Healthcare Targets – Stakeholder Maps

How to reach the right people in Healthcare #1

Getting a meeting with healthcare target buyers is one of the toughest challenges in selling to hospitals and other healthcare organizations. They buy differently and take forever to sell to. There are no silver bullets to this. Over the next few weeks, we will provide some simple tips on how you can increase your sales conversions by reaching the right people in a healthcare organization.

Step 1 is to develop a stakeholder map.

Stakeholder Checklist

Selling to healthcare is complex and involves multiple stakeholders. Stakeholder management is the best practice in complex sales. Experienced salespeople know that to close deals with healthcare organizations, you have to identify all those who have a stake in the decision to buy your solution.

Here is a checklist of stakeholders:

Champion – The single most important stakeholder. The person in the organization who wants their organization to buy your solution and will jump through hoops to make you successful.
Problem Owner – The person who owns the problem you are solving.
Decision-maker(s) – The person or people who make the final decision
Budget-owner – The person who has the budget for the solution.
Influencer(s) – People who can affect the requirements and other factors that go into the decision.

Note: Often, stakeholders play multiple roles in buying your solution. For example, the champion may also be the problem owner; the decision-maker also owns the budget or; the champion and problem owner may be the decision-makers.

Stakeholder Map

We created this simple framework to help you map your stakeholders. You can download the framework here.

In my own experience selling communications solutions, the typical stakeholders were:

Champion – Often the person responsible for technology innovation
Business Owner – Typically the Chief Medical Officer and sometimes the CIO
Decision-maker – Usually, it was shared, and sometimes the CEO
Budget-owner – Most often, the CIO
Influencers – The Medical executive committee, the chief security officer, the applications directors

You can download a simple checklist and the framework here.

In our next post on healthcare targets on how to reach the right people in Healthcare, we will cover personas and why they matter in selling to healthcare.

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

Adam Turinas

Adam Turinas is a long-time technology marketing leader and entrepreneur. He is the co-author of the Total Customer Growth book and founder of Total Customer Growth LLC. Adam spent two decades marketing for Dell, IBM, Bank of America, and dozens of other major marketers. In 2012 he founded, grew, and eventually sold a healthcare technology software business and then created healthlaunchpad, a leading healthtech marketing firm that teaches clients how to use ABM.