How Health Tech Deals Actually Get Done (Hint: It’s Not the Pitch)
That’s not how health tech solutions get adopted.
When you’re selling into a health plan or a hospital system, you’re not selling to a person. You’re trying to move a group… and you can’t move a group with a presentation. They move because the political cost of not moving has gotten higher than the cost of saying yes.
That’s the whole game. Everything else is tactics.
I was on a call recently with a rep selling a specialty care program into Blue Cross plans. Smart guy. Real product. Genuine clinical value. And like a lot of health tech companies and reps I work with, he was stuck… sitting on accounts where he had one contact, maybe two, waiting on a decision.
Stop selling. Start triangulating.
When you’re only talking to one person at a payer or a hospital, you’ve saddled them with a job they don’t want: be the lone advocate for an unproven solution in a regulated, risk-averse organization. Most people, sensibly, will pass on that exposure. So they go quiet. You assume they lost interest. They didn’t. They just don’t want to carry it alone.
The fix is to take that weight off them.
Health plan example: You’re selling that specialty care program. Don’t just work the medical director. Talk to the network management lead about provider impact. Talk to folks in member communications about how programs get rolled out. Talk to a quality/Stars analyst about what metrics matter. Talk to the employer-segment sales team about what self-funded clients are asking for.
Health system example: You’re selling a clinical workflow tool. Don’t just work the CMIO. Talk to a service line director about throughput. Get ideas from nurses about what’s working and what isn’t. Talk to someone in revenue cycle to get their perspective. Talk to a department chair whose team would use it.
None of these people sign your contract. That’s the point. You’re not selling them. You’re learning how the organization works. You’re collecting examples. And you’re building consensus.
Be curious and teachable
How does one do this? Get out and meet lots of people organization. And show up curious and teachable.
Genuine curiosity is like catnip. Everybody loves it when someone finds what they do interesting and worthwhile. And everybody has a perspective and insight that can help you better understand your customer’s circumstances.
Call the service line director and say, “I saw your readmissions numbers in the most recent CMS data. I’m trying to understand how programs like ours fit into a system like yours. Would you be open to explaining that to me?”
You don’t pitch. You didn’t ask to “explore synergies.” You positioned yourself as someone with a question, and not someone with answers nobody asked for.
The moment you signal “I’m not here to sell you,” people start to relax… and will eventually start telling you things. Who actually owns the budget. Why their workflow is what it is. The org chart you can’t get from LinkedIn.
Close every loop.
Then, after that initial conversation, circle back a week later. “Hey… you suggested I talk to Janice in network management. I did. Here’s what I learned… Thank you!” That’s it.
Do this consistently and people get invested. Not because they have power. Because they helped you, it went somewhere, and they start to want to see it through. They’ll mention your name in meetings you’ll never know about.
I watched a rep build three quiet advocates inside a single Blues plan: a nurse director, a network analyst, and someone in marcom. None had budget authority. None knew the others existed. When the deal finally went to contract, the medical director happened to mention in passing, “I kept hearing about you. You seem to know everybody.”
Health plans and hospitals are battleships.
They can absorb tremendous damage and keep going. What they can’t do is turn quickly. The default answer to any new vendor is not now.
A single champion can’t turn a battleship. It’s a big, sluggish, complex enterprise. It’s simple physics.
What turns the ship is a concerted team effort.
Your job isn’t to convince the buyer. It’s to make their YES feel safe and accepted, even obvious, by the time the question reaches them.
The pitch matters. The solution matters. But neither of them moves a battleship.
