Corti AI’s Contrarian Sales Strategy: Why They Embrace Year-Long Enterprise Sales Cycles

Most startup sales advice focuses on shortening sales cycles. But in a recent episode of Category Visionaries, Andreas Cleve from Corti AI revealed why his team does the opposite, deliberately embracing lengthy enterprise sales cycles to build a $100M+ business in healthcare AI.

The Counter-Intuitive Advantage

“A government deal in Europe can take up to a year end to end,” Andreas shares. For most founders, this would be a red flag. But Corti has turned these extended cycles into a competitive advantage, using them to build trust and create barriers to entry that protect their market position.

This approach has driven impressive growth: “We did eight hundred k first year AR, and from then we’ve been growing several hundred percent per year. Last year we grew 300%. This year we’re hoping to grow still more than 200%.”

Why Longer Cycles Work in Healthcare

The strategy stems from a deep understanding of healthcare buyers. When Corti started in 2016, they faced significant skepticism. “The majority of people was really scared about sort of the Big Brother Hollywood kind of way of thinking about it,” Andreas recalls. “Nobody wanted ambient AI in a clinic listening.”

Instead of trying to rush past these concerns, they used the extended sales cycles to demonstrate their commitment to patient care and privacy. This patience allowed them to build reference customers while the market caught up to their vision.

Building Trust Through Complexity

Rather than viewing healthcare regulations as obstacles, Corti made them central to their sales strategy. “A lot of entrepreneurs have just looked at regulation sort of as this weird bump on the road, something to just get passed. Today it’s something that we think about as a competitive advantage or at least edge,” Andreas explains.

This perspective shapes their entire approach to enterprise sales. They use the lengthy procurement processes to prove their value and build lasting relationships that create defendable distribution channels.

The Quality-First Positioning

A key element of their strategy is focusing on care quality, not just efficiency. As Andreas puts it: “The best paya providers in the world will not just want to cut off 5% of some kind of cost base if they cannot know for certain then it leads to better or ad part quality of care because that’s ultimately the promise that brand makes.”

This positioning helps justify longer sales cycles. When you’re promising to improve patient care, buyers are more willing to take time ensuring they make the right choice.

From Sales Cycles to Partnerships

The strategy has led to major wins. They now power “all of Sweden’s medical emergency hotlines” and are expanding across healthcare systems globally. These relationships, once established, become powerful references for future sales.

Andreas emphasizes that success in healthcare requires embracing its inherent complexity: “Trust is something you build over that time… getting it into healthcare, past regulatory bodies and all that jazz, will take what a lot of young entrepreneurs will feel like very old world kind of moves that are there not to slow you down, but to prove you’re worth it.”

The Future Vision

This patient approach aligns with Corti’s ambitious goals. “Our goal is covering billion patients,” Andreas shares. By treating extended sales cycles as opportunities rather than obstacles, they’re building the relationships and trust needed to achieve this scale.

For B2B founders selling to enterprise healthcare or other regulated markets, Corti’s experience offers a powerful lesson: Sometimes the fastest path to growth is accepting that some things can’t (and shouldn’t) be rushed. By embracing complexity and using it to build trust, you can create advantages that faster-moving competitors can’t easily replicate.