Why Your Better Product Is Losing to Their Better Story

Your AI scribe outperforms Dragon. The hospital buys Dragon (Microsoft) anyway.

Epic integrates multiple AI scribe vendors (Dragon, Abridge, Ambience) giving hospitals real choices between established technology and newer innovators. But when familiarity competes against performance, familiarity wins.

And if you’re a health tech company with a better product, this dynamic is killing your deals.

You already know the pattern: You make finalist rounds. Your demos go well. The clinical champion loves you. Then you lose to the incumbent. The feedback is always vague: “not enough customers like us,” “need more proof points,” “decided to stay with our current vendor.”

Healthcare buying prioritizes risk mitigation, with risk often being the deciding factor when product quality is comparable. When a hospital chooses Epic, they’re choosing to transfer implementation risk to a vendor who’s done this 1,000 times. When they choose you with two customers, they’re accepting that risk themselves.

You may be amplifying this risk instead of reducing it. That’s fixable.

Why The Typical SaaS Playbook Fails in Healthcare

Most health tech founders apply generic B2B SaaS positioning to healthcare buying. Healthcare isn’t “B2B enterprise sales with a longer cycle.” It’s structurally different in ways that determine whether positioning works or fails.

IT Reviews Take Months Because Your Software Touches Patient Care

In SaaS, security reviews protect data and take 2-8 weeks. In healthcare, the complete evaluation process takes 3-12 months, assessing clinical safety beyond just data security. One integration failure means a missed clinical alert. One documentation error ends up in the legal medical record.

“Innovative AI breakthrough” on the homepage triggers the risk response. “Proven integration stability with Epic environments, validated across 20 community hospital implementations” calms it. Same technology. Different story.

The Reference Customer Math Doesn’t Work Like SaaS

In SaaS, having a handful of customers can provide social proof, but healthcare is hyper-segmented. A 250-bed community hospital wants to see that you work with other 250-bed community hospitals with similar EHR, workflows, IT infrastructure, patient populations and budget.

They need customers exactly like them. “Trusted by leading health systems” on the homepage is too vague to trigger recognition or reduce risk. But “we work exclusively with 200-400 bed community hospitals running Epic”? Now they think: this company gets my exact situation.

Epic Isn’t Just an EHR. It’s an Ecosystem

Epic provides the EHR, revenue cycle management, patient portal, telehealth, care coordination and analytics. Adding a non-Epic solution means maintaining another vendor relationship, managing another integration, training staff on another system and justifying why you’re not using Epic’s native module.

The switching cost isn’t your product vs. theirs. It’s the friction of leaving the ecosystem.

Nobody Gets Fired for Choosing Epic

The clinical champion has to convince the CIO, CFO and compliance team that a company with two customers is worth the career risk. Marketing needs to arm them with a story that makes choosing you look smart, not reckless. Every time you use words like “disruptive” or “revolutionary” or “next-generation,” you’re making their internal sell harder.

These aren’t just industry quirks. They’re the reasons your current positioning fails. Fix them with three shifts that address how healthcare actually buys.

Shift #1: Turn “Not Enough Customers” Into Strategic Differentiation

Most health tech homepages say “trusted by leading health systems.” Case studies are generic success stories. Rather than address the customer count objection, they pretend the objection doesn’t exist.

Stop hiding that you’re focused and small. Make it your competitive advantage.

The About page is probably defensive about company size. Flip it: “We’re a focused team solving one problem exceptionally well for community hospitals, not a vendor trying to be everything to everyone.”

Case studies need to signal relevance before results. The title “How a 250-Bed Community Hospital in Ohio Reduced Documentation Time Without Disrupting Their Epic Workflows” does more positioning work than the metrics inside. It tells prospects: we understand your exact environment.

Content strategy should prove depth in one segment, not breadth across healthcare. A piece titled “The Unique Documentation Challenges Facing 200-400 Bed Community Hospitals” builds more trust than ten generic posts about healthcare documentation. You’re demonstrating understanding of the nuances in their world… the specific EHR configurations they’re likely running, the staffing constraints they face, the budget pressures unique to their segment.

Give sales a messaging guide for handling the objection: “We work with a handful of health systems right now. That’s intentional. We’re focused on hospitals exactly like yours.”

Shift #2: Turn Risk Reduction Into Product Value

Websites talk about product features. Content showcases capabilities. Nothing addresses the risk concern that kills deals. The assumption is that explaining the product well enough will overcome risk concerns. It won’t.

Address risk directly in the marketing narrative. The value proposition shouldn’t be “AI-powered clinical documentation platform.” It should be “validate results in your Epic environment before committing. 90-day pilot with measurable outcomes.”

Notice what this does: You’ve acknowledged their concern and positioned your approach as the solution. Don’t ask for trust. Offer proof.

Product pages need a section on de-risked implementation. Explain the validation approach, integration stability testing, proof-before-commitment model. This gives champions language for selling you to skeptical stakeholders.

Content marketing should address risk explicitly. A guide on “How to Evaluate New Vendors Without Risking Your Epic Ecosystem” positions you as understanding their concerns. A piece on “Why We Structure 90-Day Validation Periods (And What We Measure)” shows confidence while acknowledging their need for proof.

Restructure case studies to show the validation journey, not just results. Walk through how the pilot worked, what they measured, when they knew it was working, how they expanded. This gives future buyers a mental model for how working with you reduces risk through staged validation.

When sales gets the “not enough customers” concern, they shouldn’t defend or deflect. They should lean into it with the messaging you’ve built: “You’re right to want proof before committing. That’s why we structure initial engagements as 90-day validation periods where you test results in your environment first.”

Shift #3: Turn Status Quo Into Urgency

Most content focuses on the solution. The website explains what you do. The blog showcases product updates. You’re trying to create urgency around buying the product. That’s backwards.

Create urgency around what they’re already doing, not what they should buy.

Your content should make them quantify their current pain. “The Hidden Cost of Physicians Staying Late to Finish Documentation” or “Why Community Hospitals Are Paying More for Medical Scribes Than They Realize” aren’t about your product. They’re about making the status quo unsustainable.

The website needs a “What This Replaces” section showing current state vs. your solution in their language. If research shows most prospects have physicians staying late to finish notes, speak directly to that: “If your 10 physicians are each staying 90 minutes late to finish notes, you’re burning $9,500 weekly in unpaid provider time, nearly $500,000 annually.”

This matters because the actual cost calculation reveals meaningful financial impact. Decision-makers can’t ignore those numbers.

Email content should build urgency around current state before mentioning your solution. Make them feel the pain of staying late, paying for scribes or losing revenue to incomplete documentation. Only then position yourself as the solution.

Create landing pages targeting specific workarounds: one for hospitals using medical scribes, another for health systems where documentation happens after hours. This specificity shows understanding of their exact situation, which reduces risk and increases relevance simultaneously.

The content created for sales enablement should help them quantify current-state costs using the prospect’s numbers, not industry averages. The goal is helping prospects see what they’re already spending, not convincing them to spend on something new.

When “Technology-First” Positioning Costs You Deals

Earlier this year, a telehealth company came to me after a trade show. Their booth messaging focused entirely on technology: carts, equipment, video capabilities. Hospital leaders walked past without engaging.

The CEO described the moment: “Our signage looked like we’re a carts company. Everything was just technology. Just stuff. Nothing alluding to the fact that we actually provide physicians.”

When they shifted conversations from technology to physician access, everything changed: “The minute we said, ‘oh no, we have physicians,’ all of a sudden the story changed, eyes lit up. There was a different temperature in the room.”

The problem wasn’t their product. It was their positioning. They were telling a technology story when buyers needed a care access story.

We repositioned them to lead with specialist access for community hospitals, not telehealth technology. Technology became invisible infrastructure enabling the real value: giving community hospitals access to specialists they couldn’t otherwise recruit.

The new positioning addressed what actually drove hospital buying decisions (patient care outcomes and specialist access), not video quality or cart specifications.

Hospital buyers don’t wake up thinking “I need better telehealth technology.” They wake up thinking “I need a cardiologist and I can’t recruit one.” When the marketing spoke to that actual problem, they became relevant.

What This Actually Costs You

Every lost finalist opportunity is $75K-150K of revenue you can’t show investors. If you’ve lost three deals in the last six months, your positioning is costing you $225K-450K ARR.

The marketing tells the wrong story. Content positions you as risky and unproven when it should position you as focused and de-risked. The website competes on innovation when healthcare buyers select for proven reliability.

You don’t need to beat Epic in every deal. You need positioning that helps you win 3-5 strategic customers in the next two quarters, customers who become your reference base.

Your product is good enough to win. Your team is smart enough to execute. The only thing standing between you and those strategic customers is a marketing story that reduces perceived risk instead of amplifying it.

That’s fixable. The difference between funded and dead isn’t your product. It’s whether you can tell the story that makes 3-5 hospitals choose you over Epic.

If you’re 6-12 months from your next raise and losing deals to incumbents or inferior products, let’s chat about how I can help you fix your positioning.

About the Author

Heather Lodge, Fractional Chief Marketing Officer, The Hybrid CMO

Heather helps growing health tech and healthcare service companies transition from ‘spaghetti-against-the-wall’ marketing to scalable operations so they can go toe-to-toe against better-funded rivals. She helps establish clear market positioning, develop focused account-based marketing programs and build the systems and teams needed to scale effectively. Heather’s approach combines strategic leadership with hands-on execution, building marketing programs that drive consistent revenue growth.

Talk to Heather

Follow Heather on LinkedIn

Epic just unveiled Art, Emmie and Penny: three AI assistants that theoretically eliminate entire startup categories. Art handles clinical documentation. Emmie tackles patient engagement. Penny automates revenue cycle management.

These AI assistants leverage Epic's Cosmos platform with 16 billion patient encounters. Combined with Epic's 42.3% acute care EHR market share and their record-breaking addition of 176 facilities in 2024, these numbers suggest an absolute dominant position.

But Epic's dominance creates specific structural vulnerabilities. While Epic builds for 300+ million patients, Abridge reached a $5.3 billion valuation by delivering measurable outcomes (like enabling 90% of clinicians to provide undivided attention to patients vs. 49% pre-implementation). While Epic's AI promises general improvements, Abridge focuses on specific, verifiable results.

Epic's customers have become hostages. And hostages are always looking for escape routes.

The Hostage Situation

Most hospital systems hate their Epic implementation. They hate the cost. They hate the complexity. They hate the 18-24 month implementations. But they can't leave.

Switching EHR systems costs hospitals millions of dollars and takes years to complete. Hospitals find themselves locked into a relationship they can't afford to leave.

This creates an interesting dynamic. Hospitals can't replace Epic, but they're desperately seeking alternatives for everything Epic doesn't do well. They want to reduce their Epic dependency without ripping out Epic entirely.

Your solutions should be framed as Epic relief, not Epic replacement. You're selling incremental independence. Every successful solution that works alongside Epic reduces their leverage and gives hospitals negotiating power.

Why Epic's Scale Forces Them to Fail Specific Users

Epic's AI assistants reveal a fundamental constraint: when you build for everyone, you excel for no one.

Their Cosmos platform, trained on 16 billion encounters, optimizes for the statistical middle. But healthcare happens in the specifics. The interventional cardiologist doesn't need general documentation; she needs structured data for TAVR procedures. The rural critical access hospital doesn't need enterprise patient engagement; they need COPD readmission prevention for their specific population.

Look at how different companies exploit this dynamic:

Regard (Series A) found success by focusing solely on one problem: catching missed diagnoses in hospitalized patients. They're expanding across major health systems because of their narrow focus, not despite it.

Notable (Series B), instead of competing with Epic's broad patient engagement tools, focused exclusively on automating prior authorizations. One workflow. One pain point. They succeed by solving one problem completely rather than many problems partially.

The strategic framework: Epic's growth literally creates your market. Every hospital Epic adds increases the number of underserved specific use cases.

The Business Model Moat Epic Can't Cross

Epic's greatest strength (their enterprise software licensing model) has become their strategic prison. They can't pivot to outcome-based pricing without cannibalizing their entire revenue structure.

This structural constraint creates an entire messaging opportunity. Epic has to talk about features and licenses, while you can talk about outcomes and ROI. Companies like SmarterDx don't message about their AI capabilities; they message about the $2 million average revenue recovery per 10,000 patient discharges. CodaMetrix doesn't lead with technology features; they lead with 98% coding accuracy guarantees.

According to Bessemer Venture Partners, demonstrating hard ROI for customers (either dollars saved or gained) can help healthcare SaaS companies to achieve sales cycles under six months.

The marketing positioning opportunity: Your messaging framework should completely avoid Epic's territory. Sell outcomes while they sell comprehensive platforms. Provide ROI calculators while they require RFPs about technical specifications. Their sales materials run 50+ pages; yours fit on a napkin: "We capture missed revenue. We keep 30%. You keep 70%. No revenue, no fee."

Even if you ultimately use a SaaS model, your marketing should emphasize outcomes over features, results over capabilities.

Navigating the Political Reality

Selling into Epic environments involves navigating around Epic’s implementation and support teams, whose unofficial job includes subtly undermining competitive solutions. They won't say "don't buy that." They'll say "we're building something similar" or "that might complicate your upgrade path."

But this political dynamic creates opportunity if you understand it. Epic's interests may not always align with ensuring modules deliver value after they're sold.

The navigation strategy: Align with Epic’s incentives. Your solution helps hospitals get value from their Epic investment. You make Epic look good by solving problems they can't. Frame your solution as protecting the Epic investment, not threatening it.

The smartest approach involves building relationships with Epic's services partners. Companies like Nordic, Optimum and Sagacious work with hundreds of Epic implementations. They know every gap, every frustration, every workaround. They become your channel into Epic accounts because they're measured on implementation success rather than Epic license revenue.

The Trust Equation and Reference Customer Paradox

Every healthcare CIO evaluating your solution has one unspoken question: "Will you exist in three years?"

This creates the classic catch-22. Healthcare buyers want references from similar organizations. Similar organizations won't buy without references. Epic faced this problem once. You face it every day.

The traditional approach (hiring grey-haired healthcare veterans) costs too much and moves too slowly. The startup approach ("we're disrupting everything!!!") terrifies risk-averse buyers.

The strategic solution: Borrow trust rather than building it.

Partner with organizations that already have healthcare's trust. Medical societies, GPOs, regional health collaboratives. When the American College of Cardiology recommends your solution, you bypass the trust equation entirely. When Premier or Vizient vets your solution, you inherit their credibility.

Commure accelerated adoption using this exact approach before their Augmedix acquisition. Instead of building trust from scratch, they partnered with health system innovation labs and got health system leaders as investors. Every announcement included validation from HCA Healthcare or Intermountain ventures.

But borrowed trust only gets you in the door. Sustaining that trust while navigating enterprise healthcare requires something more fundamental: capital.

The Capital Reality of Healthcare Sales

Most health tech startups targeting Epic's market will fail… not because they can't build better products, but because they'll run out of money before achieving product-market fit.

CB Insights reports that 70% of health tech startups fail within 20 months of their last funding round. The pattern is predictable: promising pilot, extended enterprise sales cycle, depleted runway, desperate pivot, closure.

The capital requirements are brutal:

• Enterprise healthcare sales cycles average 12-18 months

• Pilot programs often run 6-12 months (usually unpaid)

• Full deployment takes another 6-12 months

• You won't see significant revenue for 2-3 years

Abridge raised $150M+ to survive these timelines. Suki raised $70M primarily for sales cycle survival, not product development. Even "successful" exits like Augmedix to Commure came after years of grinding through these cycles.

If you're going after Epic's market, you need one of three things:

1. Deep venture backing: Multiple rounds to survive long cycles

2. Revenue bridge model: Outcome-based pricing that generates cash faster

3. Partnership leverage: Using established players' infrastructure to accelerate adoption

The companies succeeding choose their capital strategy before their product strategy. They know that in healthcare, running out of money poses a bigger risk than product failure.

Playing the Long Game in Epic's Shadow

Epic's dominance defines your market opportunity. Every hospital using Epic becomes a potential customer for enhancement, relief and independence. Every hospital avoiding Epic needs solutions that work with their chosen alternative.

The playbook focuses on completing Epic, not competing with it. Find the gaps their scale creates. Serve the segments their model can't. Deliver the outcomes their structure won't allow.

Success requires three alignments:

Strategic alignment: Build what Epic structurally can't: specialized over generalized, outcomes over licenses, speed over comprehensiveness.

Capital alignment: Ensure your funding strategy matches healthcare's timeline reality, whether through venture backing, revenue models or partnerships.

Execution alignment: Bridge the gap between strategic insight and market reality through experienced operators who know which messages resonate, which channels work and which partnerships matter.

Epic's strength creates your opportunity. The more dominant they become, the more gaps they leave for those who understand both the strategic dynamics and have the experience to execute against them.

The question becomes whether you have the capital to survive the journey and the marketing expertise to navigate the terrain.

Understanding Epic's vulnerabilities is one thing. Building the go-to-market machine to exploit them is another. As a fractional CMO, I guide health tech companies through this exact challenge, from messaging strategy to team building to market execution. I can help you translate these insights into action. Let's discuss your specific situation and build a marketing strategy that works.

About the Author

Heather Lodge, Fractional Chief Marketing Officer, The Hybrid CMO

Heather helps growing health tech and healthcare service companies transition from ‘spaghetti-against-the-wall’ marketing to scalable operations so they can go toe-to-toe against better-funded rivals. She helps establish clear market positioning, develop focused account-based marketing programs and build the systems and teams needed to scale effectively. Heather’s approach combines strategic leadership with hands-on execution, building marketing programs that drive consistent revenue growth.

Talk to Heather

Follow Heather on LinkedIn

AI-enabled healthcare startups commanded an 83% funding premium over non-AI companies in 2025, according to Silicon Valley Bank's latest analysis. But that same AI story that’s helping you raise capital might just be killing your enterprise sales.

Last fall I worked with a telehealth startup founder who learned this lesson at a trade show. Their booth was aglow with AI capabilities, platform features, technical specs, all the things VCs love to hear. Hospital leaders walked right by without stopping.

Then during one conversation, he casually mentioned they also provided the actual physicians, not just technology. Everything changed. Hospital executives stopped, engaged and asked for meetings.

"The minute we said ‘we have physicians,’ eyes lit up. There was a different temperature in the room," their CEO told me during our strategy session.

This is the reality every health tech founder faces: investors want to hear about your proprietary models and technical moats. Hospital CFOs want to know if you'll actually reduce readmissions.

The $4 Billion Reality Check

AI captured 62% of all digital health VC funding in the first half of 2025. We're talking nearly $4 billion of the $6.4 billion total invested. And, AI startups are raising an average of $34.4 million per round compared to $18.8 million for their non-AI counterparts.

Meanwhile, healthcare organizations are doing something completely different. They're adopting what Silicon Valley Bank calls "modular tech stack approaches," actively avoiding vendor lock-in and prioritizing interoperability over innovation.

Think about that for a second. The very thing that gets you funded (i.e. your proprietary, all-encompassing AI platform) makes enterprise buyers nervous. They've been burned before. They want solutions that play nice with their existing systems, not another "revolutionary" platform that requires ripping and replacing everything.

Two Scripts, One Company

So how do you navigate this? You need two distinct narratives that serve different purposes but still represent the same company truthfully.

Script 1: What Investors Need to Hear

Your investor narrative has specific requirements. They're evaluating hundreds of deals and need to quickly understand why yours is different.

You’ll want to lead the conversation with technical differentiation, explain your proprietary models and highlight your unique data assets or novel AI applications. Show how AI opens entirely new market segments. For example, maybe you can now serve community hospitals that couldn't afford traditional solutions before.

You should also talk about network effects. How does each new customer make your AI smarter? According to recent M&A data, 67% of digital health acquisitions involve startups buying other startups. Acquirers want to see those compounding advantages.

The metrics that matter here: model accuracy improvements, data volume growth, patent portfolio, technical team credentials. This is where you geek out on the technology.

Script 2: What Customers Actually Care About

Your enterprise buyer story needs completely different positioning.

Start with workflow integration rather than innovation. What do hospital leaders care about? They care about fitting into their Epic workflows without breaking anything. This is where integration speed is important.

Translate everything into everyday language. Instead of "our NLP engine processes unstructured data with 97% accuracy," say "we reduce documentation time by 2 hours per physician per day." That's something a CFO can easily grasp.

Position as reliable infrastructure, not experimental tech. Healthcare buyers have a graveyard of "revolutionary" solutions that couldn't scale. Share specific implementation timelines, support structures, success guarantees.

The metrics that matter here: ROI timeline (how fast do they see returns?), FTE impact (how many people can they redeploy?), error rate reduction, patient satisfaction scores.

Know Your Audience, Time Your Message

Now, you gotta use the right script at the right time. Let me break down when to use each one:

Use investor messaging when:

• Pitching to VCs or PE firms

• Speaking at startup conferences

• Publishing in tech publications

• Recruiting technical talent

• Filing patents or publishing research

Use customer messaging when:

• At healthcare trade shows (HIMSS, HLTH)

• In sales presentations

• Creating case studies

• Writing for healthcare publications

• Building your main website (yes, really)

That last one surprises people. Your website should primarily speak to customers because that's who's researching you daily. I suggest focusing the majority of the website on the customer and reserve a separate investor relations section for the technical story.

Segmenting Healthcare Buyers by AI Sophistication

Not all healthcare organizations are the same. Some have Chief AI Officers, others are still using fax machines.

AI-Forward Organizations (think Mayo Clinic, Johns Hopkins) These places have innovation departments and dedicated AI initiatives. They can handle technical discussions and actually want to understand your differentiation from commodity tools.

For these accounts, start with business value but include technical appendices. They want both the executive summary AND the architectural diagrams. Bring your technical founders to later-stage meetings.

Pragmatic Adopters (community hospitals, regional systems) They want AI benefits without AI complexity. They need you to translate everything. Case studies from similar-sized organizations matter more than your latest patent.

Skip the technical jargon entirely in initial conversations. Talk about their staffing challenges, their revenue cycle problems. Show how peers solved these same issues.

AI-Skeptical Organizations (burned by past vendors, resource-constrained) These buyers need trust before technology. They've heard the AI promises before… usually right before a vendor disappeared or a project failed.

Lead with pilot programs. Offer proof-of-concept deployments. Talk about change management and training more than technology. Acknowledge that AI implementations can fail, then explain why yours won't.

The Integration Challenge: Making Both Stories True

Here where things get fancy – creating connection points between your narratives. They can't be completely separate stories because eventually, everyone sees everything.

Look at how Suki handles this. To investors, they talk about how they "democratize access to AI” resulting in up to 9x ROI. To health systems? They say they “lift the burden of documentation, so clinicians can focus on what matters most.”

When Suki raised their $70 million Series D, they had both stories working perfectly. Investors heard about their "AI platform that powers the industry" and how they're "well on its way to becoming the de facto AI platform for healthcare," according to partner Bryan Roberts at Venrock. Meanwhile, health systems like MedStar heard about "72% faster note completion" and "70+ percent adoption rates"—concrete operational metrics that matter to hospital administrators.

The sophistication shows in their press materials. In the same announcement, they tell investors about their valuation approaching $500 million and their "proprietary AI and speech platform," while telling hospitals that they "reduce the administrative workload for healthcare providers."

This dual approach got them on track to quadruple revenue in 2024 while serving more than 300 healthcare providers. Same technology, two perfectly calibrated stories.

The key is what I call "translation bridges”: content that explicitly connects technical capabilities to business outcomes. For example: "Our proprietary NLP engine (what investors care about) enables 2-hour reductions in daily documentation time (what customers care about)."

Create materials that can go deeper in either direction:

• White papers that start with ROI but include technical appendices

• Case studies that highlight business metrics but reference the underlying AI

• Sales decks with "technical deep dive" sections you can skip or explore

Your sales team needs to be trained on this flexibility. They should recognize the triggers:

• Innovation department on the call? Bridge both scripts

• CFO leading the evaluation? Pure business value

• CTO asking questions? Time for the technical story

Why This Matters More Than Ever

Based on Rock Health's Q1 2025 data, we're entering a consolidation phase. The companies that survive will be those generating real revenue, not just raising rounds.

Private equity firms are actively pursuing what they call "AI-native roll-up strategies." They're looking for companies that can both tell the AI story AND show sustainable customer acquisition. Your dual-script capability signals that sophistication.

Think about what potential acquirers evaluate:

• Can you raise additional capital if needed? (investor story)

• Can you expand beyond early adopters? (customer story)

• Do you understand your market deeply? (both stories aligned)

Making This Work for Your Company

Start by honestly assessing where you are today. Pull up your pitch deck and your sales deck side by side. How much overlap is there? If it's more than 30%, you've got a problem.

Map out where each message appears:

• Website copy (should be 80% customer, 20% investor)

• Sales materials (100% customer)

• Conference presentations (depends on the conference)

• PR and media (depends on the publication)

• Social media (depends on the platform)

Create clear guidelines for your team. Your head of sales shouldn't be figuring this out in real-time during a hospital pitch. Your marketing team needs separate content calendars for TechCrunch (investor story) vs. Healthcare IT News (customer story).

Most importantly, make sure both stories are true. You're not lying to anyone. You're emphasizing different aspects of the same reality. Your AI is both technically sophisticated and practically valuable. The art is knowing which truth to lead with.

Looking Forward

The health tech companies succeeding right now have figured this out. They raise capital based on AI innovation while building revenue on practical value delivery. They speak both languages fluently and know exactly when to switch.

This dual capability becomes your competitive advantage. While competitors struggle with one narrative, you're closing deals and raising rounds.

Your AI story got you in the door with investors. Your business value story will keep you in business. Master both, and you'll build something that lasts.

Ready to develop your two-script strategy? Let's talk about aligning your narratives for both growth and funding.

P.S. Share this with your head of sales. They're probably already doing this code-switching instinctively and would love a framework to formalize it.

About the Author

Heather Lodge, Fractional Chief Marketing Officer, The Hybrid CMO

Heather helps growing health tech and healthcare service companies transition from ‘spaghetti-against-the-wall’ marketing to scalable operations so they can go toe-to-toe against better-funded rivals. She helps establish clear market positioning, develop focused account-based marketing programs and build the systems and teams needed to scale effectively. Heather’s approach combines strategic leadership with hands-on execution, building marketing programs that drive consistent revenue growth.

Talk to Heather

Follow Heather on LinkedIn

California requires specific patient notifications for AI healthcare chatbot interactions while Texas has enacted different disclosure requirements for AI use in diagnostic and treatment contexts. New York has passed AI companion disclosure laws and is developing healthcare-specific AI regulations through legislation like the RAISE Act.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration's AI Action Plan recommends that federal agencies consider a state's "regulatory climate" when making AI-related funding decisions and not provide such funding to states with burdensome AI regulations, effectively creating federal pressure against state-level AI regulation while acknowledging that "states are still free to impose AI laws as they see fit.”

This regulatory fragmentation is creating compliance scenarios that didn't exist six months ago, yet many health tech companies default to the same messaging, content and sales approach across all markets. Regulatory complexity is treated as an afterthought rather than a core segmentation factor.

This represents a significant missed opportunity. When you factor regulatory considerations into your account-based marketing strategy from the beginning, you can create more targeted campaigns that speak directly to your prospects' specific concerns and risk tolerance levels.

Starting with Strategic Account Selection

The foundation of any regulatory-aware marketing strategy is precision in target selection. Focus on identifying the specific organizations you want to work with and understanding their geographic distribution rather than casting wide nets and hoping something sticks.

Once you have your target accounts mapped, you'll likely notice geographic patterns. Some companies find their ideal customers concentrated in certain metro areas or specific states. This geographic distribution becomes your first insight into the regulatory landscape you're navigating.

Understanding where your targets are located helps you anticipate the regulatory environment they operate within and the compliance considerations that might influence their buying decisions.

Segmentation by Regulatory Risk Tolerance

Based on geographic concentration and organizational characteristics, you can segment your target accounts into three categories based on how they approach regulatory uncertainty:

Low Regulatory Risk Tolerance: Organizations in states with progressive digital health policies who are often willing to pilot new technologies even when regulatory pathways aren't completely clear. With California's comprehensive AI healthcare disclosure laws and Colorado's neural data privacy protections already in place, these early adopters have experience navigating evolving regulations. They view some regulatory ambiguity as acceptable if the potential benefits are significant.

Moderate Regulatory Risk Tolerance: Organizations that want to innovate but prefer clearer regulatory guidance before moving forward. These are often in states where frameworks are developing. They're interested in new solutions but need more comprehensive risk assessment and mitigation strategies while regulatory conflicts play out.

High Regulatory Risk Tolerance: Organizations that require extensive regulatory clarity before considering new technologies. These prospects are particularly cautious given the current state and federal healthcare AI regulatory conflicts and prefer to wait until compliance pathways are definitively established. They typically need detailed compliance documentation and established regulatory precedents before engaging meaningfully.

Each segment requires different messaging strategies, content approaches and sales processes.

From The Blog

• Engaging a 10-Person Buying Committee Through a 13+ Month Sales Marathon: What Traditional Health Tech Marketing Gets Wrong

• Why Your Healthcare Sales Team Keeps Missing Their Number

  (Hint: It's Not Them)

Developing Segment-Specific Engagement Plans

To maximize effectiveness, develop distinct marketing approaches for each regulatory risk segment while ensuring smooth transitions between your strategic messaging and regulatory discussions.

For Low Risk Tolerance Segments: Direct your marketing strategy toward innovation and competitive advantage messaging. Your marketing team should emphasize market opportunity, differentiation, and early results from implementations. These prospects are interested in cutting-edge applications and first-mover advantages. They often have experience with comprehensive AI disclosure requirements and see compliance frameworks as manageable.

• Customer insight example: If prospects in states with comprehensive AI disclosure laws like California consistently raise questions about patient communication compliance, develop detailed guidance about state-specific disclosure obligations that positions your solution as compliance-ready rather than compliance-complicated.

For Moderate Risk Tolerance Segments: Balance innovation messaging with risk mitigation in your marketing approach. These prospects need to understand both the opportunity and the safeguards. Your marketing strategy should address how to navigate the current patchwork of state requirements - from detailed patient communication disclosures to practitioner-focused diagnostic notifications - while building scalable compliance processes.

• Customer insight example: If prospects in states with developing frameworks want to understand how evolving requirements might affect their future compliance, create strategic content that explores different regulatory scenarios and positions your solution as adaptable to regulatory changes.

For High Risk Tolerance Segments: Focus your marketing messaging on compliance and risk reduction. These prospects are particularly concerned about managing different disclosure requirements across multiple states and need extensive regulatory documentation that addresses the full spectrum of current state requirements before they'll engage. Your marketing strategy should include detailed compliance guides that address both current state requirements and potential federal preemption scenarios.

A Word of Caution

There is a critical timing consideration here: don't inadvertently start objection handling rather than highlighting value, particularly in marketing channels that aren't typically segmented, like your homepage.

When you prominently feature regulatory compliance messaging on your homepage or lead with it in sales pitches, you may inadvertently suggest problems that prospects hadn't considered. A homepage that emphasizes "streamlined compliance processes" might make prospects wonder whether compliance is actually complicated with your solution.

The more effective approach is keeping regulatory content accessible but not front-and-center. Place this information deeper in your website where prospects can find it if they already have regulatory concerns. In sales conversations, address regulatory considerations toward the end of your pitch with language like "in case you're wondering about this because some organizations are..."

The principle is straightforward: lead with differentiated value that attracts customers, then address regulatory concerns when they arise rather than creating concerns that didn't previously exist.

The Strategic Choice Ahead

Companies that integrate regulatory considerations into their account-based marketing strategy from the beginning often find they can create more targeted, effective campaigns that resonate with their prospects' specific concerns and risk tolerance levels.

This is particularly critical given the current regulatory environment. The Trump Administration's regulatory freeze impact may slow federal AI healthcare guidance while states continue developing their own requirements. The multiple state AI healthcare chatbot disclosure laws already creating compliance complexity will likely expand rather than consolidate in the near term.

The question isn't whether regulatory complexity affects your prospects' buying decisions. It's whether you're factoring that complexity into your go-to-market strategy before your competitors do.

Need help putting together the pieces of this regulatory puzzle? Let’s talk.

About the Author

Heather Lodge, Fractional Chief Marketing Officer, The Hybrid CMO

Heather helps growing health tech and healthcare service companies transition from ‘spaghetti-against-the-wall’ marketing to scalable operations so they can go toe-to-toe against better-funded rivals. She helps establish clear market positioning, develop focused account-based marketing programs and build the systems and teams needed to scale effectively. Heather’s approach combines strategic leadership with hands-on execution, building marketing programs that drive consistent revenue growth.

Talk to Heather

Follow Heather on LinkedIn

The One Big Beautiful Bill (H.R.1) says federal dollars are coming to rural communities, but hospitals still feel like they’re bracing for impact, not growth.

There’s a deeper tension behind the optimism: how rural hospitals prepare now will determine whether they can survive what comes next. And for health tech companies, it changes a lot about how you market, position and sell.

Front-Loaded Money, Back-Loaded Cuts

The Rural Health Transformation Program appropriates $10 billion per year from 2026-2030, but almost two-thirds of the Medicaid spending cuts won’t hit until after 2030.

The $50 billion rural fund only offsets about one-third of the estimated $155 billion in rural Medicaid cuts over the same period, according to KFF analysis. That means much of the federal assistance will already be spent before the heaviest budget cuts hit.

Hospitals will need solutions that pay for themselves twice:

• Once during the federally-funded implementation phase

• Again during the post-funding period when the deepest financial pain begins

And there’s another constraint: states must spend funds by the end of the following fiscal year in which they are awarded, and all dollars must be spent before October 2032.

Health tech companies that understand these timing dynamics can position their solutions as cost-saving infrastructure that delivers value now and can survive future financial tightening.

Quick Caveat: Nobody Knows How This Actually Works Yet

The rural health program was added as a last-minute political compromise, and the implementation details are still murky.

"I have more questions than I have answers,” said Alan Morgan, CEO of the National Rural Health Association, a nonprofit policy group. “No one has those answers yet.” Both critics and supporters acknowledge the uncertainty, and as of this writing, there's still no application available for states despite the December 31 deadline.

This uncertainty doesn't mean ignoring the opportunity. It means building marketing strategies that work regardless of how the funding ultimately flows. The fundamentals still matter: positioning, relationships and value propositions that resonate across multiple scenarios.

And always, always stay adaptable, friends.

From Innovation to Infrastructure: A Positioning Pivot

Of the $50 billion, $25 billion will be distributed at state discretion, and they can use it for technology solutions, workforce retention, cybersecurity improvements and AI training. States will be looking for hospitals that they believe can deploy federal dollars quickly, effectively and show measurable outcomes.

Health tech companies typically emphasize clinical innovation and improvements when courting hospital buyers. In this environment, your narrative shifts to positioning as:

Part of a funding strategy: Help hospitals become more competitive for federal dollars by demonstrating technical readiness, implementation planning and outcome measurement capabilities.

Sustainable over the long term: Lead with operational efficiency and cost reduction rather than clinical features and innovation. Show how your solution helps hospitals manage increased uncompensated care while building long-term financial resilience.

A multi-category solution: Show how your platform meets multiple funding priorities (for example, telehealth that addresses workforce retention AND chronic disease management).

Deployment-ready: States face tight spending deadlines, making speed and proven results a major differentiator.

What This Means for Your Strategy

To compete effectively in this new reality, your go-to-market plan needs a reset:

Sell a two-phased ROI: Frame your solution as infrastructure with short-term payback during the funding window and long-term cost savings that persist post-2030.

Back it up with case studies: Build stories that prove your value across both phases. Document specific metrics like reduced labor costs, decreased readmission rates or improved cash collection that hospitals can use to justify investments to state agencies and sustain the investment when funding dries up.

Create urgency around preparation: Implementation details are still unclear, but the December deadline looms. Hospitals that show they're ready to launch quickly may have a leg up in securing state funding.

Make outcome measurement a feature: States must submit annual reports to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) on fund usage. Help your hospital partners track population health improvements, cost savings and care quality metrics over multiple years. This builds loyalty and makes your platform more attractive.

Geographic prioritization: Not every state will prioritize the same strategies. Prioritize geographies where your solution matches the funding categories, and understand the differing dynamics between Medicaid expansion and non-expansion states.

Act Fast. Think Long.

Companies that adjust quickly will win both the near-term dollars and the long-term hospital relationships. Those that keep leading with buzzwords may find their message out of sync with what rural hospitals actually need: sustainability.

Need help shifting your strategy from “cutting-edge” to “cost-saving infrastructure”? Let’s talk.

P.S. Forward this to your sales team. Understanding the funding timeline could help them navigate deals that might otherwise stall or die.

About the Author

Heather Lodge, Fractional Chief Marketing Officer, The Hybrid CMO

Heather helps growing health tech and healthcare service companies transition from ‘spaghetti-against-the-wall’ marketing to scalable operations so they can go toe-to-toe against better-funded rivals. She helps establish clear market positioning, develop focused account-based marketing programs and build the systems and teams needed to scale effectively. Heather’s approach combines strategic leadership with hands-on execution, building marketing programs that drive consistent revenue growth.

Talk to Heather

Follow Heather on LinkedIn

When was the last time you approached pipeline planning in terms of Medicaid expansion status?

The One Big Beautiful Bill (OBBB) created a geographic divide where market conditions in Medicaid expansion states look very different from non-expansion states.

Last week, I broke down how the OBBB creates both a $50 billion rural health technology opportunity and the most significant healthcare market contraction since the Great Depression.

In this article, I’ll dive into where those coverage losses hit hardest and how this changes your messaging strategy and target account approach.

A Quick Caveat: Policy Stability in an Unstable Time

Everything I'm outlining here assumes the OBBB stays as written, but policy stability isn't exactly this administration's strength.

Senator Josh Hawley, R-Mo., introduced legislation to counter Medicaid cuts just 14 days after voting for the bill that created them. That should tell you something about the political pressure building.

History gives us two scenarios for how this could play out. The Medicare Catastrophic Coverage Act got completely repealed just one year after passing (even with bipartisan support) because beneficiaries mobilized against it. But the ACA survived 50+ repeal attempts because once people started using the benefits, complete reversal became politically impossible.

More likely? We'll see partial modifications rather than complete repeal, similar to how individual ACA provisions were eliminated while the core structure stayed intact.

You have to plan for today's legislative reality while also building flexibility into your strategy. Track policy discussions that could shift your planning assumptions. Build agility into your messaging frameworks so you can pivot quickly if needed.

The fundamentals of geographic market analysis still apply. You just need to stay ready to adjust as the landscape evolves.

Now, let’s get on with it…

Geographic Positioning Went From A ‘Nice To Have’ To A Critical Piece of Your Strategy

The OBBB's impact splits along a clear line: Medicaid expansion states versus non-expansion states.

The OBBB's work requirements and coverage restrictions hit Medicaid expansion populations directly. That means 41 states plus D.C. (the expansion states) are projected to see the biggest budget pressures as coverage losses translate into increased uncompensated care.

Kentucky is looking at over $12 billion in rural Medicaid cuts with North Carolina, Virginia and Illinois facing similar numbers. Meanwhile, non-expansion states like Texas and Florida, which never expanded Medicaid in the first place, face different financial dynamics.

This creates divergent market conditions that require different sales and marketing approaches.

Expansion states are in survival mode. Hospital systems in these markets are likely to prioritize cost reduction over innovation.

Non-expansion states may be more focused on growth. These markets didn't expand Medicaid coverage, so they're not facing the same coverage reductions. They may also be better positioned to compete for rural transformation funding since they're starting from a different baseline.

Mapping Your Strategic Vulnerabilities (And Opportunities)

You can’t send the same case studies to Detroit and Miami when those markets are about to respond to completely different value propositions. The key is understanding which of your target accounts are most vulnerable to coverage losses versus which ones have diversified revenue streams, then tailor your messaging accordingly.

Highly vulnerable accounts → cost-focused messaging:

• Safety-net hospitals with high Medicaid patient volumes in expansion states

• Rural hospitals in states that expanded Medicaid to improve their financial position

• Academic medical centers with significant Medicaid-dependent programs

For these hospitals, you’ll want to lead with ROI and cost avoidance in your first touchpoint. Your content should focus on budget relief rather than technological advancement.

• Example: "System X reduced operational costs by $2.3M in year one" versus "System X implemented cutting-edge AI diagnostics."

Focus on how your solution helps systems handle increased patient volumes with existing resources. Efficiency gains become the primary value proposition. Position your company as a strategic partner helping systems navigate financial challenges, not just another vendor selling technology. Emphasize how your solution reduces administrative burden and regulatory risk during a period of increased oversight.

Low-vulnerability accounts → growth-focused messaging:

• Hospitals with diversified payer mixes where Medicaid represents less than 30% of revenue

• Systems in non-expansion states that already operate with limited Medicaid

• Specialty hospitals and outpatient facilities serving commercially insured populations

• Systems with strong cash reserves and investment portfolios that provide financial buffers during market transitions

​​These hospital systems may have more financial flexibility for technology investments that support expansion rather than just survival. With more stable budgets, they may be more receptive to messaging about gaining competitive advantages over expansion state competitors. Your case studies should focus on features and capabilities that set systems apart in their markets. Many non-expansion states have significant rural populations and may be better positioned to compete for federal rural health transformation funding.

Once you've mapped your account vulnerability, the next question becomes: what do you do if most of your revenue sits in high-risk markets?

Diversification Strategies for Medicaid Expansion-Heavy Companies

If your customers are concentrated in expansion states, you need to reassess your account prioritization and messaging strategy. The projected coverage losses create genuine revenue risk for companies heavily dependent on these markets.

Account portfolio rebalancing and prioritization becomes a strategic priority if the majority of your targets are in expansion states. This means actively identifying high-value prospects in Texas, Florida and other non-expansion states where you've had limited presence. That needs to be reflected in marketing spend to focus on more stable geographic markets and building account research around non-expansion state health systems that may have budget flexibility for technology investments.

Pipeline forecasting should also reflect geographic risk. Deals in high-vulnerability states may have longer timelines and lower close rates, while non-expansion state opportunities may convert more predictably. This requires adjusting your sales forecasting assumptions and potentially your revenue recognition planning based on where your pipeline is concentrated geographically.

From The Blog

• Cracking the Differentiation Code: Why Messaging Trumps Product in Health Tech

• Transform Your Health Tech Messaging with a Value Proposition Canvas + Real-World Case Study

Your 90-Day Geographic Strategy Action Plan

Over the next quarter, here's what you should prioritize:

• Audit your target account portfolio by expansion status. Calculate what percentage of your accounts are in expansion versus non-expansion states.

• Segment your messaging by geographic vulnerability. Create different messaging frameworks for expansion state accounts (cost-focused) versus non-expansion state accounts (growth-focused). Your case studies, white papers and sales collateral should reflect these different value propositions.

• Adjust account prioritization. Consider reweighting your target account list to include more non-expansion state prospects if you're heavily concentrated in high-risk expansion markets.

• Build geographic intelligence into your account research. For each target account, understand their Medicaid revenue exposure, payer mix and financial resilience. This should inform your messaging approach and expected conversion timelines.

The window to get ahead of these changes is closing. Your competitors are reading the same projections and making the same calculations about where to focus their resources.

Need help mapping your marketing strategy against OBBB risks and opportunities? Let's talk about your specific market mix and build a strategy that accounts for these new geographic realities.

P.S. Forward this to any health tech founders or leaders who need to understand how this legislation affects their business.

About the Author

Heather Lodge, Fractional Chief Marketing Officer, The Hybrid CMO

Heather helps growing health tech and healthcare service companies transition from ‘spaghetti-against-the-wall’ marketing to scalable operations so they can go toe-to-toe against better-funded rivals. She helps establish clear market positioning, develop focused account-based marketing programs and build the systems and teams needed to scale effectively. Heather’s approach combines strategic leadership with hands-on execution, building marketing programs that drive consistent revenue growth.

Talk to Heather

Follow Heather on LinkedIn

Millions of Americans with Medicaid are about to lose health coverage. That's been the big headline ever since H.R.1 (aka the One Big Beautiful Bill) began making its way through Congress.

But buried in the same legislation is a $50 billion opportunity that will reshape health tech, and your marketing strategy needs to account for it.

A Quick Intro (Skip If You Just Want the Good Stuff👇🏻)

I've been thinking about starting a newsletter for 2+ years.

Since 2023 I've been getting my fractional CMO practice off the ground and have been in hardcore "build mode," which didn't leave a lot of time for writing a newsletter. Plus, there are plenty of knowledgeable voices in healthcare, and I wasn't sure I had anything important enough to say.

Then the One Big Beautiful Bill (OBBB) passed this month. I couldn't let the moment pass.

The implications for health tech and healthcare services companies are massive. The companies that understand and act on these changes now will be set up to succeed in their markets for the next decade.

I spent a day researching its impacts so I could help my clients navigate the largest healthcare market contraction since the Great Depression AND the most significant government-backed technology adoption program in healthcare history.

So, if we haven't met yet – Hi, I'm Heather, and I help health tech and healthcare service companies plan, build and execute repeatable marketing strategies and scalable systems.

Now that intros are out of the way, let’s get to the good stuff.

In this newsletter, I will:

• Walk you through the $50 billion rural health opportunity and why states control the keys

• Show you the strategic shifts you need to make in the next 5 months

• Preview what's coming in future editions to help you navigate these changes

(If this newsletter isn’t for you or you just don't want to hear from me, no hard feelings. You can unsubscribe here.)

I promise to make this worth your time. Everyone always wants to know "what's in it for me?,” so you'll always walk away with tangible ideas, strategies and frameworks you can put into action right away.

We'll cover everything from messaging and positioning to demand generation and complex B2B marketing strategies, but this legislation is too big to ignore for my first newsletter.

The Strategic Marketing Shift Every Health Tech Company Needs to Make

A lot has already been written about the OBBB. This isn't another policy explainer.

I want to talk about this through the lens of health tech sales and marketing. Not just nitty-gritty tactics, but the big picture, overarching strategic shifts you need to be considering and planning for now.

While B2C health tech companies face the biggest threat, EHR, telehealth, AI diagnostics, practice management and pretty much every other health tech vertical will certainly deal with downstream impacts.

Here's what this means for you:

• $1 trillion in Medicaid payment cuts over 10 years = budget cuts, longer sales cycles and delayed tech purchases

• Customer consolidation reducing your addressable market

• Shift from innovation-focused to cost-reduction messaging

• Geographic disruption hitting Medicaid expansion states hardest

Along with risks, the legislation also creates the largest government-backed technology opportunity in healthcare history.

The $50 Billion Hidden Opportunity: States Hold the Keys

The OBBB includes a $50 billion Rural Health Transformation Program ($10B annually, 2026-2030), but here’s the thing: states will control the funding, not individual providers.

Here's how it works: applicants need to prove they'll improve rural health access through technology. Get approved? Then they choose how to spend the money across 11 categories, including:

• Technology solutions for chronic disease management

• Training rural hospitals on AI and remote monitoring adoption

• Technical assistance and cybersecurity improvements

• Value-based care model development

• Mental health and substance use disorder treatment access

States must submit applications by December 31. That's less than 5 months to position your company as a preferred technology partner.

Instead of just targeting rural hospitals directly, you now need relationships with state health departments, hospital associations and the agencies writing these applications.

How do you actually position for this funding? What messaging resonates with state agencies? Which partnerships matter most?

I’ll be diving deep into this (and more) in the coming weeks.

What's Coming in This Newsletter Series

Over the next several editions, I'll share the strategic marketing shifts health tech companies need to make right now:

Go-to-Market Strategy Pivots

• Customer segmentation based on new market realities and funding opportunities

• Sales territory realignment based on Medicaid expansion vs. non-expansion states and other geographic market shifts

• Channel strategy optimization for both traditional and state agency partnerships

Messaging & Positioning Strategy

• Repositioning for cost reduction and ROI-focused value propositions

• Developing government relations messaging for state agencies

• Building compliance expertise positioning for new regulatory requirements

Demand Generation Strategy Shifts

• Account-based marketing targeting state health departments and emerging high-value segments

• Thought leadership campaigns positioning for transformation funding opportunities

• Content strategy pivots that resonate with budget-conscious healthcare buyers

How I Can Help Right Now

The companies that act on these insights in the next 5 months will have a massive competitive advantage.

Need help assessing your market for OBBB risks and opportunities? Ready to tackle long-term strategic shifts? Grab 20 minutes here and let's figure out your next move.

P.S. Forward this to any health tech founders or leaders who need to understand how this legislation affects their business.

About the Author

Heather Lodge, Fractional Chief Marketing Officer, The Hybrid CMO

Heather helps growing health tech and healthcare service companies transition from ‘spaghetti-against-the-wall’ marketing to scalable operations so they can go toe-to-toe against better-funded rivals. She helps establish clear market positioning, develop focused account-based marketing programs and build the systems and teams needed to scale effectively. Heather’s approach combines strategic leadership with hands-on execution, building marketing programs that drive consistent revenue growth.

Talk to Heather

Follow Heather on LinkedIn

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Your sales team is talented. They know how to navigate complex healthcare deals. But they’re constantly working the same handful of target accounts, and every quarter feels like a scramble to close enough large deals to hit the number. 

My guess is your sales reps are probably pretty darn good at their jobs. They understand healthcare. They can navigate complex buying committees. When they get into a major health system or payer opportunity, they know how to work it.

But there’s a coverage problem that’s killing them… and you.

The Healthcare Pipeline Math

Let me paint you a picture…

You identified 50-100 high-value accounts. Your average deal size is significant, maybe $250K-$500K annually. It usually takes 13+ months to close. Your close rate is probably around 20-25% if you’re honest about it. And each rep is working 8-12 major accounts at any given time.

Do the math with me:

• 12 active deals x 25% close rate = 3 closed deals per rep per year

• With a 13-month sales cycle, that means 13+ active, engaged opportunities for each person at any given time

• But only 3-4 of their assigned accounts are actually “in-market” at any given time

That means 70% of their accounts aren’t even ready to buy yet. Minimum.

Your reps aren’t bad at selling. They’re trying to force deals with accounts that aren’t ready.

Why Founder Relationships Don't Scale

When you started, you knew exactly which health systems to target. You had the relationships to get the meetings that mattered.

But, at around $5-10M ARR, your target account list grew faster than your network.

Sure, you can still open doors at 10-15 accounts. Maybe your advisors can help with another 10-15. But what about the other 50 enterprise accounts on your target list? What about the health systems you don’t have connections into?

Healthcare organizations are actively looking for solutions like yours, but they’re not finding you through your personal network anymore. They’re doing research, asking peers and evaluating options. If you’re not systematically engaging them throughout their buying journey, your competitors are.

The Cost of Reactive Selling

When you only engage target accounts after they’ve raised their hand:

• You’re playing catch-up while competitors have been nurturing relationships for months

• The buying committee has already formed opinions (without your input)

• Requirements have been written (possibly to favor your competition)

• Your win rate drops dramatically

• Deals take even longer because you’re trying to change minds, not shape thinking

When you’re systematically engaging target accounts BEFORE they’re in-market, everything changes.

Three Things You Can Do This Week

You can’t transform your entire sales engine overnight. But you can start building systematic account engagement.

1. Audit Your Target Accounts: List your top 50 target accounts. For each one, ask: Are we actively engaging multiple stakeholders? Do we know their strategic initiatives? When did we last provide value (not just “check in”)? If more than 60% have no systematic engagement, you’ve identified your problem.

2. Map the Invisible Buying Committee: Pick your top 10 accounts. Map out the typical buying committee – CIO, CMIO, CFO, VP of Strategy, Clinical Leadership, IT Directors, etc. How many of these people are you actively engaging at each account

3. Start One Systematic Engagement Play: Don’t boil the ocean. Pick one play. Maybe it’s executive briefings, maybe it’s clinical ROI studies, maybe it’s peer roundtables. Run it consistently for your top 25 accounts for 90 days. Measure engagement, not just leads.

Predictable pipeline = predictable revenue = higher valuation. 

Why? Because investors see a repeatable growth engine, not just founder hustle.

The Bottom Line

Your sales team has a coverage problem, not a closing problem. Only 30% of your target accounts are engaged before they’re in-market, and that’s why every quarter feels like a crisis.

This is fixable. Not overnight, but systematically.

How many more quarters do you want to leave to chance before you build a predictable pipeline?

If you’re struggling to build predictable pipeline instead of crossing your fingers every quarter hoping the numbers work out, I can help. Reach out to learn more.

The post Why Your Healthcare Sales Team Keeps Missing Their Number (Hint: It’s Not Them) appeared first on The Hybrid CMO.

About the Author

Heather Lodge, Fractional Chief Marketing Officer, The Hybrid CMO

Heather helps growing health tech and healthcare service companies transition from ‘spaghetti-against-the-wall’ marketing to scalable operations so they can go toe-to-toe against better-funded rivals. She helps establish clear market positioning, develop focused account-based marketing programs and build the systems and teams needed to scale effectively. Heather’s approach combines strategic leadership with hands-on execution, building marketing programs that drive consistent revenue growth.

Follow Heather on LinkedIn

Ever notice how some health tech companies seem to speak directly to your soul while others sound like they’re reading from a technical manual?

Many health tech startups jump straight to marketing execution without defining their core value proposition first. They’re creating content, running campaigns and attending trade shows with a message that’s muddled.

In healthcare especially, where decisions involve complex buying committees and long sales cycles, a clear value proposition isn’t just nice to have. It’s the difference between gaining traction and burning through your Series A funds with nothing to show for it.

Why Most Health Tech Value Propositions Fall Flat

Here’s a pattern in health tech companies:

1. The founder understands the healthcare problem deeply (often from personal experience)

2. The product team builds an amazing technical solution

3. Marketing is brought in to “tell the story” after the solution is built

4. The resulting messaging focuses heavily on features and technical capabilities

5. Healthcare buyers struggle to connect these features to their actual problems

The issue is that we’re working backward. We start with what we’ve built rather than with what our customers are trying to accomplish.

The Value Proposition Canvas: A Framework that Works

I use a simple framework to help health tech companies get super clear on their messaging before executing a single marketing tactic.

Step 1: Map Your Customer’s Jobs-to-be-Done

Start by listing out what your customer is actually trying to accomplish.

For example, a Chief Medical Information Officer (CMIO) might be trying to:

• Ensure clinical documentation is complete and accurate

• Reduce physician burnout related to EHR use

• Implement solutions that integrate with existing workflows

• Demonstrate ROI on technology investments to leadership

These “jobs” should be specific to your target healthcare audience. A CMIO has different jobs than a CFO or a Director of Nursing.

Exercise: List 3-5 primary jobs your ideal customer is trying to accomplish. Be specific enough that you could ask them about these jobs and they’d immediately recognize them as their own.

Step 2: Identify Their Pain Points

What’s getting in the way of your customers accomplishing these jobs? What frustrates them? What keeps them up at night?

For our CMIO example:

• Current EHR requires too many clicks and screen transitions

• Physicians are resisting documentation requirements

• IT resources are stretched thin across competing priorities

• Previous technology implementations have failed to deliver promised results

The key is to be specific about the obstacles that are preventing success. Generic pain points like “inefficiency” or “high costs” don’t help you craft a compelling value proposition.

Exercise: For each job you identified, list 2-3 specific pains that make that job difficult today.

Step 3: Define Their Desired Gains

What would success look like for your customer? How would they know if the job was being done exceptionally well?

For our CMIO:

• Documentation completed during patient encounter without extending appointment time

• Physician satisfaction scores with technology improve by 30%

• Integration with existing EHR requires minimal IT resources

• Quantifiable improvement in clinical documentation completeness

Gains are the positive outcomes and experiences your customer hopes to achieve. They go beyond simply removing pain points and create additional value.

Exercise: For each job, identify what “better than expected” success would look like from your customer’s perspective.

Step 4: Articulate Your Solution

Only after completing the first three steps should you talk about your solution. And when you do, focus specifically on how it:

• Helps complete their core jobs

• Relieves their specific pains

• Creates their desired gains

For example:

"Our AI-powered documentation assistant integrates directly into the EHR workflow, automatically capturing and organizing clinical conversation data in real-time (helps complete the job). This eliminates the need for physicians to click through multiple screens or stay late entering notes (alleviates pain), reducing documentation time by an average of 2 hours per physician per day while improving documentation quality by 45% (creates gains)."

This sounds completely different than typical tech-focused messaging like: “Our advanced NLP engine leverages cutting-edge machine learning to streamline clinical documentation workflows.”

How to Validate Your Value Proposition

Once you’ve written your value proposition using this framework, you need to test it. Here are three approaches I recommend:

The Unnamed Test

Share your value proposition with a potential customer without mentioning your company name. If they can immediately tell it’s you, congratulations! You’ve developed a differentiated position. If they’re not sure which company you’re describing, your message isn’t distinctive enough.

The So-What Test

After sharing your value proposition, ask “So what?” at least three times. Each answer should reveal a deeper level of value to the customer. If you run out of meaningful answers, you haven’t connected your solution to what truly matters to them.

The Elevator Test

Can you explain your value proposition in 30 seconds or less? If not, it’s likely too complicated or unfocused. The best value propositions are simple without being simplistic.

A Real-World Example: Tech-Enabled Physician Services Company

Let me share a real case study from a client of mine that perfectly illustrates this challenge.

A tech-enabled physician services company approached me to develop a messaging and positioning framework after coming back from a healthcare trade show. Their technology-focused booth messaging completely fell flat with hospital leaders. As their founder/CEO later said:

“We went to this conference, and our signage made us look like we’re a [medical] carts company. Everything was just technology, just stuff. Nothing alluding to the fact that we actually provide physicians.”

This highlighted a common disconnect in health tech messaging. The company was presenting itself as a technology provider, but what potential customers actually valued was access to specialists.

The CEO described the moment of clarity: “The minute we said, ‘oh no, we have physicians, too,’ all of a sudden the story changed, eyes lit up. There was a different temperature in the room.”

Working through the value proposition canvas with this company revealed several key insights:

1. Jobs-to-be-done: Community hospitals needed to provide specialty care locally without transferring patients

2. Pain points: Limited specialist access, lost revenue from transfers and cost of implementing new technology

3. Desired gains: Better patient care, increased revenue and seamless implementation

Based on these learnings, I got to work overhauling their messaging. Instead of leading with their telehealth platform’s technical capabilities (which was their initial approach), we developed a positioning statement centered around “Complete specialty care for every hospital, in every community.”

Their core value propositions became:

• Immediate Specialist Access

• True Partnership Approach

• Proven Technology

• Financial Benefits

• Implementation Excellence

Each supported by concrete proof points like:

• “Network of 50+ board-certified specialists across multiple specialties”

• “Reduced patient transfers by 25%”

• “Added significant annual revenue for partner hospitals”

• “Dozens of successful hospital implementations”

During the readout meeting, the CEO’s response was immediate: “This is amazing! This is awesome! This is exactly what we were looking for.”

The framework became particularly valuable as the company prepared for Series A fundraising, providing clarity on how to position the company for both hospital decision-makers and potential investors.

Putting It All Together

Developing a compelling healthcare value proposition isn’t a one-time exercise. It should evolve as you learn more about your customers and as market conditions change.

Revisiting your value proposition canvas quarterly is beneficial, especially in early-stage companies where you’re still refining your product-market fit.

Your value proposition should focus on the transformation you enable for your customers, not your technology.

In healthcare especially, where decisions carry significant complexity and high stakes, clarity of message is a business imperative. You need crystal-clear communication to cut through.

If you’ve found yourself struggling to gain traction with healthcare buyers despite having a great product, it might be time to revisit your fundamental value proposition before investing more in tactics.

What’s your experience with developing value propositions in healthcare? Have you found certain approaches work better than others? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Want to work through this framework for your health tech company? Let’s talk.

The post Transform Your Health Tech Messaging with Value Proposition Canvas + Real-World Case Study appeared first on The Hybrid CMO.

About the Author

Heather Lodge, Fractional Chief Marketing Officer, The Hybrid CMO

Heather helps growing health tech and healthcare service companies transition from ‘spaghetti-against-the-wall’ marketing to scalable operations so they can go toe-to-toe against better-funded rivals. She helps establish clear market positioning, develop focused account-based marketing programs and build the systems and teams needed to scale effectively. Heather’s approach combines strategic leadership with hands-on execution, building marketing programs that drive consistent revenue growth.

Follow Heather on LinkedIn

The Shifting Health Tech Landscape

The days of “build it and they’ll come” are over. Just look at what’s happened to the health tech space:

• Tech startups have exploded from 20,000 to over 50 million according to recent research from DemandSage that shows “50 million new startups are established every year” 

• Developer numbers have increased to around 28.7 million by 2024 according to Statista with projections showing the global developer population reaching 28.7 million people by 2024

• Daily ad exposure has jumped significantly. While estimates vary widely, research suggests people are exposed to hundreds of ads daily, with some sources citing figures from a few hundred to several thousand with “estimates suggest[ing] that we are exposed to anywhere from 4,000 to 10,000 ads daily”

What does this mean for you? Even with exceptional technology, you’ll struggle to get noticed without strategic messaging that speaks directly to your buyers’ needs.

Moving From Product-Market Fit To Message-Market Fit

We all understand product-market fit – that milestone when your solution perfectly addresses a market need. But there’s another critical achievement many health tech leaders overlook: message-market fit.

Message-market fit focuses on how appealing your messaging sounds to your ideal customer, rather than just highlighting your product features. You need to clearly communicate:

• What makes your organization unique

• The specific need your solution fulfills

• How it directly impacts your customers’ daily challenges

• Why they should choose you over alternatives

Without message-market fit, even the most advanced solutions can stall and fail to gain traction.

Understanding Your Healthcare Buyers: ICPs and Personas

The first step toward effective messaging is understanding exactly who you’re speaking to. This requires clarity on two distinct but complementary frameworks:

Ideal Customer Profile (ICP): These are the organizational characteristics of companies most likely to find value in your solution: industry, revenue, location, employee count, etc.

Buyer Personas: This is where your ICP comes to life, going beyond demographics to uncover motivations, pain points, behaviors, and preferences of the actual people making decisions.

The magic happens when these two frameworks align. Your ICP guides where to direct your marketing efforts, while your personas help you connect with decision-makers on a personal level.

For example, if your ICP is “urban health systems in the Southern US,” your persona might be “Rebecca, Chief Medical Officer.” This enables you to speak not just about how your solution impacts the organization, but how it addresses Rebecca’s specific pain points, aspirations, and day-to-day challenges.

Navigating the Healthcare Influence Maze

Healthcare buying decisions rarely come down to a single person. According to Gartner, complex B2B purchases typically involve buying committees of 6-10 decision-makers, with healthcare purchases sometimes including up to 11 stakeholders or more for complex B2B solutions Madison Logic.

While targeting the ultimate decision-maker (the one with budget authority) is important, don’t overlook the critical influencers within the organization:

• IT specialists evaluating technical requirements

• Clinical leaders assessing patient impact

• Operations managers considering workflow integration

• End users who will actually implement your solution

These influencers connect your product’s value to the organization’s specific needs and communicate that internally. When the final decision is made, the C-suite relies on these trusted internal voices more than any marketing material you could produce.

Building Your MVP (Minimum Viable Positioning)

Developing effective positioning doesn’t have to be complicated. Start with a “minimum viable positioning” document that includes:

1. Brand Promise: The commitment you make to customers about what they can expect

2. Positioning Statement: How you want to be perceived in the market

3. Primary Message/Tagline: A brief, memorable statement that captures your essence

4. Value Propositions: The specific value you deliver and what makes you different

5. Proof Points: Evidence (data, testimonials, case studies) that supports your claims

6. Primary Call to Action: The one key action you want prospects to take

Remember, positioning is internal. It guides how you think about your place in the market. Messaging is external. It’s how you communicate that position to customers.

To create your MVP document, start by interviewing customers or listening to sales discovery calls. Look for patterns in why they’re considering your solution, what problems they’re trying to solve, and what features matter most to them. Use these insights to prioritize your messaging points.

Common Messaging Pitfalls

Even with the best intentions, health tech companies often stumble into these messaging traps:

1. Not niching down enough
Instead of trying to serve everyone (and ending up as one of many), focus on dominating a specific segment where you can be THE solution, not just another option.

2. Over-emphasizing features and technology
Everyone claims to be “AI-enabled” these days, so it’s no longer a differentiator. What can’t be replicated are your unique stories, customer successes, and proprietary data. 

3. Lack of clarity
Your number one messaging goal should be clarity. Be crystal clear about:

• Who your solution is for

• What value it delivers

• How it makes lives better

• What action prospects should take next

If you confuse them, you lose them. They’ll simply find a competitor who makes it easier to understand their value.

Would your messaging pass the clarity test if you read it aloud to someone outside your industry? Try it. You might be surprised by what you learn.

Learning from Success: Lyra Health's Messaging Framework

For a real-world example of effective health tech messaging, look at Lyra Health, a digital mental health company serving major clients like Zoom and Morgan Stanley.

Their approach balances emotional appeal (“care for your employees”) with rational business benefits (“transformative value for your business”). Their framework includes:

Tagline: “Mental health care for every person, every day, and every need”
Value Props:

• Concierge member experience

• Exclusive global network

• Workforce transformation

Proof Points:

• 10x utilization over traditional EAPs

• 88% of members show improvement with care
  $2,000+ per member per year reduction in healthcare claim costs

• Call to Action: “Schedule your free consultation”

What makes this effective is how it simultaneously addresses multiple stakeholders, focuses on outcomes rather than just services, and backs claims with concrete evidence.

Moving Forward with Strategic Messaging

Developing your messaging framework requires time (expect 2-6 months for full implementation). During this period, continue running tactical campaigns to maintain immediate results while building your long-term strategic foundation.

Remember to test different messages, measure their impact through engagement and conversion metrics, and continuously refine based on customer feedback and sales team insights.

Strategic, audience-focused messaging that speaks directly to both organizational needs and personal pain points changes how healthcare buyers perceive and ultimately choose your solution.

If you’re struggling to differentiate your health tech company, I can help. Through my Marketing Strategy Clinic, I’ll audit your current positioning, messaging, and marketing efforts to develop a 90-day strategy tailored to your specific challenges. Reach out to learn more.

The post Cracking the Differentiation Code: Why Messaging Trumps Product in Health Tech appeared first on The Hybrid CMO.

About the Author

Heather Lodge, Fractional Chief Marketing Officer, The Hybrid CMO

Heather helps growing health tech and healthcare service companies transition from ‘spaghetti-against-the-wall’ marketing to scalable operations so they can go toe-to-toe against better-funded rivals. She helps establish clear market positioning, develop focused account-based marketing programs and build the systems and teams needed to scale effectively. Heather’s approach combines strategic leadership with hands-on execution, building marketing programs that drive consistent revenue growth.

Follow Heather on LinkedIn

If you’re running a health tech company, this probably sounds familiar: Your team is working harder than ever, executing campaign after campaign. You’ve got leads coming in, but they’re not converting. Your sales team is frustrated. The deals that do move forward seem to take forever to close.

And despite all your efforts, it feels like you’re just throwing spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks.

You’re not alone. I see this pattern all the time in health tech. The traditional B2B marketing playbook just isn’t cutting it anymore.

The Current State of Health Tech Marketing

Traditional B2B marketing approaches can create a lot of waste.

Marketing teams cast too wide a net, reaching prospects who aren’t a good fit. They treat all leads equally, despite vastly different potential values. There’s often misalignment between marketing and sales teams, leading to friction and missed opportunities.

And in health tech, these challenges are amplified by several unique factors.

The Complex Healthcare Sales Environment

Let’s talk about what makes healthcare different. According to recent HIMSS research, sales cycles in health tech average 13+ months, with many extending beyond 24 months. Some deals may even take years to close.

Why so long? Healthcare organizations operate under intense financial pressure and strict budget constraints. A budget that’s approved today might be frozen tomorrow due to shifting priorities.

IT teams in healthcare juggle hundreds of projects simultaneously. Despite the value the CIO sees in your solution, it still might not make the priority list that year.

The Stakes Are Higher

In healthcare, the consequences of a wrong technology decision extend far beyond financial impact. While a misguided tech purchase in retail might hurt profits, a poor technology choice could affect patient safety.

This reality creates a level of risk aversion that’s unique to healthcare. Decision-makers often prefer to stick with the status quo rather than risk a failed implementation.

The Multiple Stakeholder Challenge

Perhaps the most complex aspect is the number of stakeholders involved in each purchase decision. We’re not talking about two or three people: 60-70% of organizations report five or more people are involved, according to HIMSS, with over 25% saying 10+ people spanning executive leadership, clinicians, finance, operations, and more.

Healthcare buying groups typically include:

• Clinical leaders evaluating patient impact

• IT teams assessing integration requirements

• Compliance officers reviewing security and regulatory alignment

• Finance teams analyzing ROI

• Operations staff considering workflow implications

• C-suite executives weighing strategic fit

Each stakeholder brings their own priorities, concerns and evaluation criteria to the table.

Imagining a Better Way

What if you could transform this complex, lengthy sales process into a more strategic, efficient approach?

Imagine if you could:

• Identify your most valuable potential accounts before investing significant resources

• Create personalized campaigns that speak directly to each stakeholder’s specific concerns

• Align your marketing and sales efforts around the same high-priority target accounts

• Measure success at the account level rather than by individual leads

• Significantly reduce wasted effort on poor-fit prospects

This is where Account-Based Marketing (ABM) comes in.

A Strategic ABM Framework for Health Tech

Account-Based Marketing is a fundamental shift in how we approach B2B healthcare marketing. 

Think of it like this: Traditional marketing is like casting a wide net in the ocean, hoping to catch any fish. ABM is more like spearfishing. You identify exactly which fish you want and use specific techniques to catch it.

Here’s how to implement ABM effectively in health tech:

1. Define Your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP)

Your ICP is the foundation of any successful ABM program. In health tech, this means looking beyond basic firmographic data to consider:

• Technology infrastructure compatibility

• Clinical specialty alignment

• Patient volume and type

• Recent technology investments

• Regulatory readiness

• Budget cycles

• Organizational change readiness

The goal is to identify organizations where:

• The pain point is acute enough to drive change

• The infrastructure can support implementation

• The budget cycle aligns with your sales cycle

2. Map the Buyer Collective

This is crucial in healthcare, where buying decisions are never made in isolation. For each target account, you need to identify:

The Champion: Your Internal Advocate

Champions are your ground-level heroes. They’re the ones living with the problem day in and day out, and they’ve finally reached their breaking point with the status quo. 

Think of the Director of Clinical Operations who’s watching her staff struggle with inefficient workflows, or the IT Manager who’s patching together three different systems to accomplish what should be a simple task.

What makes a Champion valuable:

• They have first-hand experience with the pain points

• They understand the real-world impact of the current situation

• They’re motivated to drive change

• They can articulate both the problem and potential solutions to others

• They have enough organizational influence to get people to listen

Champions are your most important allies because they’ll do the heavy lifting of internal advocacy. They’ll set up the meetings, gather the requirements and fight the internal battles necessary to move the process forward.

How to identify your Champion(s):

• Who owns the problem your solution solves?

• Who has the most to gain from implementing your solution?

• Who has the organizational influence to drive change?

3. Outline Your Buyer Personas

The real magic happens when you develop detailed personas, but not in the traditional marketing way. Here’s what makes health tech personas different: They need to reflect how people buy as a group, not as individuals. 

Instead of creating personas for every possible stakeholder, focus first on developing deep, actionable profiles of your Champions. Why? Because Champions are your key to understanding and influencing the entire buying collective.

When developing your Champion personas, limit yourself to no more than four. Each should be a scannable, one-page document that helps you understand who they are and how they can successfully drive consensus within their organization.

4. Develop the Buyer Journey Framework

You’ve probably seen the classic buyer journey: Awareness → Interest → Consideration → Decision. It’s clean, it’s simple and it’s also completely inadequate.

Let’s break down how healthcare organizations actually buy technology solutions:

Problem Definition Stage (Months 1-3)

This stage focuses entirely on collective agreement about what needs to be solved. The buying group must reach shared understanding of the problem before moving forward.

Your champion and their colleagues are asking:

• What’s the real cost of our current situation?

• Who else in the organization is affected by this problem?

• How does this issue impact our strategic objectives?

• What metrics should we use to measure the problem’s impact?

Your role is to help them:

• Frame the problem in business terms

• Gather relevant internal data

• Build consensus around the problem definition

• Identify all affected stakeholders

Solution Definition Stage (Months 4-6)

Before evaluating specific vendors, the buying collective needs to align on their approach.

Key questions include:

• What types of solutions could address our problem?

• What are peer organizations doing?

• What internal resources would different approaches require?

• How would various solutions fit into our existing infrastructure?

Focus on helping them:

• Understand different solution categories

• Evaluate various approaches

• Define success criteria

• Build internal alignment around solution requirements

Vendor Evaluation Stage (Months 7-9)

Now the collective begins comparing specific options within their chosen solution category.

They’re investigating:

• Which vendors meet our technical requirements?

• How do different solutions compare on our key criteria?

• What are the total cost implications of each option?

• Which solution poses the least implementation risk?

Your task is to:

• Provide clear comparison frameworks

• Demonstrate concrete differentiation

• Address stakeholder-specific concerns

• Facilitate technical validation

Decision-Making Stage (Months 10-13+)

The final stage requires achieving collective buy-in across the entire organization, going far beyond simply selecting a vendor. Stakeholders must align completely on the decision for successful implementation.

The buying collective needs to:

• Build consensus across all stakeholder groups

• Align implementation timelines with organizational capacity

• Secure final budget approval

• Develop risk mitigation plans

Support them by:

• Providing internal champions with advocacy tools

• Addressing final stakeholder concerns

• Offering clear implementation roadmaps

• Demonstrating organizational readiness support

Remember: the buyer journey focuses on supporting a buying collective through their decision process, not just moving prospects through your funnel.

5. Create Targeted Content

According to research from 6sense, buyers typically don’t reach out to vendors until they’re 70% through their buying journey. Even more critically, 84% of buyers end up selecting the first firm they contact.

Let that sink in.

By the time a potential customer reaches out to you, they’ve likely already:

• Defined their problem

• Researched potential solutions

• Created a shortlist of vendors

• Started building internal consensus

• Developed preliminary requirements

• Estimated their budget

And if you’re not the first vendor they contact, your chances of winning their business drop dramatically.

The typical ‘wait for them to come to us’ marketing completely fails in healthcare tech. Your potential customers aren’t starting their research on your website or by talking to your sales team. They’re out there doing their own research, in their own way, long before they ever reach out to a vendor.

Healthcare tech buyers actively research solutions. You have to make sure they find your content during that critical first 70% of their journey.

Before you create a single piece of content, understand what drives healthcare organizations to start looking for solutions like yours.

Common triggers include:

• Regulatory changes requiring new capabilities

• Failed audits exposing system gaps

• Staff turnover highlighting process inefficiencies

• Merger/acquisition driving system consolidation

• Budget cycles freeing up new resources

• Competitor implementations creating FOMO

These triggers should shape your content strategy because they indicate when organizations are entering the market. Then, you can move on to creating content for each stage: 

Problem Definition Content

• Industry trend reports

• Problem impact calculators

• Peer perspective interviews

• Regulatory requirement guides

Solution Definition Content

• Approach comparison guides

• Implementation methodology whitepapers

• Resource requirement calculators

• Integration consideration checklists

Vendor Evaluation Content

• Technical specification sheets

• Security documentation

• Customer case studies

• ROI analysis tools

Decision-Making Content

• Implementation roadmaps

• Change management guides

• Training program outlines

• Success measurement frameworks

The goal is to provide your champions with exactly what they need, when they need it, in their preferred format and location. This targeted approach delivers far more value than creating content for content’s sake

Making The Transition

Moving to ABM doesn’t happen overnight. Start with these steps:

1. Identify your top 10-20 target accounts based on your ICP

2. Map the complete buying committee for each account

3. Create personas for 2-4 Champions.

4. Audit your current content against stakeholder needs

5. Develop account-specific engagement plans

6. Align sales and marketing around account priorities

The Path Forward

Health tech sales will likely continue to involve multiple stakeholders and lengthy decision cycles. That’s not going to change. But by implementing a strategic ABM approach, you can stop throwing spaghetti at the wall and start taking a more precise, strategic approach to market engagement.

Want to learn more about implementing ABM in your organization? Connect with me on LinkedIn for regular insights on healthcare marketing strategy, or reach out to discuss how I can help your team make the transition to ABM.

The post Engaging a 10-Person Buying Committee Through a 13+ Month Sales Marathon – What Traditional Health Tech Marketing Gets Wrong appeared first on The Hybrid CMO.

About the Author

Heather Lodge, Fractional Chief Marketing Officer, The Hybrid CMO

Heather helps growing health tech and healthcare service companies transition from ‘spaghetti-against-the-wall’ marketing to scalable operations so they can go toe-to-toe against better-funded rivals. She helps establish clear market positioning, develop focused account-based marketing programs and build the systems and teams needed to scale effectively. Heather’s approach combines strategic leadership with hands-on execution, building marketing programs that drive consistent revenue growth.

Follow Heather on LinkedIn