging is grounded in research on how patients actually process health information, not assumptions about what they want to hear.
Regulation is a creative parameter, not a limitation that kills ideas.
Proof
18% → 31%
Sales conversion improvement. Medical device, 12 reps.
340%
Event ROI proven. Global MedTech UK subsidiary.
47%
Increase in qualified enquiries. UK pharma, first MLR cycle.
73% → 27%
We work with the 27% of launches that hit forecast. We're building more of them.
The book
This isn’t frameworks built in a pitch deck. It’s in print.
It’s Not a Sales Problem: Why Healthcare Innovations Fail to Reach the People Who Need Them
Across forty-seven product launches and twenty years inside operating theatres, procurement committees, and boardrooms, the same structural failures appeared again and again. Nobody had written them down. This book does that. It names the problem, traces its cause, and documents the system for fixing it in precise, repeatable terms.
When a methodology is published, it is accountable. The thinking is on record. Clients can read it before engaging, interrogate it during, and hold us to it throughout. That accountability is the point. The 3 E’s framework, the SAFE methodology, and the four-stage diagnostic process described on this page are not proprietary claims. They are documented, published, and testable.
Methodology in a book, so the thinking is on record.