There are a ton of posts that correctly point out that networking is by far your best bet. Getting someone on the inside to advocate for your product is going to be your best return on time investment.
Outside of that:
You need to be able to quantify what your product can do for the organization. It might be a cool concept, but you need to transfer that into real dollars, lives, or customers to get anyone's attention. Do the research to tell them what they need to hear to consider your product. "Right now you are spending $20 million on disease prevention studies in rural counties in Virginia. With our software, you can get the same actionable data, faster, and more reliable for $2 million."
Also, these organizations are like huge tankers. Don't assume that just because they haven't implemented a system yet doesn't mean someone in the organization hasn't considered it yet. They take forever to change course. They are all probably using some piece of infrastructure that could be upgraded but hasn't because "it just sort of still works." Breaking through that can be impossible.
Outside of that:
You need to be able to quantify what your product can do for the organization. It might be a cool concept, but you need to transfer that into real dollars, lives, or customers to get anyone's attention. Do the research to tell them what they need to hear to consider your product. "Right now you are spending $20 million on disease prevention studies in rural counties in Virginia. With our software, you can get the same actionable data, faster, and more reliable for $2 million."
Also, these organizations are like huge tankers. Don't assume that just because they haven't implemented a system yet doesn't mean someone in the organization hasn't considered it yet. They take forever to change course. They are all probably using some piece of infrastructure that could be upgraded but hasn't because "it just sort of still works." Breaking through that can be impossible.