Dr Hodge has 20 years of clinical pediatrics practice experience, helped grow both Doximity and Healthtap as an early advisor into leading physician platforms and is the Chief Medical Officer PreventScripts, which helps providers add 9k monthly to their revenues with a Prevention Management service line strategy.
As a 20 year pediatrician, I can say that in order to get our attention, you simply have to be doing something incredible for patients. Be Compelling, add value. What linked in groups are your targets in? What kinds of providers are you looking for? What do they care about? If you can get access to the linked in groups, ask questions there. Start with what are your top three challenges in your work? Follow the influencers that your target providers follow. Comment on content and engage with those who hold similar positions. Go to healthcare meetings which your targets attend. Be curious. Good luck. We need healthcare disruption now more than ever. There is no shortage of problems in our work. Natalie Hodge MD
What a great question! As with other answers, there are many kids of physicians, primary care vs specialists, urban vs rural, hospital employed vs private practice. You will want to target early adopter physician’s if you have a relatively new product. Are you selling software? Hardware? Is FDA approvals necessary for your product? If it is a Health IT product have the necessary certifications been completed? In the case of the hospital employed physician, you will want to understand how the organization is run. Is it a physician led organization? Are physicians even the decision makers for purchases? Does the organization have a RFP process? Is there a vendor form on their website to take a preliminary step towards a sale? Who are the actual decision makers for the practice? Don’t discount the importance of an office manager or other clinical personnel to influence the physician. What kinds of publications does your particular physician read? Is he a member of Doximity? Linked in? Facebook? Modern Healthcare? Health IT news? What professional organizations and trade shows does he attend? At the end of the day, there is no substitute for a well thought our content strategy in which you create evergreen content which resonates and educates the physician about his critical area of interest. Have customers and case studies he can access. In short, selling anything to a physician in the value based care area is HARDER THAN EVER. You have to build a great team, product and simply be awesome, and do incredible things for patients. Best of luck and let me know if I can provide more color to your quest.
Look at the evolving digital health startup ecosystem leaders, they are ( in this order) Startup Health, Rock Health, Blueprint Health and research the companies which have had successful exits, these founders may be interested in your next big thing! Another great resource on health accelerators as well as companies with successful exits is on Angelist, of course. Startup Health, for example keeps a nice database on exits here. I know many of these founders from my experience at Startup Health, and I'm always happy to help you in a followup call. Best of Luck!
I have lately been using the new Klout app in combination with hootsuite for this. Klout's revision lets you pull articles by topic, pulls the photo of the content ( better open rate) and let's you easily read and tweet/facebook similiar to hootsuite. They are adding sm integrations, we can't post to our company facebook for example yet, but they are working on that. It is a simple way to post a shortened link with gives you extra space to write your own take on the article which is value add! I am happy to talk with you on a call for other ideas and suggestions!
I agree with some the above. Never ever cold call a physician's office. And never ever expect to get a physician to call you back from their office. I am a pediatrician practicing nearly 20 years. The only way to sell something to a physician is through CONTENT and INBOUND MARKETING. We look for solutions to our problems 1. at NIGHT after our kids are in bed ( of course that's all through social sites which I can expound upon for you) 2. At conferences but don't think having your product at a trade show display will get my attention either, because we ignore 98% of those. 3. Through someone I trust using a product or service.
My advice would be to have your entire platform and value proposition set up on your website, and preferrably have a robust you tube site ( think kareo, they do a great job of this) that shows how to onboard/implement your product or service. Your you tube site serves double duty, as product support and onboarding, and great SEO for your site if you have your keywords right.
If you are trying to get a doc for a 15 minute demo, or webinar, forget about that too.
Be sure to record your webinar, and make it available to your audience so they can view it on their own time.
These days in healthcare you have to be AWESOME on SO MANY LEVELS to get our attention. Your product must be on the main stage of a infuential conference. You must write passionately on your blog about your domain. You must comment on OTHER blogs leaving a link to your site.
I'm happy to walk you through Linked in Strategy on a call!
Natalie
It sounds like you have a wound care physical product? Is that correct? Who will b the end user? Nurses in home health? Hospital nurses and general and trauma surgeons? Who buys products for these end users? Cmo of large health systems? Ultimately, you may need to consider cardinal health, McKesson for distribution? How will you manufacture this product? Check out alibaba for starters. How much will your customer pay for this product? How is it better than what they are using now? Will this product allow burn victims to be discharged earlier? Will it reduce hospitalization in nursing home residents?
You will need to assemble a team, probably an MBA for starters... What is the total addressable market? Start a conversation with the buyers for your local healthcare system and ask them their pain points in wound care? Work with a local physician who might be a champion user and persuade administration to try a pilot with your product. In short get one customer who will pay a certain price for it, consider presales, like tile is doing now. This should get you started! Once you have these answers you may be ready for a grass roots fundraising campaign on medstartr! I am happy to help! Best, dr hodge
How is your product mission critical? What pain does this solve for them? Is it hippa compliant? Is it secure? How is it better than Doximity for secure doc to doc communications( which is free, by the way) how is it better than the 4 or so other secure physician to physician communication platforms out there? Take a look at mobihealth news, several are advertising there. How will your product improve patient outcomes? Once you have answered these questions, Sound like you need a couple of cmo's to interview asking them about their pain points! Keep in mind inbound marketing to show expertise and engage those cmo's even ask which features they'd like to see!
I'm happy to help, let me know!
This completely depends on who you are. Are you a physician with primary care experience? Are you a business person trying to build a concierge service network? I think the key issue in selling health services or any health product right now is value. Can your network deliver a BMI reduction of 7% to your client within 12 months? What kinds of patient population do they deliver services to? Are they affluent yuppies? Or are they working class prediabetic smokers? What technologies will your network leverage to provide better care? An Emr going to mu2 is not near enough. What app platforms does your network encourage? How will you price your services?
A general piece of advice is to utilize exclusively inbound marketing and once you have an MVP, you can ask questions and engage potential customers on your blog. Push marketing is futile. Join linked in groups with your pertinent end customer and ask questions rather than trying to make assumptions about what the tpa needs! Quite a general answer but hope it helps!