By: Dexter Braff
If you’re one of the Red Bull Crowd (or is it now La Croix?), you love your technology.
You love your code. The logic, the simplicity, the creativity, the elegance, the way it attracts members of the opposite sex (well, maybe not that one, but you get the picture).
We get it.
But the thing is, the people buying the code?
Their relationship with the bits and bytes is far more complex and nuanced.
Sure, they care about what it can do for their patients, their institutions, their bottom lines, their workloads – their bonuses.
But they also care about:
- how hard it’s going to be to get the technology up and running,
- how long it will take,
- how they will look to their higher ups and co-workers if things go wrong,
- how they feel about the people in front of and behind the technology,
- how they are treated during the sales process,
- how the technology “feels” and makes them
That’s why the best technology doesn’t always win (perhaps often so).
Think of it this way.
Steve Jobs was not a technology guy – he left that to Woz.
No, what Jobs loved was design, promotion, creating a company ethos that made consumers want to be part of it all.
Now don’t get us wrong. The products must be good. Remember Newton?
But that was only a part of what their consumers were buying. They were buying cool.
So, if you’re in digital health, your code is important.
But in order to address some of the touchy-feelies above, and more:
- You’ve got to know your competition and their value proposition so that you can tailor yours to differentiate where you’re better.
- The aesthetics and collaterals must be inviting.
- Wherever possible, you must emphasize how others have succeeded using your product – the better for purchasers not to feel that they are all alone in selecting you.
- The implementation and support team must be readily apparent – and capable.
- Yada.
- Yada.
- Yada.
Oh, and just in case you forgot:
- The revenue model must be right,
- the marketing and distribution channels must be right,
- and you’ve got to have enough cash reserves to give yourself enough runway to, you know, actually implement these plans (enterprise solutions, in particular, have a particularly long sales cycle, i.e. take however long you think it’s going to take…and double it).
No wonder why founders – who frequently come from technology – often struggle in the CEO slot.
Sure, it’s all very daunting.
But take a deep breath, and do a line…
Of Code.