10-Minute Workshop: How to Find Your Ideal Client Profile

WRITTEN BY

Dan Baker

Every day, healthcare is getting more innovative—and also more competitive. As record amounts of funding flow into telemedicine and other technologies amid COVID-19, it has kicked the digital health engine into warp speed, forcing a paradigm shift that will forever change the sector.

If your voice is among the thousands of those vying for the business of health systems, standing out from the crowd can seem like a pipe dream. As the market continues to get saturated with digital products, rising above the noise gets even more difficult.

So what’s the solution? If you’ve ever worked with us, or looked into methodology, you’ll know our recommendation: That is, you’ve got to shore up your product-market fit, pipeline, process, and people, and perhaps even yourself.

By the time they’ve assembled funding, most startups get to a point where they master their product-market fit. But the next step, the pipeline, can be a little more challenging to tackle. Finding qualified leads and then channeling them through the funnel takes time and effort. It’s also a matter of being in the right place at the right time, in front of the right person.

That’s why—before focusing on selling your product—you should focus on who you’re selling it to: Who is your ideal client profile?

To help brands answer that question, I like to take them through a simple, four-part exercise that takes most 10-minutes to complete:

1. Choose five criteria that make up your ideal client. These criteria can be any filter you choose, from the segment, size, specialty, industry, reputation, or other attributes.
2. Organize your prospects in rank order. Take every prospect you have and rank them on a standard or weighted scale (-5 to +5) according to those five criteria.
3. Get real with yourself. Consider how many deals you can manage simultaneously, and be realistic with your expectations: Healthcare is an incredibly complex sector with multiple decision-makers, red tape, budget barriers, and corporate politics. Just one elephant can drain more time than you might think.
4. Draw your cutoff line. You now have a rank-ordered, focused pipeline on which to spend your limited resources.

In 10-minutes you can prioritize your prospects and inject some discipline in your sales process. In time, that legwork—plus other discovery work you do—will undoubtedly pay off: If you put yourself in front of the right prospects and invest marketing muscle and other strategies to reach them, you’ll see much more traction and engagement.

Stay tuned, because I’ll talk about that in a future post.

Need help optimizing your pipeline? Reach out and we’ll get you going with the right strategy!