Untangle Health™ is a growth advisory firm focused on revenue and market share growth in the healthcare space. We partner with growth-oriented companies to uplevel their execution and expand their footprint across healthcare – with a particular emphasis on client acquisition, strategic account uplift, and new market expansion (organic + inorganic).
Due to the nature of our work, we heavily emphasize establishing and growing relationships across the healthcare industry. In our connected world today, we are a simple internet search away from hundreds of options for even simple questions like, “What should we eat tonight?” This content “bloat” extends beyond restaurant and recipe pages and has fully infiltrated the B2B space. Due to this noise, many companies in healthcare continue to lean on existing relationships instead of taking the plunge with a new vendor. This trend is contributing to vendor consolidation efforts, building around fewer, trusted partners who may act as advisors through crowded markets.
We believe that this transition to a trusted advisor is one of the most important strategic moves that any company can make, but it must start from within your current customer base. While the Net New Logos will always be a priority, healthcare is growing and innovating so rapidly that often one of the most impactful growth decisions an organization can make is focusing on the “farm” and growing those relationships that already exist within your portfolio. It is commonly stated in business development that it can be upwards of 5x more costly to lose a current customer than to find a new one. While being costly to lose customers, the upside (as found in a Bain study) shows that increasing customer retention rates by 5% will increase profits by 25% to 95%.
“Increasing customer retention rates by 5% will increase profits by 25% to 95%.”
This is where Untangle’s approach of “Hunting on the Farm” comes into play. We guide our partners on radical prioritization and opportunity assessments to identify incremental growth opportunities within current accounts. Instead of depending on annual renewals and inbound requests as the source for account growth, we retain the active hunting mindset that is more common with new logos. Organizations have a captive audience with their current customer base. These customers are optimal sources of feedback for pain points, use of competitive or complementary products, and sharing unmet needs.
Hunting on the farm is proactively looking for opportunities within your customer base. It translates strategic relationships into mutual growth. With an open mindset and some creative problem-solving, hunting on the farm can apply organic or inorganic strategies to help you and your customers win.
Why do companies struggle with this?
Focusing on hunting on the farm can be a challenge for organizations for many reasons. We are going to focus on the three most common pitfalls:
- For one, companies may have unintentionally pigeonholed themselves: they may have entered the market with a point solution and the client sees them as filling that need without understanding the full scope of potential services. This transactional relationship should be a starting point for relationship development.
- The next area we see our partners struggle is by focusing on being order takers. Focusing only on renewals and inbound requests does not allow for mutual growth conversations. Waiting for the customer to ask for something allows them to stay one step ahead. If they are not communicating their other problems to you, they are more likely to churn.
- The final challenge that we see commonly with our partners who are in a transactional relationship is that they are siloed and only engage stakeholders in one area of the company, lacking the ability and access, to engage with their customers at an executive level. This is exactly where Untangle Health™ and our industry advisory team offer support to uplevel and grow these executive engagements.
What are best practices?
A fundamental part of any strong “hunting on the farm” engagement, whether internal or with clients, is to spend time building a strong account plan. The first step of the account plan involves understanding where you fit within the market. Oftentimes, we are too quick to focus outward on selling what we have, without understanding the true value we are bringing to the market. At Untangle Health™, we execute this through our Readiness Assessment. Once this value plan has been detailed, it is time to start diving into the market analysis and build out the Account Plan. Here at Untangle Health™ we leverage the expertise of many different account management frameworks, such as RCIP (Relationship, Communication, Insight, and Proactivity) as well as Miller Heiman’s Large Account Management Process (LAMP).
The Account Plan (or GTM strategy if it is to be used more broadly) involves:
- Internal Team: Identify your Strengths, Roles, and existing relationships to support your customer
- Trends / Opportunities / Position of your company to identify areas of alignment
- Trends / Opportunities / Position of your customer’s company
- Goal Setting: Set Revenue Targets and Goals for your current account and have your account validate that you are in alignment with their revenue targets
- Build People Map and Define Stakeholder Relationships
- We often like to use terms such as Champion, Sponsor, Anti-Sponsor
- Where does the Customer see themselves in the market? Where does the Customer see your company? (e.g. partner, advisor, vendor)
- How can we get our stakeholders to where they want to be?
- Establish Communication Cadence (Stakeholder – Frequency – Team Owner)
- Define your network effect
In regards to working with your stakeholders, Andrew Sobel in his book It Starts with Clients recommends that you not ask the overused question, “What keeps you up at night?” but rather reframe it to, “What gets you up in the morning and excites you?” This enthusiastic approach to account management will allow you to drive revenue targets and move towards that trusted advisor role.
How do you evaluate success and measure progress?
Once the Account plan has been built, there needs to be accountability metrics put into place. We, along with many of our partners, leverage CRM’s to track engagement, and weekly outcomes, with the intention of achieving the goals set out in the account plan.
As you execute on the above Account plan, your customer accounts will continue to grow but one of the best outcomes is that your customer will become among your highest lead sources for your company. Building those strong relationships allows you to feel comfortable engaging your clients to ask for referrals within their network or partner channels that may be a good fit for your services. Also, one of the strongest forms of lead generation comes from a customer testimonial. These testimonials can range from conference speaking engagements, case studies, or reference calls as you navigate the opportunity pipeline. This is a proven method as the New York Times found that over 65% of all new business comes from referrals and referred customers have 59% higher lifetime value! (Source: Influitive)
Finally, one of the last tips for “hunting on the farm” and relationship building is to make an effort to get onsite with your customers. Coming off the pandemic, many of us spend our days on video conference calls and we can lose sight of the power of face-to-face interaction. We recommend holding Quarterly Business Reviews (QBRs) at least once a quarter with your large accounts and if budget/health and other factors align: it is our recommendation to have these in person. During these meetings, you can build out a roadmap that aligns these shared outcomes and establish a plan to achieve these together.
What if we want to level up?
If you want to strengthen your place in the market by improving your relationships at your most strategic accounts, and utilizing those key logos to attract others who are eager for the same – , please reach out to our team at Untangle Health™ to learn more. We live and breathe health data architecture and growth strategy, with our experience and customer base encompassing the entire healthcare landscape.
Proven Results:
- Strategic Account Management: Untangle Health™ played a pivotal role in guiding the client’s renewal and uplift process, delivering a 15x return on their initial investment with our team.
- Recent Deal Win Example: Untangle Health™ supported a client in a recent renewal emphasizing value-based pricing, achieving a 4x growth in their annual spend compared to the previous year.
- Go-To-Market HCLS Vertical: Untangle Health™ helped a horizontal technology company to double their HCLS market share in just over 24 months
