What Should a 90-Day Go-to-Market Engagement Include?

A good 90-day go-to-market engagement runs in three 30-day phases: a market assessment, then advisor and value-proof work, then a small real-world launch. It should end with a launch package your own team could run. The cost is driven mostly by how many senior hours it takes, how wide the scope is, and how much of the fee is tied to milestones.

What should happen in the first 30 days?

A market assessment. A small group of senior experts, I use four, spends roughly 150 hours looking at your market, your product, your customers, your reimbursement and your viability. The goal is a plain answer: is there a real opportunity, and what are the critical things the technology has to prove?

Day 30 should be a go/no-go. If you're not happy with what you learned, you don't move forward. That gate protects you more than any contract clause.

What happens from day 31 to day 90?

The second phase is about people and proof:

• Engage key opinion leaders and put together a medical advisory board. You name the people who matter most to your company, and the team goes there first.
• Build the value proposition and test it with real customers.
• Start the value analysis committee paperwork at target hospitals. Even when a hospital loves the idea, that process can take six to eight months, so it has to start early.

The third phase is a soft launch. The team actually goes to market for a few weeks, sells the product, runs the sales cycle, tests the messaging, and builds a sales rhythm and process your people can repeat. It takes 10 to 20 discovery calls before you really understand the real pain points and the right questions to ask. A soft launch done right also creates some real revenue along the way, which matters to your board and your next investor.

At day 90 you get the launch package. A device launch involves hundreds of separate activities, so the package should lay them out from A to Z. On day 91 you choose: hand it to your own team, or contract a team to run it for you.

How should milestones work?

Milestones should be built around what matters to you. For one device startup, the list included a focus plan for two product lines, the top five target markets, hospital and surgery center targeting messages, the role of distribution partners, and a key opinion leader plan. The hard targets by the end were a set number of advisors signed and a set number of hospital committee processes started.

Part of the fee should be paid only when those milestones are met. If a partner won't tie any money to outcomes, ask why.

What drives the cost?

• Senior hours. Four experienced people over about 150 hours is the core of the assessment. More experts or more hours costs more.
• Scope. How many markets, how many people, and whether you want sales, marketing and commercial operations, or just one of them.
• Risk sharing. The more of the fee that is tied to milestones, the less you carry up front.
• Who does the work. A large consulting firm can charge around $200,000 for a market assessment alone, so compare what you get for the money, not just the headline number.

What happens after day 91 is priced differently again, by markets, headcount and functions, so keep that conversation separate from the 90 days.

Where to start

Before you talk to anyone, write down the three to five milestones that would make the 90 days worth it to you. Then ask any partner to show who will do the work, how many hours they will spend, where the day 30 gate sits, and which part of the fee depends on milestones.