This is the first in a three-part series on selling, scaling, and succeeding in healthcare—distilled from the class I teach at Texas Medical Center Innovation, Plug and Play, TechStars, and accelerators nationwide. Over the last decade, I've watched brilliant founders with game-changing products get stuck in healthcare's buying maze, not because their technology wasn't ready, but because their go-to-market wasn't.
In this series, we'll cover the complete playbook: First, how to map healthcare's multi-actor buying process and position your product around outcomes that matter (this post). Second, how to choose revenue models that align with buyer incentives and survive compliance review—using a five-step framework that turns pricing from guesswork into strategy. Finally, how to engineer paid pilots that convert to system-wide contracts without re-negotiating your life away.
Each piece builds on the last, but you can jump in anywhere. If you're already closing deals but want to optimize your model, start with Part 2. If you're converting pilots but struggling to scale, skip to Part 3. If you're still figuring out why great products stall in healthcare procurement, you're in the right place.
Why “great product + good deck” still stalls in healthcare
If you walk into a hospital or payer with a pitch, you’ll probably miss. Walk in with empathy and fluency in their reality, and you’re in the game. Healthcare is slow, regulated, political, and budget-punishing right now. That’s the bad news. The good news: buyers are crystal clear about what they want—reduced operational cost, increased revenue, improved patient care, and lately, provider retention. If you connect your product to those outcomes in their language, you’ll move.
The institutional buyer is not one person—it’s a maze
Healthcare organizations are multi-actor systems. Even a “simple” hospital deal can require sign-off from clinical leadership, IT/security, procurement, compliance, legal, and finance. All have veto power. All have different currencies:
- Clinical: outcomes, quality, patient safety, workflow fit and adoptability
- IT/Security: integration burden, data pathways, identity, data privacy and security risk.
- Procurement/Finance: predictability, total cost, budget fit.
- Legal/Compliance: fraud/abuse, data use, liability, privacy.
Your job is not to bulldoze this maze; it’s to map it. Who will champion you? Who can quietly kill you? What’s the internal sequence of meetings you’re not invited to—and how does your narrative survive that game of telephone?
Empathy is the competitive edge (and yes, it’s quantifiable)
“Stop selling, start helping” is not feel-good fluff. It’s a strategy. Helping means:
- Diagnose pressures before pitching features (labor costs, reimbursement shifts, burnout, margins).
- Translate your value to each seat at the table (e.g., “saves 12 minutes/encounter” for clinicians; “no net-new integration requirements” for IT; “flat fee with upside cap” for finance).
- Make your champion look good. Give them a one-slide internal brief they can forward. If your story can’t survive three forwards, it’s not ready.
What they’re actually buying (hint: not your product)
They don’t buy software, devices, or services. They buy outcomes. Fewer readmissions. Faster prior auths. Better throughput. A calmer nursing station. Better quality data to inform smarter financial and operational decision making. When your messaging leads with outcomes—and then shows how the product produces them—you’re in alignment with how healthcare justifies spend.
Know the system you’re selling into
Healthcare has guardrails. You MUST design your product and your pitch with them in mind:
- Privacy & Security: HIPAA is baseline; state privacy/AI/cyber laws can be stricter.
- Fraud & Abuse (AKS, Stark, beneficiary inducement): revenue shares, referral bonuses, and success-based influencer deals can land you in trouble without careful structure.
- Regulatory Class: SaMD or device implications trigger validation and documentation, at minimum.
- AI Scrutiny: explainability, bias mitigation, transparency, safety, effectiveness—if your product informs clinical decisions, expect questions.
You don’t have to be a lawyer. But you do need a sales motion that doesn’t casually wander into prohibited territory.
The long cycle is a feature, not a bug
Procurement in healthcare is long because stakes are high. Your product can change clinical risk, reimbursement, or an entire service line’s economics. Treat the timeline as part of the design brief. Plan interim wins (site A → region → system), evidence gates (milestones that matter to them), and human wins (your champion gets promoted; you get the renewal).
Pilots are not logos—they’re audition nights
Pilots exist to de-risk for the buyer, not to juice your vanity slide. You want paid pilots with buyer-aligned metrics and a papered path to permanence:
- Metrics tied to pain (cost/throughput/retention/claims speed).
- Contract language that lets you roll straight to a long term deal via order form/SOW if thresholds are met.
- Delivery that feels like go-live—because it is.
How to become the easy “yes” internally
- Simplicity sells. If your champion can’t describe you in a sentence, you made their job harder.
- Predictability beats clever. Flat fees beat uncapped volume-based fees. Complex fee structures may align incentives, but wreck the time to close.
- Compliance pre-work. Have your DPAs, security docs, BAA posture, and data maps ready.
- Paper that fits the motion. Your template should look like you’ve done this with this type of customer before—even if you haven’t.
Key Takeaways
- Healthcare buying is multi-actor and political—map the maze before you pitch.
- Lead with outcomes tied to today’s pains (labor, margins, retention), not features.
- Design your story (and pricing) to survive internal forwards—be simple, specific, and aligned.
- Build for guardrails (privacy, fraud/abuse, SaMD/AI) or your deal will stall in legal.
- Treat pilots like conversion engines: paid, measured, and pre-wired to scale.
If you’re selling into healthcare and want help translating your value into outcomes, aligning incentives, and getting your paper right, let’s talk about structuring it so you can close faster.