Our CEO came back from a conference excited. "I talked to five healthcare companies. They all want our product. We should launch a healthcare vertical."
I asked the obvious questions: Do we have healthcare customers today? Do we understand their workflows? Do we have healthcare-specific features?
No, no, and no. But he'd met prospects who expressed interest, and that was enough to commit.
I had 30 days to launch into healthcare before the next board meeting where he wanted to announce our healthcare expansion.
Every guide on market entry says you need 3-6 months: extensive market research, vertical-specific features, custom messaging, dedicated sales team, industry partnerships.
I didn't have three months. I had four weeks.
I spent the first week panicking, trying to figure out how to compress six months of work into 30 days. I made spreadsheets. I planned research sprints. I sketched out vertical-specific product requirements.
None of it was going to work in time.
Then I talked to a PMM friend who'd done rapid vertical expansion at her previous company. She asked: "What's the minimum you need to validate that healthcare is actually a good market, not just five interested prospects?"
That question reframed everything.
I wasn't building a comprehensive healthcare go-to-market strategy. I was running a 30-day experiment to validate whether healthcare was worth investing in long-term.
That shift—from "launch a vertical" to "validate a hypothesis"—changed everything.
Why Most Market Entry Plans Fail
The traditional market entry playbook assumes you have time, resources, and conviction.
Phase 1 (Months 1-2): Deep market research, customer interviews, competitive analysis
Phase 2 (Months 3-4): Product adaptation, vertical-specific features, integration development
Phase 3 (Months 5-6): Sales enablement, vertical-specific messaging, channel partnerships
Phase 4 (Month 6+): Launch and scale
This works if you're certain the market is worth the investment.
But most market entry decisions aren't based on certainty. They're based on hunches, anecdotes from prospects, or exec intuition.
You spend six months building out a vertical only to discover that the five interested prospects don't represent a real pattern. The market wants features you can't build. Your pricing doesn't work for that vertical. Buyers have procurement processes you can't navigate.
I've watched companies invest $500K+ in vertical expansion only to shut it down 12 months later when it didn't generate returns.
The mistake: treating market entry as a commitment instead of a hypothesis to test.
The 30-Day Market Entry Experiment
Instead of building a comprehensive vertical strategy, I designed a 30-day experiment to answer three questions:
Question 1: Do we already have hidden traction in this vertical?
Before investing in healthcare, I needed to know if we had existing healthcare customers who were getting value.
If we did, that validated product-market fit. We weren't entering a new market—we were doubling down on an underserved segment.
If we didn't, that meant we were starting from zero. Much riskier.
Question 2: Can we create a vertical-specific value proposition without building new features?
Healthcare buyers have different priorities than our core market (B2B SaaS companies). Could we reposition our existing product to resonate with healthcare buyers? Or did we need new features first?
If repositioning worked, we could test demand immediately. If not, we'd need product investment before launch.
Question 3: Can we generate qualified pipeline in 30 days?
Interested prospects aren't the same as real pipeline. Could we get healthcare buyers to take sales calls, request demos, and start evaluation processes?
If we generated pipeline fast, it validated demand. If not, the market might be interested but not ready to buy.
I designed the 30 days to answer these questions as cheaply and quickly as possible.
Week 1: Find Hidden Traction (Or Lack Thereof)
I started by pulling every customer account in our CRM and filtering by industry tags.
We had 847 total customers. Seventeen were tagged as "healthcare." I dug deeper:
- How long had they been customers?
- What was their engagement level?
- Were they getting value, or were they at-risk?
- Why did they buy from us initially?
I found five healthcare customers who were highly engaged and had been with us 12+ months. That was the signal I needed—we had product-market fit in healthcare, we just hadn't intentionally targeted it.
I set up calls with all five customers and asked:
"Walk me through why you bought our product. What were you trying to solve?"
"How do you use it today? What workflows does it support?"
"If I were selling to another healthcare company like yours, what would I emphasize?"
"What's missing that would make this more valuable for healthcare?"
These interviews revealed patterns:
Pattern 1: They all used our product for the same job—managing compliance documentation across distributed teams.
That was interesting. We didn't market ourselves as a compliance tool, but healthcare customers had discovered that our collaboration features solved their compliance workflows.
Pattern 2: They all struggled with the same gap—we didn't have audit trail features that their compliance teams needed.
This was solvable. We had audit logs; we just didn't surface them in the UI. Not a new feature—a UX change.
Pattern 3: They all bought through the same path—IT evaluated us for general collaboration, but compliance teams became the champions because of the audit capabilities.
This told me the buying motion: enter through IT, expand to compliance teams.
By end of week one, I had validation that healthcare wasn't a completely new market. We had hidden traction and a clear use case. I just needed to make it intentional.
Week 2: Build Vertical-Specific Messaging (Without Building Features)
Most market entry strategies assume you need vertical-specific features. Build healthcare integrations, add compliance workflows, create industry-specific templates.
That takes months.
I tested whether we could win healthcare deals with our existing product by repositioning how we talked about it.
I took our existing features and rewrote the messaging for healthcare compliance teams:
Generic messaging: "Collaborate across teams with real-time document editing and version control."
Healthcare messaging: "Maintain compliance documentation across distributed teams with complete audit trails and version history."
Same feature. Different framing.
Generic messaging: "Integrate with your existing tools to centralize workflows."
Healthcare messaging: "Connect to your EHR and compliance systems to centralize audit-ready documentation."
Same integrations. Different value prop.
I built three assets to test this messaging:
Asset 1: A one-page vertical landing page
Headline: "Compliance documentation for healthcare teams"
Three use cases: audit readiness, policy management, training documentation
Customer proof: quotes from two of our healthcare customers
CTA: "Schedule a demo"
Built this in one day using our existing website template.
Asset 2: A healthcare-specific pitch deck
Ten slides, all focused on compliance use cases and healthcare workflows. Screenshots from our product showing audit trails, version history, access controls.
Built this by adapting our standard pitch deck with healthcare framing.
Asset 3: A sales talk track
Three-minute pitch for discovery calls:
"We work with healthcare organizations like [customer names] to help compliance teams manage audit-ready documentation across distributed teams. Our customers use us for policy management, training documentation, and audit preparation. They chose us because we provide complete audit trails and version control that compliance officers need, while being easy enough that clinical staff actually use it. Does that sound relevant to what you're working on?"
Tested this script with our top sales rep.
Total time to build all three assets: three days.
Week 3: Test Demand With Paid Acquisition
Most market entry plans start with content marketing, SEO, partnerships—channels that take months to generate results.
I needed signal in 30 days, so I went straight to paid acquisition.
I worked with our performance marketing manager to launch a LinkedIn campaign targeting healthcare compliance officers and IT directors:
Audience: Job titles (Compliance Officer, Director of Compliance, IT Director) at companies tagged "Healthcare" with 100-5,000 employees
Creative: Simple ad highlighting audit readiness and compliance documentation
Landing page: The vertical page I'd built in week two
Budget: $8K for two weeks (small test to validate interest)
I also ran a cold outbound experiment:
I pulled a list of 200 healthcare companies in our target size range and had our SDR team send personalized outreach:
"I noticed [company] is growing fast. As you scale, managing compliance documentation across teams becomes harder. We work with [healthcare customer names] to centralize audit-ready documentation. Would it be worth a quick call to see if we can help [company] similarly?"
These two channels—paid acquisition and outbound—were designed to answer one question: Will healthcare buyers take meetings?
Week 4: Evaluate Results and Make Go/No-Go Decision
By end of week three, we had results:
Paid campaign results:
- 847 clicks to landing page
- 34 demo requests
- 12 qualified opportunities
- $8K spend, $340K in pipeline created
Outbound results:
- 200 emails sent
- 41 responses
- 18 meetings booked
- 8 qualified opportunities
Combined: 20 qualified opportunities worth ~$850K pipeline in three weeks.
That validated demand. Healthcare buyers were willing to take meetings and evaluate our product.
But pipeline doesn't mean wins. I needed to understand if we could actually close these deals.
I sat in on five discovery calls and three demos to hear what prospects cared about:
Insight 1: They all asked about audit trails in the first 10 minutes. This was the make-or-break feature.
We had it, but it wasn't prominent in our UI. I added it to the product roadmap as a quick UX improvement (surface existing audit logs in a "Compliance View").
Insight 2: They all asked about HIPAA compliance and security certifications.
We had the certifications but didn't talk about them. I created a one-page security brief for healthcare prospects. Objection handled.
Insight 3: Pricing wasn't a concern. They had budget for compliance tools.
This was huge. Many verticals require discounting or custom pricing. Healthcare buyers didn't push back on price—they cared about functionality.
Insight 4: Sales cycles were 6-8 weeks, not 3-4 months like our typical mid-market deals.
Healthcare had urgency around compliance. They moved faster than our average buyer.
By end of week four, I had enough data to make a recommendation to the CEO:
Recommendation: Commit to healthcare as a vertical
We have product-market fit (existing customers, clear use case). We can generate demand (proven with paid and outbound). We can win deals (sales cycles are reasonable, pricing works). We need minimal product investment (UX improvements, not new features).
Required investment:
- One dedicated sales rep for healthcare ($120K/year)
- UX improvements to surface audit trails (2 weeks engineering time)
- Vertical-specific enablement and collateral (my time, already underway)
Expected return:
- $2-3M ARR in year one based on current pipeline conversion rates
The CEO approved the investment. We hired a healthcare-focused rep, prioritized the UX improvements, and doubled down on what was working.
What Happened Next
Twelve months later, healthcare was our second-largest vertical:
- $2.8M ARR from 47 healthcare customers
- 38% win rate in healthcare deals (vs. 28% company average)
- 6-week average sales cycle (vs. 12 weeks company average)
- $180K CAC per customer (vs. $220K company average)
Healthcare became our most efficient market.
But here's what I learned: We didn't succeed because we built a comprehensive vertical strategy. We succeeded because we validated the hypothesis quickly and doubled down on what worked.
If I'd spent six months building healthcare-specific features before testing demand, we would have wasted time and resources.
By testing demand in 30 days, we learned what mattered (compliance workflows, audit trails, security) and what didn't (industry-specific integrations, vertical content, custom features).
The Rapid Market Entry Framework
After running this playbook three more times for different verticals, I've refined it into a repeatable framework:
Week 1: Validate Hidden Traction
Don't assume you're starting from zero. Pull customer data and look for patterns:
- Do you have existing customers in this vertical?
- Are they successful and engaged?
- What job are they hiring your product to do?
- What would make your product more valuable for this vertical?
If you have 5+ engaged customers in a vertical, you have hidden traction. You're not entering a new market—you're making an existing segment intentional.
If you have zero customers, market entry is riskier. You're truly starting from scratch.
Week 2: Reposition Before Building
Don't build vertical-specific features until you validate demand.
Take your existing product and rewrite messaging for the vertical:
- What job does this vertical hire products to do?
- What language do they use to describe that job?
- How can you reframe your existing features to match their priorities?
Build three assets: vertical landing page, vertical pitch deck, vertical sales talk track.
Test whether your existing product, repositioned, resonates with the vertical.
Week 3: Test Demand With Fast Channels
Don't wait for content and SEO to generate organic demand. Use paid acquisition and outbound to test if the vertical will take meetings.
Run a 2-week paid campaign targeting vertical-specific job titles.
Run a 2-week outbound sprint to 100-200 target accounts.
Measure: How many qualified opportunities can you generate in two weeks?
If you can't generate 10+ qualified opps with $5-10K spend, demand might not be strong enough to justify investment.
Week 4: Evaluate and Decide
Pull together data from weeks 1-3:
- Do we have hidden traction? (existing customers getting value)
- Does our messaging resonate? (meetings booked, demos requested)
- Can we generate pipeline? (qualified opportunities created)
- Can we win deals? (sales cycle, pricing, objections)
Make a go/no-go decision:
Go: Invest in dedicated resources (sales rep, product improvements, vertical enablement)
No-go: Pause or deprioritize this vertical and test a different market
Don't commit to verticals based on exec intuition or a few interested prospects. Commit based on data from rapid testing.
What I'd Tell a PMM Doing Rapid Market Entry
If you're entering a new market on a short timeline:
Look for hidden traction first. You might already have customers in this vertical who prove product-market fit.
Reposition before building. Test whether your existing product resonates before committing to vertical-specific features.
Use fast channels to validate demand. Paid acquisition and outbound give you signal in weeks, not months.
Make it an experiment, not a commitment. Spend 30 days validating the hypothesis. Commit only if data supports it.
Don't build comprehensive vertical strategies. Build the minimum to test demand, then double down on what works.
Most importantly: speed is a feature, not a bug.
Markets change fast. Competitors move. Customer needs evolve.
The companies that win aren't the ones with the most comprehensive plans. They're the ones that test hypotheses quickly, learn what works, and scale what's proven.
30 days is enough time to validate whether a market is worth pursuing. Six months is enough time for the opportunity to disappear.
Move fast. Test cheaply. Scale what works.