Healthcare Sales: Mastering the Pilot-to-Scale Transition

I've been selling into enterprise sales for the last 40 years and the last 25 plus in healthcare. The effort is oftentimes more important than the cost. So the degree to which you as the vendor can alleviate me from additional effort is increases the likelihood that that pilot's going to be success. This is one of the things that really separates a success from failure. - Welcome to guest expert episode of The Clinician Founder Podcast, where we explore the stories behind doctors, healthcare professionals who've built mission-driven ventures beyond the bedside. Today, we're tackling one of the biggest questions Clinician Founder's face. How do you actually get your products adopted? I'm joined today by Brendan McAdams, founder of Kinetics. A sales coach and author with over 25 years in healthcare sales, Brendan helps health tech startups move faster, from that first pilot to sign contracts with smarter sales strategy, better deal structure and fewer costly mistakes. In this conversation, we'll break it down. You can talk about how you get your first pilot, what makes a good pilot agreement, how to turn a pilot into a paying contract, the biggest mistake startups make in healthcare sales, and how to think like a business person, even if you're a clinician first. If you're building in health tech this episode is definitely your old map for turning innovation into implementation and doing it faster. I'm your host, Dr. Shabay in the course race, an executive coach and an emergency physician, helping clinicians become founders so that medicine could be their side hustle. I'll soon be reopening doors for my flagship Clinician Founder LaunchVide program. So if you're a clinician who's more innovative and impact-driven, make sure to take the Clinician Founder Assessment, link in the description to receive updates on that. All right, let's get into it. (gentle music) - Thank you for joining me today, Brendan. - Good to be with you. - How are you? - Good, good, thanks. - Fantastic, this is exciting. I'm really keen to dive straight in the meat of the conversation, but before we do that, this is slightly different format. You're not a clinician, you're not a doctor, but you're very entwined in the healthcare world. Could you just tell our listeners a little bit more about yourself, please? - Okay, so I'm based in Baltimore and I've been selling into enterprise companies, been selling into enterprise sales for the last 40 years. And the last 25 plus in healthcare, selling to health plans and health systems. And what I do now is I work with health tech companies and help them accelerate their sales, execute into health plans and health systems and large provider groups in particular. And from a sales coaching standpoint and sales strategy and sales consulting standpoint. So that's kind of my background. - Oh, fantastic. I'm really curious, how did you end up getting into this role that you're in at the moment? - I was in enterprise sales, selling into ATT and then later on Bell Labs and then later on into Wall Street. And my executive vice president of sales at one of the companies left and went to the company that came WebMD and he recruited me to come over. And so I got into healthcare from that standpoint. Did that for a long time? Went into work for another couple of other healthcare companies. I was at United for a while on their technology side. And then I decided I saw out in the across the landscape, there are a lot of situations where I thought there'd be an opportunity for a hired gun or the ability to augment someone's sales team by and having expertise and then I got into that. And then that became more of a sales strategy and consulting business. So that's how I got to where I am now. - That's really interesting, I mean, surely in the UK here we're seeing doctors diversify more and more into entrepreneurial ventures and innovation. Are you seeing a similar trend across in the US as well? - Absolutely. In the US in particular, I think it's becoming less and less rewarding to be a physician. I mean, certainly from a financial standpoint it's much tougher. And so there's a lot of burnout in among physicians and other clinicians. And so oftentimes the entrepreneurial side of things is a very attractive option. Much more of a, it's in some cases a lifestyle play, it's also an opportunity to make more of an impact and also potentially to have a greater financial benefit. Yeah, so I think we're seeing a lot of that. - Yeah, it's really interesting. I think clinicians, especially in my mind the kind of like two kinds of clinicians. One that I like really focus on mastering their clinical skill and the second type that really innovative and impact-driven. And I think there's keep pushing that impact, impact, impact. You kind of just want to scale it and business and entrepreneurship comes up really quickly on that path to driving impact. At what stage do people in the US or companies come to you? What challenges are they facing and what do you mainly help them with? - It kind of runs the gamut. So it could be, they're very early and they don't know how to get a customer. Right now I'm coaching a couple of different companies where they're very strong technically. But by their own admission they'll say, we don't know anything about sales. And they can be quite capable, but they don't understand things like, but they don't just don't have that background in terms of process and you know, certain tactics and the things that kind of just the ABC steps along the way that you need to kind of accelerate the sales process and to make fewer mistakes and that sort of thing. So, and then it can get as complicated as, you know, revenue, how to recognize revenue and getting reimbursement, helping your customers understand reimbursement, you know, sales strategy in terms of where to focus your energy and who your ideal customers are. And then ultimately it gets into, and I'm working with a couple of different companies now where they're looking to scale. And so it's what CRM are they going to use? How are they going to measure their sales? How are they going to bring sales people on and train them and I can help with that too? So that's kind of those are kind of from start to finish sort of a thing. - Yeah, fantastic. And you and I sort of know each other through Josh Spector and Josh Spector's all about getting straight to the value. So I think with him in mind, let's try and do that. And I thought one of the best ways we could do that is try and follow a clinician's journey. So say this clinician, he's very much health tech, AI focused and they've gone and learned how to code and perhaps built a couple of prototypes. And they finally come up with something that they think holds a really valuable problem for them. So you know, it could be, let's call it a non-clinical, like it's not a medical device. So it helps clinicians do their job more efficiently or somebody in the health care system do their job more efficiently. It draws ROI for the hospital, it improves patient outcomes, the typical thing. So they've kind of got to that point where they're like, oh, I've created a prototype. And the next thing that kind of comes up is like, I need to run a pilot, I got to get some data, I need to figure out like how to prove the value of this thing. What are some of the common challenges you see at that phase and what do people need to get right? - Well, the one thing that clinicians have going for them in particular is they've been living, if they're physicians or other clinicians, they've been living in the environment. So in which that they're coming up with a solution to improve things. So one of the mistakes entrepreneurs often make is they go off and build something before they talk to a bunch of customers. But a clinician, because they're immersed in that environment already, they have the ability to kind of see the problem 'cause they're living that problem firsthand. And so the being able to validate the problem is less of an issue. I mean, it's less of the thing that they have to focus on. So, but now to get to your question about the pilot, how do you go about it and like how to think about it? You know, the first thing I would say is you want to make sure you're identifying the problem correctly. And you know, we've addressed that to some degree degree. You know, or the clinician has 'cause they've lived in that environment. And then who's the buyer? Who's gonna buy it? And what's gonna be important for that buyer? So if it's a hospital or a health system, their focus is gonna be different from a health plan who's gonna be different from a provider group. So who's the ultimate purchaser? And then the next thing I think you want to do is figure out how to identify who the stakeholders are. Who's gonna benefit from this solution that you're contemplating? Who always involved in it is the decision makers, one or more, the one thing that's a challenge in the healthcare world is there's a lot of consensus driven decision making. So usually you're kind of hurting cats in a way. You're trying to get a bunch of different people involved and weigh in and buy in. And so that's oftentimes one of the big challenges before you even get to the point where you can say, "Oh, this is what the pilot is." Who are the people that are gonna be involved? And who are in some cases, and this is oftentimes counterintuitive, but in a large organization, who are the people that might be adversarial to this new, this innovation? And that may be something as simple as, they're gonna lose head count or lose budget or whatever. So those are sort of things that come into play. And then of course it's, what's the existing technical, you know, or technological infrastructure in place? But how easily or difficult is it gonna be to integrate into that? And then those are kind of the things you have to tackle at the very front end. - Would you recommend that people start with a pilot in the location that they currently already working whether hospital or GP practice? So that sort of should they go to another organization and kind of almost start from scratch to separate themselves from that organization. - My general thinking. on this is get your early win as quickly as you can. And so if that's something you can do inside your own organization, that's probably best. The one thing I would say is, as soon as possible, you really want to be talking to other organizations. So you're not solving a problem for an isolated case. One of the things that a physician, I said that one of the benefits for a physician is they're living in that environment. One of the things they ought to do is be talking to their peers in, you know, if you're an ER doc and you've got an ER solution, right? And you know other ER docs, you go to the same conferences, you know, get on the phone with them, get on Zoom and say, "Hey, this is what I'm cooking up." And talk to them and make sure that you're not solving for an end of one. You know, you want to make sure you're solving a problem that that has broader appeal. And then, and then even if you start with your own hospital, just or your own organization as a start, you want to want to start spooling up or preparing those other, those other organizations and those other locations to be early adopters. So I would say as soon as you can get to some level of scale, that's going to be meaningful. That makes it absolutely does. I think as I'm imagining myself doing that or this clinician doing that, some of the common hurdles which I'm sure maybe in the US as well are there's no budget for this or like we'd love to do it but we don't have the manpower or like you got to do all the data collection and implementation and everything else, we'll maybe just allow you to just do this on the ground for free. And I think free is one of those things as well where like how do you, how do you almost contract yourself into that pilot so that you know when you're going in and when you're coming out? What are you? Yeah. How do you look at that? Well, so the free versus not free is a decision you kind of have to make on the ground in that moment. Like every individual entrepreneur is going to have to decide how important is it to charge money versus not charge money for that first one? Can you and that's just a decision you have to make at that moment? How badly do you need an example and something that's successful? You know to get the next one. Can that first one help you measure the actual value that is generated and that benefits the customer? And if you can do that, then maybe on two things can happen. One is you can, you can kind of agree that you're going to get sort of some sort of case study, ROI analysis, testimonial, etc, etc. In exchange for this free pilot. The other thing you can do is you can make the pilot contingent on or get the payment on the back end once you hit a certain threshold. So you do get your financial benefit. The thing you're wrestling with or at least one of the things you're wrestling with is every additional kind of ingredient that you add to the pilot complicates it to some level and going out and getting budget and getting dollars and getting payment adds to that complexity. And it may be that if you're going after a hundred thousand dollars for the pilot or a thousand dollars, the complexity is the same. The budget, the budget's an issue, but just the complexity of now I got to go and get, you know, it doesn't hurt to ask if they have money and you should, you know, you should try to get some sort of payment in exchange for the value that you're delivering. But you do want to weigh that against how, what's the much is this going to delay the eventual outcome and make more complex the decision making a process. Interesting. So it's, it sounds like, to be honest, it sounds like a lot of hard work that initially bit of like finding the right people speaking to them and convincing them. And I think from a clinician perspective, there's this want to have the product good enough so that it almost speaks for itself. I think that's a general theme of like we want to make sure that it's good enough to do the job of the pilot. What's your take on that? How much does the pilot contribute to the product and vice versa? What's a good stage for people to say, you know what? I think I just need to run a pilot. Well, I mean, if you're, if you've got a solution that's, that's either on the drawing board and it's not built and you're going to built it as part of the pilot or the, or, or it's, or it's a minimum viable product. And that is, it's just, it's just solving like a single or a core piece of the total solution. Then that's where a pilot can, can be particularly valuable because you can get some level of momentum, some level of validation for what you've, what you've got, what you're contemplating or what the overall solution is going to be. And then, and you can use the customer experience to A, validate that and B, tease out additional functionality and problems and opportunities for a more expansive product. Along with gathering that early adopter testimonial and the, and the value of the equation, you know, and in some substantive way. Yeah. Are there, are there some common mistakes that you've seen people make and it's like, are just simple fixes that unfortunately they've not realized. Yeah. The, the, you want to keep this thing very, very compressed. So ideally, you want to keep the, if you can keep the pilot to one part of the organization, a single part of the organization that, that simplifies it. Basically, the overall philosophy here is try and keep it as simple as possible, as small, as possible, while still deriving a measurable value, right? So that's, that's one thing. You want to make sure that you're identifying and you've got some executive sponsorship that matters, right? So, who is that executive sponsor? Are you talking to that person? Are they, are they invested in this? And is there an operational sponsor as well? And those two people are going to be critically important. Oftentimes that, that's not something that's really locked down well enough in a lot of cases. And that's where a pilot can feel. The other thing is you want to have a very clear measurable result that, that your customer has bought into and expects. And in fact, it probably makes sense to document this in some way. And this is part of the whole, this is just standard sales discovery. And that is in that sales process. And in the discovery process, I spent a lot of time working with, with my clients on this, on really effective discovery. And if you, if you do that well, then you can figure out exactly what the measure result should be, what their expectations are, how to manage those expectations. And then, and then, you know, when it's short and concise, and, you know, like a timeframe that's, that's, that's, that's manageable. And where you can see some real results. And so 16, 90 days, something like that, you know, is, is better than, you know, nine months. Yeah, sooner, sooner you get there, the sooner, yeah. So, so far, we've kind of identified which organization we've identified, who we need to speak to. And it sounds like there's an executive sponsor and an operational sponsor. So, in a hospital that might be someone at the director, chief executive level, or chief medical officer level. And then the operational sponsor, someone who's like facing the problem and actually will benefit directly from the implementation of the innovation. Yeah. And then I think you're right about the sticky part being the clarity around what are we measuring? When do we start? When do we finish? Right. What is the actual benefit that we're looking for? And your suggestion is to keep it as narrow and as short and well-defined as possible? Yes. Yeah. You know, what, what does success look like? Basically, is the question you want to ask? And this is a question you're going to ask the customer directly. And that is, when you're, when you're going through this, all right, we're going to, this is, and this is a way, fundamentally, the thing about a pilot is, it's a way to validate that you can deliver. And it's designed to address the risk that the, or risk real or perceived that your customer has about their ability, that your ability to deliver it and the, and the ability of this solution to do what you want it to do. Yeah. And so, so one of the fundamental things that just in generally in sales that you run up against that prevents decisions from being made is, what's the risk, you know, to me, as the buyer? Like, am I going to be embarrassed? Am I going to lose money? Am I going to, is it going to jeopardize my job? All those sorts of things. And the other thing associated with this is, how much work is this going to be for me? And my, my organization, how much, not just cost, but effort. And the effort is oftentimes more important than the cost. So to the degree to which you as the vendor can take that off my plate and alleviate me from additional effort, is increases the likelihood that that pilot is going to be successful. And that they're actually going to say yes to doing the pilot, right? Yeah, almost as though the pilot needs to be an offer they can't refuse. Like, you need to think about what are all of the challenges in the risk going in. Right. Any common things that initial startup founders, health tech founders can do to make that easier. How can they make it an offer that they can't refuse? Well, beyond the things we've talked about, keeping it simple and concise, and then having the right sponsors and so forth is in a time frame. And so, you know, having that figured out is, is you want to go in and you want to know that you've really identified a serious problem that and one that has a meaningful need to be fixed. And there's a real, there's a genuine opportunity to see an outcome, a beneficial outcome, and that's one that's measurable. And then from there, what you want to do is you want to, you want to have a clear plan to solve it. And as much as a clear plan, and this is where the sales comes back into it, what's the customer journey that's going to happen along the way? So as we do this time, as we do this pilot, we're going to, this is going to happen at this point, this is going to happen at this point. This is what I do through at this point. This is what, as a, if I'm the customer, you know, this, I have to do this. I have to get you access to an API, or I have to give you data, or I have to get you our master services agreement. And you, as the vendor, you know, you're going to do this and this and this and this and these things along the way. And what you're doing when you do that is you're, you're articulating a clear plan of success. Hey, this is going to succeed. And here's why, because we're doing this and, and, and, and what that also does is it surfaces the sorts of potential obstacles and objections that are going to come along the way, because as you map out this journey, this process, this exit plan of execution, I'm going to say, oh, no, I can't do that. And then you're going to say, why not? And here's, you know, I need this. And here's why. And then, and then I'm going to, and then I'm going to have to answer that. I'm going to have to, like, I see, I get it now. And I can do that. And here's how I would do it. Interesting. And one of the things you're going to ask for is, who's the executive sponsor? That's just step along the way. And, and you're going to ask me for who that person is. And what, like, let's get together with them. And I'm going to say, yeah, that makes perfect sense. Or I'm going to say, man, you know, you can't meet with that person. And then now you know, you've got to, you got to challenge. Those are some of the ingredients that, that I spent a lot of time when I, when I work with customers, like, you know, threading that out and kind of encouraging. And then also giving them little tips on how to have those conversations, you know, yeah, that's it really interesting. I often see implementing innovation and part of the sales process also has really good leadership. I mean, you're essentially leading change in a part of that is sharing your vision in a way that other people can follow it. And what, as you were describing that journey, as in terms of what they, what they can expect, I think they also kind of go on that journey of seeing how the benefits that will come with it. Yeah. And that's a really interesting process. And really bringing up the hurdles and the questions early on rather than once you've already started. And then you realize, oh, I don't actually have access to the exec. Yeah. Yeah. This is tricky one. This is if I, if I could just look, emphasize this a little bit. And that is the ability to find a way to surface the obstacles and the issues that are going to, that are going to get in the way. And the natural tendency of anyone that you get, you get someone that's saying, oh, yeah, I'll do a, let's talk about a pilot. Get some excited. And you don't want to, you don't want to jeopardize that good feeling. So to speak, but the, but, but the thing is, you're going to have to, you're going to run up against these things one way or another. And if you've got the right person that you're working with, they're going to recognize, oh, yeah, I need to get you in front of so and so. I need to get you in front of the chief technology officer, or I need to get you in front, I need to get you an APA access to our API. And because they know that, you know, those things are integral and critical to this, the implementation process and the success, right? Is there ever a point where you've kind of gone to your clients and said, actually, this pilot is not going to work just call it right before you spend too much. Yeah. Does that happen? Yes. Absolutely. And, and, and it's not something you should fear. It's a setback admittedly. But it's not something you should fear because ultimately, if you, if you don't confront that or there's a really good chance, you're going to run up against that later. And by that point, time you will have spent a lot of time and energy and, and to no avail. But more importantly, and this is a little counterintuitive is if you get to a certain point, and there isn't, there is a real level of enthusiasm and interest. But you're running up against certain obstacles. Then if you were, if you were to say to them, listen, here's my issue. I'm seeing a problem here and here. And so I don't think this is, I'm not seeing how this can be successful. And, and that puts the customer, your prospect in a position of being able to either agree with you or disagree. And if they disagree and they said, no, no, no, like what do you mean? Or if they say, oh, tell me more or whatever. And you say, well, we, I really need to have an executive sponsor. And here's why for, you know, for these reasons, or I really need to get in front of this cheap technology, technology officer, or I need to do whatever. Then, and if they're really truly motivated, they will then say, all right, we can figure this out. Let's, how do we do this? And blah, blah, blah. And in a lot of cases, what you'll find is if you're going into an organization, like a hospital system, or even a health plan, or especially in a, like a provider group, there's a really good chance that they've never really done anything like this before. Where they've had to buy something that doesn't exist, or they have to buy something that's brand new, or that's highly customized or whatever. And so they don't have the experience of thinking through and orchestrating and coordinating something like this. And so you're, you're sort of in a position where you're, you're consulting them on things. You're, you're providing consultation. And when you do that, one of the things that happens is it's, it's disarming. And you're also, it puts you in a position where you're not really feeling like you, I'm trying to sell them. I'm not trying to manipulate them into something. I'm trying to figure out if there's a way to make this work. If I, we can make this work, because I don't want to waste your time and you don't want to waste my time. And so this is a way to kind of consult. And that, that kind of takes some of the pressure off you. It is, I'm rambling on here, but it is, it is, it is a little unnerving to sit there and, and, and essentially jeopardize your deal. Yeah. But, and it seems counterintuitive. But it actually, it's an invitation to the customer to say, to correct you or to, to weigh in. And it also allows you, it, it, it indicates to them that you're not selling them for the sake of selling it. You're saying, hey, I don't know if this is going to work. And here's why. And so why take some of the pressure off the customer and allow them to put them in a position where they're actually making a decision as opposed to being told what to do. Yeah, I agree. I think when I speak to my clients as well, I often talk about how good sales is like good consenting for the procedure. You're not there to convince anyone of anything. You're there to lay out the pros and cons and help them make a decision really well. Yeah. And that means being comprehensive, allowing asking them the questions to think about the right bits. Yeah. And have that early buy. And before you go ahead and operate on them, I guess. Yeah. Yeah. In terms of the analogy. Yeah. As you're saying all of this, it comes across that you've got a very clear, like, step-by-step process in terms of we got to establish this and then this and then this and then this. Yes. Yes. There's actually a question that's come up on our, on our stream. People, there's someone asking, what are some beginner books and sales that you would recommend? Well, one of the things the first thing I'd say is the thing about this is this pilot idea that we're talking about is it's very much a, it's a, it's basically taking enterprise sales and compressing it down to a very specific opportunity. So the stuff that what we're talking about here is very consistent with just general enterprise sales. Because what you want to do here is this pilot is meant to get a certain level of success that's been defined and agreed to by both parties and then and then you're expanding. So if you go in and sell a huge system to, to SIGNA, that thing doesn't typically start by you just going in and selling the whole thing and, and, right, unless you're an established company, it typically it's you get a beach, what's called a beach hat or whatever and then you grow from there. And so in that case, it's a, you know, it's, it's that. So that's a long-winded preamble to any kind of a sales book that's kind of focused on enterprise sales. So the, the Miller Hyman stuff, strategic selling, I think is really good for this. It's kind of certain rigor. A lot of people like the challenger sale, it's fundamentals. There's, there's, there's my book, right, which is much more about like, it's little, it's easy take away, so like little fundamentals that I wrote and I'm writing a new book now about this very topic, about how to get your first sale. So that's going to be out in the next month or so. So, so the Miller Hyman stuff, again, challenger sale, I think are, are, are good, good fundamentals. Yeah, those are fantastic. I think the ones that kind of stuck with me or the ones that I hear referred a lot as well are the Sandler Sales System Manager get to write a bicycle or something along those lines. Yeah. I think none of them are too particular or actually none of them are towards health care sales in, in particular. And even though there's a lot of similarities, there's also a lot of challenges, I think, especially in terms of the person you sell to versus, as you mentioned, the operational was the word for it. The person who's operationally involved and is, you need buy in from them is often a clinician as well. And the language used to speak to both of them is quite different. Can I jump in one more of their book? So Clay Christensen innovators dilemma, Right. And I'm pretty sure he wrote a book about healthcare specifically and innovators dilemma. And that's another really good book because what you're doing is you're disrupting things at some level. And one of the things I talk about in some when you sell to healthcare companies, health plans, health systems, they're, I say this all the time, they're like big battleships, right? And they can take a beating, right? And so there's no reason to change course if you can take the beating. And so you really have to try and figure out a way to get them to want to do something different. The thing is, is that they can keep doing the same thing and they'll be fine, more or less. Not really, but they think so and they, and so you really are trying to figure out a way to get them to think differently and to try something new and make a decision. And so it's the current trajectory they're on, they're quite happy with. And so getting them, that's the thing you're wrestling with. - Yeah, that's such a good description actually because there's so many inefficiencies that I think, especially as clinicians are people working in the system are constantly facing on a day-to-day basis and it really frustrates us. And then we go and fix it and we say, this is all the change it can make. But sometimes we go and speak to the execs, we go and speak to the company in the hospital and they say, oh no, that's not really bothering us. And they're so, right, they can deal with so many inefficiencies and so many problems because they're such a big battleship and the cost of change is bigger than the cost of continuing with the same thing. - Yeah, I have a, I have a, in the US right now, a lot of hospitals are struggling and one of my customers is sells to hospitals and they have the ability to increase revenues substantially. But there's a cost associated with that, right? You know, you pay X and you get four or five X back. They don't want to spend money. They're trying, they're focused on, we can't spend money. And so at a certain level, they're saying, hey, I don't have budget for this because it's an additional cost for me. And you'll say to them, but you'll get the revenue or five X the revenue and they can, well, I can't spend money. And so you have to, in that case, you have to go above that person or go elsewhere to get the point, to give them the air cover to say, you know, someone up here says, oh, yeah, we're going to increase that person's budget so they can purchase this because we need the additional $4 million in revenue because it actually helps the company, even though we have to spend another million to get it. That's kind of one of the things you have to wrestle with. - Yeah, a couple of episodes ago, I had a founder on this podcast, Declan, who's the founder of Allers, and he was talking about the concept of business model market fit. So not just product market fit, but just having it fit into what the organization's looking for and where the budget lies kind of depends on that. What's kind of been your experience or insights on that front? - Well, one of the things I always tell people on the front end of any sales call is, I want, like, when I talked to my clients, you know, I said, one of the things I ask them right away is before you get on the call with someone the first time, how do they make money? What's their business? How do, who were they serving? And then if you can talk to that customer in the language and in a way that addresses who their customers are and how they make money, then you're off to, you're in a much better position, right? So how does a hospital make money? It's, you know, they have to have patients come in, they have to get reimbursed for those patients, they have to provide them services in a certain way. How do health plans make money? They want to be able to hold on to members, they want to be able to add additional services for members and have those services be paid for, right? They want to be, you know, they want to, those are the things that you have to wrestle with. And so when you talk to those customers, you have to talk to them in terms of their, in terms of their business model in a sense. So yeah, I think that's a good way to think of it. - That's a very interesting one. I want to kind of move into where this is taking us next. So hopefully with those tips and tricks, we've read some books and we've managed to get a pilot in. - Yeah. - Just cautious of time. I feel like we can go on about this whole thing for a very long time, but I think the key problem that then comes up is I see a lot of founders duck in constant pilot after pilot after pilot and not actually being able to convert that into - Yes. - On going contracts. Why does that happen? - That's it. I'm so glad you asked that because that is the next thing is like one of the failures isn't, I mean, one of the failures of a pilot isn't maybe you get success with a pilot, but you don't have a plan for after the pilot. And that is a critically important ingredient to this process because it's not enough to just say, oh yeah, we saved you in this little area. We need to save you. You have to have some level of us understanding in the front end, hey, here's where this goes from there. So part of the pilot plan should be, if and when we hit this threshold, we expand, this is what happens next. And so that's part of the discovery process is who gets involved. And that's where having the executive sponsor is critically important. You want someone high enough up that can recognize, wow, this really does impact us in a favorable way and it's significant, we need to expand this. And so you really need some of that buy-in up front. - As in, even before the pilot? - Yeah, before, this should be part of that plan. - Okay. - So here are the thresholds. Here are what we expected. This is what we're trying to achieve. This much cost savings, reduction in staff time, whatever the thing is, whatever the key metric or metrics are, that you want to measure and achieve, like you want to assign some buy-in. That all right, if we do this, what's next? And then what you want to do is you want to be reporting. So if it's a 980 pilot, you want to have an executive level sponsor meeting at day 30, right? And you might want to email them every two weeks and says, "Hey, here's where we are." Like we're doing well, partly because you want to be able to report good news. And if there's something that's a rye, something that's not, you get some sticking thing behind your exact sponsor, your operational sponsor can intervene and address that. And get either right resources or get, whatever the obstacle is, get that out of the way, right? - Yeah, I feel like the trouble becomes, so often clinicians will build up or with the sponsors and they say, "Can we run a free pilot for you? "These are the benefits." And they go, "Yeah, sure, go ahead. "Make sure you adhere to guidelines, blah, blah, blah." Run the pilot and then they run the pilot and the clinicians think, "Oh, this is going to go so well." When they see how much benefit brings to them, we're going to get a contract, we'll sell to them. And that point, the sponsors go, "Actually, we don't have budget for this. "This isn't a big enough problem for us." Or like we love the job that you've done, but maybe we'll come back to it next year or maybe you need some more data. Here's another place you can do another free pilot act. It's like, "Yeah, you just go around and around in circles." - Right, right. So you want your, in the process of doing this, and this is why it is sort of a, this is basically a compressed version of an enterprise sale. And that is, you want your advocates inside the organization and they may not be all senior level people. You might want some, you might, you want to be on the lookout for two or three people in the trenches that are really excited by this. Whatever it is that they're doing today is a burden and you're alleviating that burden and you want them to be like your cheerleaders and highly motivated and you want to, you want to be able to get that kind of feedback on the ground from people that are using it a day in, day out. And so you can kind of use them as a kind of a market survey. So you've got users that are evangelists inside the organization and you're talking to them and you're taking care of them and maybe you're sending them some swag or whatever it is you do. But you want to make sure, hey, what do you like about this? What do you like? What would you, what would you be doing differently? What additional functionality? How does this save you time? How much time does it save you? How much cost does this take out of the company? And so you have these anecdotal examples as well. And then you can share those, you know, you share those up the chain and it does a bunch of things. First of all, the execs oftentimes don't get to see the stuff that, you know, how the sausage is being made down in the bowels of the company, so to speak, right? And at the same time, you know, if, you know, if Gladys in Revenue Cycle Management encoding every now and then you say, you know, you got, you know, you tell some senior exec that Gladys in R.C.M. is just, she's phenomenal. She's such a, and, you know, maybe that that person will go and contact her and say, good job. Keep up the good work and you create this, this kind of this flywheel of expectation of success. And that's really helpful because when you do have that setback, you've got these advocates and evangelists inside the organization that will help you overcome that and get you back on track or give you advice, this person, you really have, this person can get in the way or this person can really help you. And so someone down in the trenches can be, can be usually influential and helpful in terms of guiding your way along the, along the process. This is, again, this is Enterprise Sales and there's a lot to it. And you can learn it, but it, it does help to have someone yeah kind of coach in your long that's got you know that's great. I mean a bit more than that. I was going to say if clinicians are listening to this and thinking I'm still working clinically a couple of days a week. I don't have the time for this and I haven't done the fundraising to be able to pay myself to do this full time. I mean it's the whole reason why sales in itself is a profession. Yes it is. It takes a lot of effort. It takes a lot of time. It is vulnerable. It is definitely learnable and clinicians that that you know one of the things we didn't get to touch on earlier but the things that clinicians have going for them is they have such strenuous training and the rigorous training that not unlike attorneys like there are a lot of attorneys that go and go into law school and then never practice law they go off but what it does is it you know doctors are particularly well trained in being like analyzing things and understanding things and so you've got you've got a really robust set of foundational skills and so adding sales that makes you kind of that's a that's a real phenomenal combination combination of skills isn't it? I'll tell you what my take away has been from our conversation Brendan. I think my big takeaway or the big shift that's happened for me during our conversation is that instead of going into trying sell the pilot and then crossing fingers at the end of it it's almost like you need to go in and sell the product and the outcome and the benefit or the promise at the end of it and pilot is almost like an introductory offer to say you know we'd like to sell this product to you at the end of it but because we have a relationship let's run a pilot see if it's even right for you yeah and then take it from there is that right yeah as long as you're communicating it in terms that matter to them so you're not trying to sell them a pilot for you you're trying to sell them a pilot for it listen this is going to help reduce your readmission rate or this is going to help reduce your costs you're you're just going to improve your outcomes and that translates into this amount of dollars or this amount of hours saved or whatever as long as you're communicating the value in terms that matter to them because nobody buys a pilot they buy a result right I know that's obvious but it's it's important because it's easy you know it's easy to get in that let's do a pilot and test this out no let's let's prove out that we can actually reduce this problem for you or improve your prove whatever thing you want to improve and and I think that's where that's where I think if you can communicate it that way that that is an effective way to look at it yeah yeah fantastic I think that's a huge takeaway at least for me and I think it'll reflect in everything else I do and do our listeners as well if people want to find you reach out to you where what's the best place uh the best place is uh I mean linked in Brendan McAdams uh you know linked in is one way and connect with me there you can my website is it will be in the show notes I'm sure but it's a KII and ETICS.com kinetics and you can find me there and yeah and if and if you're the kind of a company that's looking for some sales coaching or strategy that's that's that's the thing I spend a lot of time with it but you know specifically for health tech yeah that's brilliant is there a particular size of a company that you work with only I mean I know you do only B2B sales yeah but is that particular size it's typically companies that are either just getting started or up to say 15 20 million in revenue I mean I I work with a lot of larger companies that are in the 15 20 million and they're more of like how do we optimize our team how do we improve like our metrics you know how do we they're looking for some specific kind of tuning up or maybe they're they want to ramp up new sales people and they want to kind of inculcate a certain standard process is you know sales methodology but so basically that's the that's yeah brilliant yeah is there anything that I haven't asked you yet that I should have asked you Brendan so how does this like just real quick how does this apply like like what are your like what are your clients when do they run up against this stuff what do they run up against typically the people that your customers in your audience what what like what sorts of things do they run up against yes I think majority of my clients are slightly just a phase before that then those innovative clinicians that are still identifying within that clinician identity and I take them from that place to the shift into that early founder identity so both internally but also externally they they get the traction to be able to call themselves founders and a lot of that is is the buy-in is the testing the iteration to see what's working and sort of where we close the journey is is around the point of where they're ready to go into their first pilot so they've got the structures in the in place they've got the outreach the marketing the ability to actually tell their founder's story all of that kind of comes together and I think that's the place at which they start to be like okay we got to like pilot this we've got to run this I don't know if you can see it just behind me is is a book yeah one of my clients become FRK and that was kind of his pilot to be like you know we've put all of this together let's get the book out and see how the responses do this book and the concepts and frameworks within the book so that's the phase I get to and then they hit the challenge of how do you get a pilot how do you get paid selling into a health care system and I think there's huge differences from that and selling BTC yeah which I have a bit more experience with that's excellent that's excellent well again thank you for for the opportunity to talk this is the timing is perfect I have to give spend a bunch of time in a training session with a bunch of tech stars accelerator startup companies in this space and and this is the topic I'm covering on Thursday which is around just how to think about pilots and examples and and so this is this is good good uh fantastic it's been it's been an absolute pleasure to have you on Brendan thank you for sharing your wisdom and expertise and absolutely not holding back and you know bringing it all here for us to benefit from so I'm going to say that's it for today's episode huge thanks to Brendan McAdams for sharing such clear practical insights on how to move from pilot to partnership and close real deals in health care if you found this valuable make sure to follow or subscribe wherever you're listening and share it with a fellow clinician founder who's building something that deserves to scale the next live episode is next to you state 28th of October at 11.45 a.m. but we'll be joined by Dr Mark Biko who's the founder of BAPEScape he's required returning to the spot cast for the second time and we'll be catching up on what's changed over the last six to eight months new developments pivots lessons learned along the way also a massive thanks to Dr Akash Vajain for the intro music of the spot cast check out his work on spotify and soundcloud until then keep building stay bold and remember you have the power to create something extraordinary see you next time