How to Commercialize Your Healthcare/IT/Media Product

Transcript

1. By Shahid N. Shah CEO, Netspective Communications LLC 1
2.  CEO, Netspective (http://www.netspective.com)  17+ years of entrepreneurship experience  10+ years of executive technology management experience as CTO, Chief Architect, etc. in healthcare IT firms  Lead/Analyst/Consultant on numerous consulting projects in the past 9 years. Sample clients:  Executive Office of the President  U.S. Patent & Trademark Office (I train them and I have a patent)  Northrop Grumman  CardinalHealth  NIH  American Red Cross  Read my blogs to learn more:  http://shahid.shah.org (technology)  http://www.healthcareguy.com and http://www.hitshere.com (healthcare IT) 2
3. Source: Brand Autopsy Blog 3
4.  Healthcare folks are neither technically challenged nor simple techno-phobes (they’re busy saving lives)  Most product decisions are no longer made by clinical folks alone, CIOs are fully involved  Complex, full-featured, products are not easier to sell than simple, stand alone tools that have the capability of interoperating with other solutions are  Hospitals will not buy unless one proves value.  Selling into doctors offices is not easy. 4
5. Payer Benefiter User 5
6.  Need vs. Want, Demand & Desire  Value - the benefits your customers gain from using your product versus the cost of obtaining your product or not buying at all.  Satisfaction - Based on a comparison of performance vs. expectations.  Performance > Expectations => Satisfaction  Performance < Expectations => Dissatisfaction 6
7. Increase revenue (topline) Maintain capabilities Reduce costs (bottomline) 7
8. Customer Gives You Get • Money • Time • Energy • Commitment • Referrals • Past experience • Expectations • Knowledge You Give Customer Gets • Product • Price • Value • Convenience • Selection • Service • Warranty • Brand 8
9. Target health sector? Number of employees? Annual sales volume? Geography? Number of hospital beds? Number of patients? Type of patients? The list goes on and on…be specific! 9
10.  Many public/behavioral health products are provided by the government or non-profits for free.  Critical for your product to have a discriminator (technology or innovation)  Price points generally have no relationship of the cost to produce. 10
11.  Competing with “do nothing” or “wait”  Competing with products that are provided for free  Shrinking resources (money) available for purchasing products  Too much noise in the market place  Saturation of products in market place  Niche markets don’t support ROI for marketing 11
12.  Find the right search terms for your industry or product. Don’t be esoteric.  Using your search terms, locate your competitors and existing firms  Once you know your competitors, call them up and ask them about client references  Call up their clients and talk to them about their products and services and what can be improved 12
13. Software as a Service (SaaS) and subscription model Consulting and Solutions model Licensed model Freemium model (and open source) 13
14.  Easy to explain  Defendable and differentiated  Attractive partnership opportunities  Word of mouth opportunity  Potential for PR  Scaleable staff and systems  Scaleable product — build once, sell many times  Uncomplicated  Focused  Sales model is scaleable and predictable  Own relationship with and information about customers 14
15.  Research based products that are proven effective  Partnering and endorsement with accredited institutions or associations.  Partnering with private sector (Pharma, Managed Care, etc). 15
16.  Establish realistic success criteria up front  Success may not be measured only in terms of revenue  Set up systems to track sales and distribution in house or through distribution partners. 16
17. Shahid.Shah@netspective.com 17