(not manually) building a lead list in 30 min (with Bonfire)

In the last post, I walked through the grind of manually finding sales targets for Intuitive Surgical. From CMS data dives to Google Sheets wrangling, it was a hands-on exercise that showed both the value and the limitations of public data.

“THERE HAS TO BE A BETTER WAY” said every mildly lazy founder/sales rep/BD person/product person/whoever else that needs to find targets quickly and accurately.

For this follow-up, I partnered with Vinay Nagaraj and the team at Bonfire to complete the “taste-test” we discussed in the last post.

From Thumb-in-the-Air to Data-Driven Precision (or, from Becker’s to claims)

Previously, we started with a thumb-in-the-air approach—using public data and directories to find hospitals doing relevant procedures like cardiac and colorectal surgery. It worked, but we spent a lot of time sifting through data that wasn’t directly useful. With Bonfire, we start with actual healthcare data (which I love as a healthcare data/claims nerd)

Here’s how it works: Bonfire’s platform focuses on analyzing patient populations. For Intuitive Surgical (continuing with the previous example), that means pre-loading patient-level data for relevant procedures for their robotic surgery systems. We focus on CPT codes for surgeries like gynecology, thoracic, and urology (sample from ChatGPT below)

Instead of hunting for hospitals that might be performing those procedures, Bonfire provides a list of institutions based on actual, relevant patient encounters. You can imagine how this makes the job easier, though it presents the (usefully) tricky challenge of figuring out what encounters and codes are actually relevant.

Vinay put it best during our conversation: “We’re starting from the bottom up, focusing on the patient, not just what the hospital does.” I reminded him that I often know better than him, even though he was right in this case.

Focus on Who You Serve

Manually, I was looking at the big picture—top hospitals by reputation, high-level procedure volumes, or a quick CMS search. While that’s fine to get started, it’s not the most refined approach. What using Bonfire forces us to do is start with the patient. Who is Intuitive’s end-user? Who benefits most from their surgical products? Once we know this, Bonfire tracks patient procedures, diagnoses, and medications, narrowing down exactly where the most relevant patients are treated.

Instead of focusing on “who can we sell to?”, we now move to a world where we ask “who can we serve and where do they get care?”

Now, instead of guessing which hospitals are best based on brand or size, I can see exactly which hospitals are performing the most surgeries in a given specialty. We can also see which hospitals may focus on certain types of surgeries; very useful in a world where procedure revenue is key to the hospital model and ASCs are threatening some of this revenue. We can double click into very granular patient attributes like their age, diagnosis at the time of a procedure, type of drug they were prescribed after a procedure, and etc.

Streamlining the Process: From Lead List to Actionable Insights

Once Bonfire identifies your target institutions, you can take action. Instead of exporting a long list of hospitals with minimal context (like in my Google Sheet), Bonfire allows you to append relevant contact information, like medical directors or heads of surgery—people who actually make purchasing decisions.

This doesn’t just speed up the process; it allows sales reps (or founders figuring out how to do this right) to focus on hospitals/customers that actually have a need for your product, enabling more thoughtful and targeted outreach.

Quality vs. Quantity: Avoiding Wasted Effort

One of the key insights we discussed was how traditional sales methods often result in wasted effort. You might spend hours building a list, only to discover that the hospitals you’re targeting don’t perform enough surgeries to justify outreach.

Bonfire seeks to eliminate that guesswork, which I’m totally behind. With the right filters, you can focus on institutions with high patient volumes that align with your product.

Key word: right. We do need to know how to think about the healthcare universe and use the filters in the data that are actually relevant to our case. This can be hard! Sometimes, the billing structure for your codes of interest can be opaque; think home care, caregiver-involved utilization, or worker’s comp. With the right creative approach though, leveraging healthcare data in this form can yield a much higher quality list.

In our test, we quickly identified 50 hospitals performing the most colorectal surgeries. That’s 50 highly qualified targets, compared to the 50–60 general leads we generated manually. Check some out below ??

Making Data Actionable: From Sales Leads to ROI Conversations

Everything in healthcare ultimately comes down to the “ROI conversation”. In a world where so much needs fixing, how do I actually convey the value of what I’m doing and you’re buying?

Bonfire can really help with this as you dive into individual accounts, because it lets you understand their patient mix, payer mix, and top procedures. I love this feature because mix to me is the most strategic customer filter there is.

With this info, you can imagine speaking to a surgical director at Cleveland Clinic, about data on how many procedures they perform, what their payer mix looks like, and how your product can drive value.

In today’s highly competitive market, this shift from “just another sales pitch” to a data-informed conversation about a client’s business can make a world of difference.

Final Thoughts: Moving from Manual to Data-Driven

The manual approach works; it’s just time-consuming and imprecise. It’s focused on leads, not the value you can create… it can be hard to back into value from just a few top line numbers.

Bonfire instead lets you talk about the patients that providers are seeing and how they might be relevant to the customer’s business and your tool’s value.

In a market where B2B sales are highly competitive, thoughtful, data-backed outreach is what sets you apart. I like how Bonfire makes the process a lot more delightful, value-driven, and frankly fun. You can really understand your customer’s business and work from a value creation POV.

In this taste test, Bobby Flay wins yet again. Has anyone ever looked at his win loss record?? Just kidding: all I can say is that Bonfire beats my bad recipe.