10 Rules for Driving Innovation in Healthcare – Rule # 7 – Pitch Listen Fix Pitch repeat

Rule # 7 –  Pitch Listen Fix Pitch Repeat

We recommend to all our acceleration clients to pitch early and pitch often.  I don’t just mean at events like MedStartr Momentum but to everyone.  I mean if you can sell your mother-in-law then you can sell anyone and make no mistake, sales are the wind that will take you across the sea of dead startups.  Not sure who you are selling?  That’s okay, due to the indirect nature of payments and perverse incentives in healthcare, your customer is rarely who you think it is  (more on this in rule 4.)  The point here is that you need to keep talking about the idea to anyone who will listen, get in front of the largest, most relevant audiences you can, and pitch.

But just pitching isn’t enough.  Each time you need to really listen, often to that which is left unsaid. If you aren’t hearing patients, doctors, nurses, and other care providers saying, “yeah that would be great, when will it be available?” or “where can I buy it?”, or better yet, “can I pre-order that?” then you need to go back to the drawing board.  This is one of the reasons we love crowdfunding because every sale on MedStartr is a pre-sale and you can pitch all your potential stakeholders in every way you can imagine and see what works.  Whatever feedback you get you need to rebuild the pitch to cover the needs of your customer.  How do you know when to stop?  When people start paying you a premium for your idea.  Free pilots can kill your company, I mean paying you what your idea is worth.  Pitch, Listen, Fix, Repeat until paid.  Got it?  Good.

And I know I have said it many times in many ways, but it bears repeating.  We created H2NYC and MedStartr to give you a place to pitch your ideas among friends, mentors, customers, investors, and healthcare leaders of all stripes.  If you haven’t got up front at one of our events, then you are missing out. Not sure why? Stay tuned for Rule # 6 then!  Apply to speak at our next event here.

See you there!

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