In this episode, I'm going to show you how to think through one of the most common and frustrating situations in international MedTech expansion where everything looks like it's working, but you're not getting real traction. And by the end of this episode, you'll know how to decide. What to do next so you don't waste months doubling down on the wrong approach. And instead, you focus on what will actually lead to adoption. 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. Now this episode is part two of a three part series on mindset and international expansion, and in the last episode, we covered the three mindset traps that slow companies down. And in this episode I'm gonna show you what those mindset tracks look like in a real decision scenario. So here with this situation I left you with in the last episode, you've entered a new international market, you're getting interest, you're getting meetings with the right people, you've even got a couple of early trials. But nothing is converting and your team is looking at and saying, right, well, we're close. All we need to do is push a little bit harder. So here's the decision. Do you A increase sales activity and double down on the current approach? B, strengthen your clinical and economic evidence. C, stay consistent and give the market more time, or D, pause and reassess how the product actually fits this specific market. And the tricky part is that all four of these can feel like the right answer in any given moment. Now, this is where mindset really comes in, because this isn't just about picking an option from A to D, it's about how you interpret what's actually happening. And this is exactly where those three mindset traps from the last episode show up in real decisions. IE one, assuming you already know what the problem is, or two, expecting the market to behave exactly like your home market. Or three, waiting for certainty before acting. Because when something. Isn't working. You have to decide what the problem actually is. And that decision is based on how you're seeing the situation and how you see the situation comes from your mindset. So let's walk through these not just as options, but as of thinking. So option A. Push harder. And the first instinct is that we need more activity. We need more meetings, we need more demos, we need more follow ups. And this is often the assumption over a curiosity mindset trap, because you're assuming the issue is effort, but in this situation, you are already getting meetings, you've already got interest, you've already got trials. So the question becomes, is activity really the constraint or are we solving. The wrong problem. So therefore you're not gonna go with option A because you've assumed. And actually I think a bit more curiosity would indicate based on the situation, that actually that isn't the issue. So option B is they need more evidence. So you're looking at, in your mind, okay, maybe they just need more proof, and sometimes that's valid, but actually in this situation, people are already engaging and actually you've got some trials going. So this is coming from a different assumption. I, if we strengthen the case, it will convert. But the real issue may be how this actually is fitting into their system. So we're gonna say that it's probably not, thus giving them more evidence. And then option C. Give it more time. What you're Effectively saying here is let's stay consistent, keep doing what we've always done, and give it a bit more time, and this is where that third mindset trap shows up. 'cause you're waiting for certainty 'cause you're assuming the current approach is right and it just needs a bit more time. And that may well be true. But also it might not be true, so you don't wanna make that assumption. We're not gonna say that it's option C. So then we move on to option D, reassess. This is all about curiosity, and remember what we talked about, assumption versus curiosity. The final option here is to pause and reassess. This is what curiosity looks like in practice. So instead of how do we push this harder, it asks, what might we be getting wrong here? And that leads to better questions. Does this fit the workflow? Is the value that we're offering landing in a coherent manner? Are we speaking to the right people? Is this a priority, in this specific system? I think what this demonstrates is the option D is the most aligned with the right mindset that you need to drive an international med tech business. And the real takeaway is this. These are not just different options. These are different interpretations of the same situation, and those interpretations come from mindset and. If you're taking one thing away from this episode, it's this, before you decide what to do, next question how you're actually seeing the problem, and ask yourself, what am I assuming here? Don't sit in the room or round a table guessing. Go and ask the people who are actually making the decisions. And test it, because the answer is usually not in doing more things. I eat, more activity. It's in understanding where things are actually breaking down and not leading to adoption. So if you are in this situation right now, here's a simple three step way to approach any decision. Step one, identify where it's breaking first. Don't look at the whole market. Find where things are actually breaking down. it breaking down after the first meeting? Is it breaking down during trials? Is it breaking down when procurement gets involved?, Because just saying it's not converting is far too vague. You need to know where it's stopping. Then you wanna move on to step two, work out why it breaks. Because once you know where it's stalling, then ask yourself what seems to be causing that hesitation? What objection keeps coming up? What part of the process is creating friction and what are we assuming here that may not be true? So for example, if things are breaking during clinical evaluation, go and ask a clinicians to walk you through how they would actually use it in their workflow. If things are breaking, when procurement gets involved, speed to procurement or finance and understand how they're evaluating it. And if things are breaking after initial interest, ask them directly. What's stopping this from moving forward right now, because this is the shift. But what you're trying to do is move from assuming internally and then making the wrong decisions, and working on the wrong things to learning externally. By simply going back to the market and asking And then once you've understood where it's breaking and why it's breaking, then you want to Move on to step three. adjust what you're doing. then you can change something and test again. And I'm not talking about a full relaunch of what you're doing. Just small adjustments. So you will look at messaging, you look at positioning, you'll look at who you're targeting, and then you are test it again because this isn't about getting it perfect, and it's definitely not about waiting and procrastinating either. It's about getting closer to what actually works. That again, is this shift. From assuming and pushing harder to testing and adjusting based on reality. Now in this episode, we've looked at how mindset shows up in decisions, and specifically in this decision scenario and how to respond when something isn't converting. And in the next episode, we'll take this one step further, not just how to react to one situation like this, but how to build this into a repeatable approach that you can use across markets. Because getting to the right answer once is useful. Doing it consistently is what actually drive growth. Because as I always say, ultimately everything we've talked about here only matters if it leads to real world use, and if it doesn't get used, it doesn't matter. And if you're building a MedTech business and you're not sure whether your next move should be around evidence, market access, commercialization, distributor strategy, or adoption. Don't guess. Booker Healthcare export accelerated diagnostic Call with me. Use the link in the show notes and in that session I'll help you identify the specific constraints blocking your momentum and the commercial move, most likely to unlock your progress. Until next time. Thanks for listening. Keep challenging your assumptions and keep growing.