In Practice: Choosing Where to Start

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A small solution provider with limited commercial resources was preparing to expand outreach into biopharma. The solution had clear applicability across multiple therapeutic areas, company sizes, and functional teams, and early conversations suggested broad potential interest.

The addressable market appeared large, and the team felt pressure to pursue breadth to increase the odds of success.

As outreach expanded, activity increased—but it became harder to tell which conversations reflected real buyer readiness versus polite exploration.

Target selection was driven primarily by perceived fit and market size. Accounts were prioritized based on brand recognition, pipeline breadth, or theoretical relevance to the solution’s capabilities.

Outreach was spread across a wide range of companies and functions, with light message adaptation but limited role-specific differentiation. The team expected early responses to reveal where deeper investment was warranted.

What was not fully accounted for was the cost of breadth—and how quickly limited time, attention, and credibility could be diluted across too many “possible” targets.

From the buyer’s perspective, relevance is not abstract—it is contextual.

Whether a solution is meaningfully considered depends on:

• where programs sit in the development lifecycle
• whether the need is active or merely anticipated
• how established workflows and incumbent vendors already are
• whether engagement aligns to current priorities—not future hypotheticals
   

Many of the accounts contacted were not misaligned in principle—but they were not ready. As a result, conversations were polite, exploratory, and ultimately non-converting.

Without a tighter focus on readiness and decision context, outreach produced activity—but not usable signal.

Advisory work centered on shifting the team from coverage-based targeting to constraint-driven prioritization.

Key areas of focus included:

• narrowing the universe to accounts where buyer context, timing, and maturity aligned
• prioritizing situations where the solution could be understood quickly without extensive education
• identifying patterns of receptivity rather than isolated interest
   

Rather than asking “who could use this,” the team began asking:

“Where can this realistically be evaluated, sponsored, and advanced with our current capacity?”

The team reduced the number of active targets and concentrated effort on a smaller set of accounts where engagement could be more intentional.

Messaging became more specific, conversations more informed, and follow-up more purposeful. Internal discussions shifted from tracking volume to evaluating quality of engagement and proximity to decision-making.

The result was higher-signal engagement—making it easier to distinguish curiosity from decision-path opportunity.
 

The primary outcome was decision clarity—where traction was achievable, which conversations were worth advancing, and which were unlikely to convert within current constraints.

Some accounts that looked attractive on paper moved down the list, while others emerged as stronger candidates based on timing, buyer alignment, and internal readiness.

The experience reinforced that early targeting decisions shape every downstream outcome—from meeting quality and pilot intent to budget timing and credibility.

• Early breadth often masks where traction is actually possible
   
• Market size is less important than buyer readiness and context
   
• Small teams need prioritization logic—not coverage
   
• Fewer, better-aligned targets produce stronger signal
   
• Targeting is a strategic decision, not an administrative task