Why Your Better Product Is Losing to Their Better Story
Why healthcare buyers choose inferior products (and the three positioning shifts that change the equation)
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 youâre 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: ânot enough customers like us,â âneed more proof points,â âdecided to stay with our current vendor.â
Healthcare buying prioritizes risk mitigation, with risk often being the deciding factor when product quality is comparable. When a hospital chooses Epic, theyâre choosing to transfer implementation risk to a vendor whoâs done this 1,000 times. When they choose you with two customers, theyâre accepting that risk themselves.
You may be amplifying this risk instead of reducing it. Thatâs fixable.
Why The Typical SaaS Playbook Fails in Healthcare
Most health tech founders apply generic B2B SaaS positioning to healthcare buying. Healthcare isnât âB2B enterprise sales with a longer cycle.â Itâs 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.
âInnovative AI breakthroughâ on the homepage triggers the risk response. âProven integration stability with Epic environments, validated across 20 community hospital implementationsâ calms it. Same technology. Different story.
The Reference Customer Math Doesnât 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. âTrusted by leading health systemsâ on the homepage is too vague to trigger recognition or reduce risk. But âwe work exclusively with 200-400 bed community hospitals running Epicâ? Now they think: this company gets my exact situation.
Epic Isnât Just an EHR. Itâs 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 youâre not using Epicâs native module.
The switching cost isnât your product vs. theirs. Itâs 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 âdisruptiveâ or ârevolutionaryâ or ânext-generation,â youâre making their internal sell harder.
These arenât just industry quirks. Theyâre the reasons your current positioning fails. Fix them with three shifts that address how healthcare actually buys.
Shift #1: Turn âNot Enough Customersâ Into Strategic Differentiation
Most health tech homepages say âtrusted by leading health systems.â Case studies are generic success stories. Rather than address the customer count objection, they pretend the objection doesnât exist.
Stop hiding that youâre focused and small. Make it your competitive advantage.
The About page is probably defensive about company size. Flip it: âWeâre a focused team solving one problem exceptionally well for community hospitals, not a vendor trying to be everything to everyone.â
Case studies need to signal relevance before results. The title âHow a 250-Bed Community Hospital in Ohio Reduced Documentation Time Without Disrupting Their Epic Workflowsâ 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 âThe Unique Documentation Challenges Facing 200-400 Bed Community Hospitalsâ builds more trust than ten generic posts about healthcare documentation. Youâre demonstrating understanding of the nuances in their world⊠the specific EHR configurations theyâre likely running, the staffing constraints they face, the budget pressures unique to their segment.
Give sales a messaging guide for handling the objection: âWe work with a handful of health systems right now. Thatâs intentional. Weâre focused on hospitals exactly like yours.â
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 wonât.
Address risk directly in the marketing narrative. The value proposition shouldnât be âAI-powered clinical documentation platform.â It should be âvalidate results in your Epic environment before committing. 90-day pilot with measurable outcomes.â
Notice what this does: Youâve acknowledged their concern and positioned your approach as the solution. Donât 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 âHow to Evaluate New Vendors Without Risking Your Epic Ecosystemâ positions you as understanding their concerns. A piece on âWhy We Structure 90-Day Validation Periods (And What We Measure)â 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 ânot enough customersâ concern, they shouldnât defend or deflect. They should lean into it with the messaging youâve built: âYouâre right to want proof before committing. Thatâs why we structure initial engagements as 90-day validation periods where you test results in your environment first.â
Shift #3: Turn Status Quo Into Urgency
Most content focuses on the solution. The website explains what you do. The blog showcases product updates. Youâre trying to create urgency around buying the product. Thatâs backwards.
Create urgency around what theyâre already doing, not what they should buy.
Your content should make them quantify their current pain. âThe Hidden Cost of Physicians Staying Late to Finish Documentationâ or âWhy Community Hospitals Are Paying More for Medical Scribes Than They Realizeâ arenât about your product. Theyâre about making the status quo unsustainable.
The website needs a âWhat This Replacesâ 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: âIf your 10 physicians are each staying 90 minutes late to finish notes, youâre burning $9,500 weekly in unpaid provider time, nearly $500,000 annually.â
This matters because the actual cost calculation reveals meaningful financial impact. Decision-makers canât 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 prospectâs numbers, not industry averages. The goal is helping prospects see what theyâre already spending, not convincing them to spend on something new.
When âTechnology-Firstâ 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: âOur signage looked like weâre a carts company. Everything was just technology. Just stuff. Nothing alluding to the fact that we actually provide physicians.â
When they shifted conversations from technology to physician access, everything changed: âThe minute we said, âoh no, we have physicians,â all of a sudden the story changed, eyes lit up. There was a different temperature in the room.â
The problem wasnât 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 couldnât 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 donât wake up thinking âI need better telehealth technology.â They wake up thinking âI need a cardiologist and I canât recruit one.â 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 canât show investors. If youâve 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 donât 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.
Thatâs fixable. The difference between funded and dead isnât your product. Itâs whether you can tell the story that makes 3-5 hospitals choose you over Epic.
If youâre 6-12 months from your next raise and losing deals to incumbents or inferior products, letâs 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 âspaghetti-against-the-wallâ 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. Heatherâs approach combines strategic leadership with hands-on execution, building marketing programs that drive consistent revenue growth.