So the three things that you're gonna get from this episode on number one, why? Let's go to the conference and see who we meet is not a distributor strategy and what you should do instead. Number two, how serious med tech team views conferences to accelerate deals not to hunt blindly. And how you can become one of those. And number three, the questions that you need answered before any conference or you're better off not going at all. Welcome to Clinician to CEO, the podcast helping clinicians simplify your go-to-market strategy so that you can stop guessing and turn your working prototypes into international MedTech businesses. I'm your host, Hakeem Aade. Let's get started. To be fair, most med tech founders go to conferences for lots of good reasons to speak to clinicians, to present data, to build credibility. But when you're looking for someone to help distribute your product in another country, that's when conferences stop being a tool and quietly turn into a very expensive substitute for clarity. And in this episode, we are gonna discuss the old way of approaching conferences and the new way that actually works.. And then at the end of the episode, we are gonna pose a scenario which will force you into a Practical. decision point. So make sure you listen out for that, it's a scenario and a decision point that will make you rethink how you approach conferences and distributor conversations. Now, let's say the quiet part out loud. Most founders don't arrive at conferences with a defined distributed strategy. Not because you're careless, but because distribution is one of the hardest parts of the business to structure in those early days. So instead of getting to conferences with clear market choices, defined distributor profiles, explicit success criteria, you arrive with questions, who should I talk to? How do I even tell if someone's a fit? What does good actually look like in this market? And at that point, the conference becomes the place where you're trying to figure it out in real time, and that's where things will start to unravel. So conferences become a substitute for strategy. And I get it because you're building a product, you're juggling regulatory clinical evidence, cash flow investors And distribution feels vague. It feels messy. It feels opaque does that start to sound familiar? If so, you're definitely on the right episode, so keep listening. So just Attending a conference. Often feels like action, but action without direction is effectively just wasting time. And the logic used for going to conferences to find distributors. Sound reasonable on the surface? IE or the distributors will be there. It's international. We'll have loads of conversations. Something will come out of it. But here's what you'd be forgetting. Good distributors, and I assume that they're the ones that you're after. Good distributors don't attend conferences to be found. They attend to protect existing relationships to selectively scout, emphasis on the term selective, and also to validate manufacturers who already look credible to them. They're not wandering the halls, the good ones, that is hoping to discover a company that hasn't worked out its market focus yet. So if you turn up without clarity, without intent, and more importantly, without a compelling reason. For them to engage. You don't look like an opportunity. To them. You look like noise. Or even worse, you might just look like confusion and that's not gonna attract the right sort of distributors. So the simple question for you. Would you rather speak to 30 distributors that you meet randomly at a conference or speak to five distributors that you already know are a fit in the right market with the right profile? Now, I know everybody says five, and I'm positive that's what you've just said, but behavior tells a different story because 30. When you, when you have a number, a large number, it feels like progress, doesn't it? Five. It's quite a small amount and it requires thinking and a lot of preparation, and most founders are busy being busy. So you answer five in theory, but you'll probably Actually, chase 30 in reality. And this brings us to the next question. Founders wrestle with, should you book a stand or should you walk the floor? Different tactics, but what I usually see is the same mistake underneath No plan. If you're exhibiting without a distributor plan, you're hoping footfall is gonna save you. And if you're walking the floor without a distributor plan, you're hoping chance meetings will save you. Now, one of those two options costs more, Are e getting yourself an exhibition stand, but neither works consistently because in both those cases, you're outsourcing strategy to look and chance. So there are really two ways that you can approach conferences when you're looking for distributors. The old way which I've obviously started to allude to. And the new way and the old way is simply trying to see as many people as possible and hoping that some of it sticks. Conversations that sound good in the moment. IE people saying things like, oh, that's an interesting product, or, yeah, yeah, let's, let's follow up, or send me some more information. And then what happens after the conference? Nothing. Why? Because there wasn't any market focus. There wasn't any clear distributor profile. You didn't have a value proposition for the distributor. You didn't have a defined next step or follow up logic. Can I scan Your badge isn't qualification of, distributor opportunities if your distributor pipeline depends on who happens to walk past your stand or who you bump into walking the floor, you're not building a go to market strategy. You're effectively just rolling the dice, and that's the old way of doing conferences. Now let me be clear. I'm not Anticon conference. I'm just anti doing conferences in the wrong way because used properly conferences are powerful and this is the new way. Of using them. They should be great for qualifying distributor fit quickly, accelerating existing distributor conversations, pressure testing, appetite, market by market, and compressing months of meetings. In today's, because in the new way of working, the real work has to be done before you arrive because if your distributor strategy starts at the conference, it's already too late. Before you book a stand or even buy a ticket, you should be able to answer these following questions cleanly and clearly. Number one, which markets are you targeting? Not Europe, generally? Actual countries. Number two, what type of distributor do you need in each market? Is it hospital focused? Is it tender led? Is it private sector? Is it a hybrid of those? You know, you need to be clear on that. And then number three, what problem does this product solve for that specific distributor? Is it margin play? Is it differentiation? Is it a portfolio gap that they're trying to fill? Is it strategic leverage? You need to define what's in it for that specific distributor. And number four, what does success look like? 60 to 90 days after the event. You know, is it shortlist? Is it second meetings and follow up meetings? Is it pilot discussions? Or is it letters of intent? So let me ask you this directly. Do you actually have that level of detail when you are going to a conference? Because if you don't, that's not a conference problem, that's a preparation problem, And that's the work you need to do before you go anywhere. So let's just pause for a second and start pulling this together. You know, conferences don't fail because they're bad. They fail when they're used as discovery instead of execution. If you don't know which markets you're targeting. What kind of distributor you need and what good actually looks like. The conference doesn't fix that. It just exposes it used properly. Conferences can accelerate distributor conversations used badly. They can become an expensive way to stay unclear. So here's the mindset shift that you need. You have to stop treating conferences as discovery. Start treating them as execution discovery happens. Before the conference, IE market selection, distributed identification partner shortlisting. Execution happens at the conference meetings, qualification, acceleration. That's the difference between the old way hoping and then the new way building. So I'm gonna leave you with a decision point scenario for you, to ponder on, to start thinking differently about your conferences. Hopefully. So the scenario is this, you get home from a conference with five distributors that you've shortlisted as potential partners. So three of them are very vague, but they're also very enthusiastic. One is very keen, but clearly not well aligned to what you're trying to achieve. One is quiet, but asking the right questions. Now, obviously as always, you've got limited time and limited bandwidth. So where would you put your time? In the next 30 days and what are you actually using to make that decision now? I want you to review that scenario and send me your answers. And then in the next episode, I'm gonna walk through the different way founders have answered this, coupled with my thoughts and suggestions. So if today's episode has made you realize that your distributor or export approach isn't as clear as it needs to be. Then the next step is getting that clarity, And if this episode has made you rethink how you approach conferences, then I've put together a simple guide on five do's and don'ts of conferences. It's designed to help you avoid the most common mistakes that teams make when they're trying to use conferences to drive commercial outcomes. And you'll find a link to this in the show notes. So thanks for listening. Keep listening and keep growing.