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Guide · Healthtech GTM

Go-to-market strategy for B2B healthtech

By Madalena Rugeroni, founder of Mazo · Updated 17 September 2026 · 9-minute read

Healthcare organisations do not buy software, they adopt processes — and the person who loves your product is almost never the person who can sign for it. A clinician champions you because it saves them time; an administrator buys you because it reduces cost, risk or a reported number. Privacy and information governance gate the whole thing, and procurement runs to a calendar you do not control. The founders who win here pick one narrow workflow, secure a clinical champion and an administrative sponsor at the same time, and design pilots that were built to convert rather than to be interesting.

Why go-to-market for healthtech is different

Healthtech punishes the standard startup instinct to move fast and iterate in front of the customer, because the customer operates under clinical risk and regulatory obligation. The pace is not negotiable, but the sequence is, and the sequence is where deals are won.

The user and the buyer answer to different incentives. Clinicians optimise for time and patient outcomes; administrators optimise for cost, risk and reported performance. A pitch that only speaks one of those languages stalls, because you need both people to move.
Privacy and information governance are a hard gate. Anything touching patient data brings a data processing agreement, a privacy impact assessment and a governance review. This is not negotiable, cannot be charmed, and takes as long as it takes.
Budget cycles are annual and the calendar matters. Missing a budget window can cost you a year regardless of how good the pilot went. Founders who do not ask about the cycle on the first call routinely lose deals they had already won.
Evidence is a currency. Even outside regulated medical claims, buyers expect measurement: time saved per clinician, a reduction in a tracked metric, a published case. Enthusiasm from a pilot site is not evidence and will not survive a committee.

Mazo's rule of thumb: Never run a pilot without knowing who signs the contract if it succeeds, where the money comes from, and when their budget window opens. A pilot without those three answers is a research project you are funding for someone else.

Who actually buys healthtech, and who blocks it

A healthtech deal needs a clinical yes and an administrative yes, and losing either one ends it. Map both, plus the gate, before you invest a quarter in a pilot.

Role	What they care about	What they do to your deal
Clinician or care team lead (the champion)	Time per patient, admin burden, whether it fits the actual workflow	Creates demand and credibility internally. Cannot sign, and has very little time for you.
Operations, finance or transformation lead (the buyer)	Cost per episode, staffing pressure, waiting times, reported targets	Holds the budget and the business case. Needs a number that maps to something they already report.
Information governance and IT (the gate)	Patient data, integration with the record system, security, procurement rules	Can stop everything, and will, if engaged late.

The trigger to watch for. The trigger is operational pressure with a name: a staffing shortage, a waiting list target, a backlog, an inspection or accreditation finding, a new reporting requirement, or a system migration. Healthcare buyers do not adopt because something is better, they adopt because something currently hurts and is being measured.

The motion that fits your price

Healthtech rewards starting smaller than feels ambitious. A department-level deal you can close in one budget cycle beats an organisation-wide deal that needs three.

Annual price per customer	Motion that pays for itself	What breaks if you pick wrong
Under €10K/yr	Department or practice level, often on a manager's discretionary budget, self-serve or light touch.	Trying to sell centrally at this price. Central procurement costs more to navigate than the deal returns.
€10K–€100K/yr	Founder-led sales into a single department, with a paid pilot, a clinical champion and an administrative sponsor.	Free unlimited pilots. They fill your quarter and end without a decision-maker attached.
€100K+/yr	Organisation-level sales with formal procurement, evidence requirements and often a framework or tender route.	Assuming enthusiasm converts. At this level you need evidence, references and a procurement path.

Mazo's rule of thumb: Sell one workflow in one department, prove a number, then expand along the corridor. Every healthtech founder who tried to sell the platform first spent a year in meetings; the ones who sold a narrow, measurable win got a reference they could reuse.

Three channels that work for healthtech, and one that doesn't

Healthcare professionals are hard to reach through advertising and easy to reach through peers. Almost everything that works here runs on credibility borrowed from someone they already trust.

Clinical peer referral

The strongest channel in the market

Clinicians trust other clinicians in their specialty far more than any vendor, and they move between organisations taking recommendations with them. One delighted department becomes three conversations without you doing anything.

First action this week: Ask your best clinical user which two peers at other organisations have the same problem, and request a warm introduction rather than a referral form.

Professional networks and specialty events

Slow, high trust, high conversion

Specialty conferences, royal colleges, professional associations and regional networks are where this market actually discovers things, and a session run with a customer is worth more than a stand.

First action this week: Find the two events your champions attend and get your customer on the agenda to present their own results, with you in the room.

Evidence and case publication

Unlocks the administrative yes

A written case study with real numbers — hours saved, backlog reduced, a tracked metric moved — is what your champion forwards internally and what procurement asks for. It converts enthusiasm into an approvable business case.

First action this week: Turn your best pilot into a two-page case with the customer's own measured numbers, cleared by them for sharing.

The one to skip for now: Cold outbound to clinicians

Clinical staff are time-poor, heavily targeted and often unable to act on a vendor email even when interested. Response rates are poor and the approach can damage the peer credibility you depend on in a small, well-connected market.

Skip is not never. Outbound works into operations, transformation and digital leads, who are contactable and whose job includes evaluating suppliers.

Your first 10 healthtech customers

The first ten healthtech customers are about proving one narrow, measurable improvement in a real clinical environment, with enough documentation that a stranger on a committee would believe it.

Pick a workflow that avoids patient data if you can. Scheduling, capacity, administrative burden and staff-facing processes let you ship and prove value while you build the governance posture required for clinical data.
Secure both yeses before you pilot. A clinical champion for adoption and an administrative sponsor for budget. Write down who signs and when their budget window opens, before the pilot starts.
Define the measurement with them. Agree the baseline, the metric and the pass mark up front. Retrofitting evidence after a pilot never convinces a committee and wastes the quarter.
Prepare governance documentation early. Data processing agreement, privacy impact assessment support, security overview, integration approach. Having these ready turns a six-week delay into a one-week one.

The pass/fail test: A pilot passes when the customer's own operational data shows the change and an administrator states the number without you in the room. Clinician enthusiasm alone is a signal, not a result.

Pricing healthtech: the value metric and the trap

The value metric that usually works here. Price on the operational unit the organisation already manages by: clinicians or staff supported, sites, beds, appointments or episodes. Healthcare budgets are built around these units, so a price expressed in them can be approved without a translation step.

The trap. Per-patient pricing on anything patient-facing. It grows unpredictably, sounds uncomfortable in a clinical setting, and invites an ethical objection in the middle of a commercial conversation.

Mazo's rule of thumb: Price so the first department-level deal can be approved by one person without a committee, then expand. Getting in under the delegated authority threshold is worth more than the extra revenue you would have charged.

Test the number before you commit to it: the free willingness-to-pay test designs a 7-day, commitment-based price test with a pass line attached.

What to measure, by stage

Healthtech founders lose time to activity that feels like progress. Measure whether pilots have a buyer attached, not how many pilots you are running.

Stage	The one number	The line
Pre-revenue	Pilots with a named signer and a known budget window	Every single one, or it is not a pilot
First 10 customers	Pilot to paid conversion rate	Above half, or the pilot design is wrong
€10K+ MRR	Expansion within the same organisation	A second department within two budget cycles

The lines above are Mazo's working thresholds for this market, not published industry benchmarks. Use them to force a decision, then replace them with your own numbers as soon as you have 10 customers.

The mistakes we see most in healthtech

Running pilots with no buyer attached

An enthusiastic department, a successful pilot, and then nobody with budget to convert it. This is the single most common way healthtech startups burn a year and mistake activity for traction.

Instead: Refuse any pilot without a named signer, a funding source and a date — kindly, on the first call.

Selling the platform instead of one workflow

Broad product stories force broad evaluation, which means more stakeholders, more governance and more chances for someone to say not this year. The scope of the pitch determines the number of people who have to agree.

Instead: Sell one measurable workflow to one department, and let the platform story wait until you have a reference.

Leaving information governance until after the pilot

Discovering the data processing agreement and privacy assessment at the end adds weeks at the exact moment momentum matters, often pushing the deal past the budget window.

Instead: Start governance in parallel with the pilot, and arrive with the documentation already drafted.

The objection that kills healthtech deals

"We'd need this to work with our existing record system, and that's always where these things die."

Integration anxiety in healthcare is earned — most organisations have a graveyard of tools that never connected properly. Arguing that your integration is different does not help, because they have heard that. What helps is scoping a first phase that delivers value without deep integration, being specific about what you do and do not connect to today, and naming the integration work as a separate, later decision with its own success criteria.

Say this: You are right that it is where these things die, so phase one does not touch the record system at all — it runs alongside and proves the time saved. If that works, we scope integration as its own decision with its own test, rather than betting the whole project on it.

FAQ

Do I need clinical evidence to sell healthtech?

It depends on the claim. Operational products that save staff time or reduce backlogs need operational evidence: a measured baseline, a measured after, and a customer willing to state the number. Anything making a clinical or diagnostic claim moves into medical device regulation, which is a different business with different timelines — decide deliberately which side of that line you are on.

How do I get a meeting with a clinician?

Through another clinician, almost always. Cold approaches perform badly and can cost you credibility in a well-connected specialty. Ask your existing champions for named introductions to peers, and target operations, transformation and digital leads directly, since evaluating suppliers is part of their role.

Should I start with private providers or public health systems?

Private providers and clinic groups usually buy faster, have shorter approval chains and tolerate a younger company, which makes them a better first market for proving the workflow. Public systems offer scale and durability but run on procurement frameworks and annual cycles you should not attempt until you have references and complete governance documentation.

How long do healthtech sales cycles take?

Long enough that your runway model should assume a full budget cycle for organisation-level deals, and considerably less for department-level ones. The practical lever is scope: a decision that fits inside one manager's delegated authority moves in weeks, while the same product sold organisation-wide moves in quarters.

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How this guide was written. Written from the operating patterns Mazo applies to regulated, committee-driven markets — buying-committee mapping and trigger-event selling in the tradition of Winning by Design's SPICED, beachhead selection following Geoffrey Moore, positioning from April Dunford. Figures given as lines are Mazo's working thresholds, not published benchmarks. Mazo is not affiliated with or endorsed by the authors named.