Podcast
Empowering a Consultative Approach to Marketing
Aaron Hillman
Sr. Director, Global Client and Industry Engagement
On this episode of Healthcare Market Matrix, John Farkas is joined by Aaron Hillman, advisory board member at Ratio, to discuss the intricacies of marketing products and solutions to healthcare enterprises, specifically with a consultative approach. Throughout the episode, John and Aaron emphasize the importance of getting out into the field to gather intelligence in order to effectively meet the market’s unmet needs. And with almost twenty years in the industry, Aaron shares his thoughts on how to assert value propositions through strategic and targeted content.
Show Notes
(0:20) Introducing Aaron Hillman
(2:39) Unifying Growth Efforts with a Consultative Marketing Approach
(8:00) Stewardship as a Consultative Marketer
(13:04) Critical Interactions in the Translation Layer
(25:13)The Importance of Intelligence Gathering
(32:34) Meeting the Needs of the Market
(40:56) Asserting Value Propositions through Content
(52:28) Closing Thoughts
Listen Now
Transcript
Introducing Aaron Hillman
John Farkas:
Greetings everybody, and welcome to Healthcare Market Matrix. I’m your host, John Farkas, and joining me in the Ratio Studios today is my friend and Ratio Advisory Board Member, Aaron Hillman. I need to tell you that Aaron and I were just at HLTH, at the big conference in Las Vegas, and had the chance to intersect several times while we were there. And something I’d want you to know about Aaron is, and from my perspective this says a lot about who Aaron is; every time after Aaron departed a group that we were in together, the people that know Aaron who were in that group made comments, unsolicited comments, that just were talking about how much they like and respect this guy. And I love that. That just says a lot about who Aaron is and what I’ve come to know of him. It’s really true.
So, why are we talking to Aaron today? He has spent a good chunk of his life marketing products and solutions into the healthcare enterprise, including a number of years with Meditech, with Nuance, with GE and now Philips, where he is currently the Senior Director of Global, Client, and Industry Engagement. We’re going to learn what that means, because that’s one of those multi-syllable titles. And in fact, Aaron and I met at HLTH in the Sky Box that Philips had overlooking the convention center floor where he was set up there exclusively above the fray. It was a nice break. But needless to say, Aaron has a lot of experience marketing enterprise level solutions into healthcare, and I know he has some strong tenets that he holds onto regarding how to approach marketing into this space. So we’re going to learn. Let’s welcome Aaron to the platform here. Glad you’re joining us here today, Aaron.
Aaron Hillman:
Thank you so much, John. And I’m flattered. That’s a very kind thing that you’ve shared there, so don’t quite know what to say. But thank you for that and truly my pleasure connecting with you at HLTH and for joining the Ratio advisory board. It’s truly my honor to work with such a group of illustrious folks and you yourself and the ratio team. Of course, thrilled to be here today.
Unifying Growth Efforts with a Consultative Marketing Approach
John Farkas:
Great. Well, thanks. I’m curious, as we jump in here, I know a lot of our conversations have been around the importance of bringing in a consultative element when you’re marketing into this space. And what I know is that there’s organizations that silo product marketing and sales and marketing and have that all segmented. And in my experience, that’s never really a great approach. It has to be a unified effort toward growth. And I think when we talk about bringing a consultative element in, it certainly transcends just a traditional approach to marketing. But what does it mean to be a consultative marketer? What does that approach look like?
Aaron Hillman:
You mentioned briefly my storied career. It’s almost 20 years now, which is a hard number to swallow some days. But I started off in EMR with Meditech back in what I’ll call the first EMR revolution, arguably first and a half. And it’s a really particular thing to talk to the service lines and then also the C-suite. They need different things, but they’re also looking for the same things. Through my career, as I moved from Meditech to Nuance, thought about global solutions marketing really at a very distinct level, but how that played with product, how that played with client success, how it played with implementation, which could or could not be different than client success, and how it played with the sales team. It really helped develop my thinking around this. Through my time at GE, both as a central marketing leader as well as a solutions marketer again globally for deep IT solutions, it embedded very deeply my thinking about how we approach the leadership. Whether it’s departmental, whether it’s IT across the enterprise, or whether it’s truly C-suite enterprise leadership. And now here at Philips, I have that opportunity truly through this engagement role to think about how do we reach these people.
I think you’re exactly right, John, in the sense that there’s no right or wrong way specifically to structure an organization. There’s lots of ways to skin that cat, if you’ll. But I think that exactly to your point, it’s really critical that they align around what the mission is, how to bring this to the clients repeatedly, scalably, and effectively. And I’d argue with cost and time as very specific components of that ideology. And then also, when we talk about the word commercial, most often people think about sales. But as far as I’m concerned, anybody that’s talking to the client-facing realm is commercial.
And so as a marketer, I think about what it means to help provide deep understanding of what it is we’re bringing to bear, what the value is. Not just the feature function fits and starts, the things that go click in the night, it’s the things that help drive outcomes and value for the organization. And to me, when we talk about that, it’s the sales, it’s the marketing, it’s the product, it’s the vision or product roadmap, it’s the client success components. It’s all of these things that come together to bring a holistic story to the client. Whether that’s through marketing or sales or all the things. So I’d almost say it’s being a consultative commercial person. If that makes sense.
John Farkas:
Yeah. I think that that’s really consistent with a lot of my thinking. One of my favorite quotes, it comes from Peter Drucker, and he said, “The purpose of business is to create a customer. And the business enterprise has two and only two basic functions. One is marketing and the other’s innovation. Marketing and innovation produce results. All the rest are costs.” That puts a broad stroke on marketing. It’s commercial. It is the commercialization of the innovation. And if you divide up that segment, if you really intentionally take a big black marker and draw lines in between marketing, sales, and product, you’re going to lose the story. It’s really important to have a throughline through all of that, because that’s what it means to bring something to market after all.
Talk about how that works itself out in the context of… What does it mean to be a consultative marketer?
Stewardship as a Consultative Marketer
Aaron Hillman:
Yeah. I’d argue it’s a circle, maybe not even a throughline. Because there’s no beginning or end to it, especially in terms of the client journey. At some point the client joins in the client journey, but ostensibly that’s a fairly easy osmosis sort of thing through the border of that circle. But once they’re in, the way I think about it is that it’s a continuous loop. And in an ideal world where marketing is bringing back what the clients are saying, sharing out what product or solutions marketing is saying, helping to enable the commercial or sales teams very specifically with all this information… I say commercial because we should all be educated on the materials and the value proposition and the story and what it does. Because at any moment I could step into an elevator and there’s John Farkas waiting for me and says, “Aaron, what are you up to these days?” And how do I think about this thing? I want to be able to actually give you some relevant information.
It’s a feedback loop, for lack of a better way to say it. And it really does require a concerted and ongoing effort and really listening to the clients about what they’re experiencing, what their pain points are, what they need help with, what they want to get to for their organization and the healthcare industry as a whole.
John Farkas:
In that context, when you think about stewarding that, to me, one of the most helpful definitions of the marketing function I’ve heard is that marketing serves as the translation layer. It’s the connective tissue making sure that what we have that needs to find its way into the market, has the translation layer necessary to connect itself to the market. And that is a dynamic. That’s not just a one-way conversation, it’s a back and forth. There’s a lot of both in, and that’s just what you described.
And so, talk a little bit about that dynamic and what are some of the things that you’re doing to care for and steward the story. Because you have a lot of experience with large enterprises. You’re working with big organizations with lots of moving parts and some meta narrative that needs to flow in there mixed with specific solutions. Talk about how you steward the story.
Aaron Hillman:
Well, it’s a couple of different ways. In my current capacity, a lot of what I’m doing is exactly that, is stewarding the story. But also a lot of what I’m doing is the feedback loop. In previous capacities-
John Farkas:
Which is part of that stewardship. I mean, it… Yeah.
Aaron Hillman:
100%. Yeah. In fact, I’d argue it is the critical component to it. We can all tell stories facing out. If we don’t listen and take that back and learn from it. That’s not a loop, it’s an arrow. It’s a vector. And so, I think that that’s a really interesting thing. As a solutions marketer, the responsibility was the same. I’d argue that any marketer and even commercial person is really an engagement manager, an engagement leader, because the whole point is to connect with the client and the market to understand what’s going on.
In terms of stewardship and how we go about that, there’s quite a few different ways. Going to an event like HLTH is a great example, where you have planned meetings but you also surreptitiously meet people on the floor, you listen to what thought leadership is being shared and you learn from those things. There’s thousands of opportunities for that throughout the year. There’s also lots of publications and trade, and then of course there’s actual visits with clients onsite. And to me there’s nothing more valuable than actually going and seeing how a client is working, what it is that they’re going through. They may be able to tell you about it a little bit on the floor or over dinner or through a nice conversation over a cup of coffee, but until you experience it, until you see it firsthand, I think that’s really important.
And as marketers I think sometimes we forget about that, because we get so stuck in producing content and all the things that also come from marketing. And so, it’s important to get out in the field and experience that as well.
Lastly, I’d say there’s lots of additional opportunities around learning from providers, whether it’s the thought leadership or content they put out in the world through tools like LinkedIn or the other healthcare trade publications. But organizing yourself focus groups and ad boards, proprietary events; all sorts of things like that really provide the opportunity to steward that information back and forth between the client and the internal org, and vice versa.
Critical Interactions in the Translation Layer
John Farkas:
Yeah. As you were talking, there were several things that came to mind about the critical nature of getting out in the field. The reality of what we are talking about marketing is, when we’re talking about healthcare solutions, it can often get pretty removed. There’s a lot of technical, there’s a lot of specifications, there’s a lot of integrations; there’s all those tricky parts. And at the end of the day, Philips. You’re talking a lot about imaging solutions. These are things that are peering into people to understand what is going on in their being that has implications for how the rest of their life will play itself out. No small thing. I mean, that is an intimate and critical interaction. As a marketer who’s part of the translation layer, having eyes on that simple reality, I’ve got to think is really important. And holding that front and center is really a critical component.
I know you’re getting ready to go to RSNA and preparing for that gigantic festival of radiology. I’m curious, as you’re thinking about that and carrying this idea of being… How does Philips cross that bridge? How do you all look at bringing that reality home?
Aaron Hillman:
Well, I mean, Philips has been doing this for over 100 years, right.
John Farkas:
A long time.
Aaron Hillman:
It’s a long time. And what I’d comment on is I know we’re very commonly known for imaging and diagnostics, but I guess what I’d call it is an integrated diagnostic journey, which includes all the other critical data relevant to patient care. That’s something that’s actually very interesting, is we really do carry across the continuum all the different things, from, as you say, the modalities, the diagnostic devices, through monitoring and remote patient monitoring, and emergent care and care management, and the analytics and performance oriented tools to understand all this data, as well as the integration layers. It’s really a complex suite.
And RSNA is a really interesting thing, because everybody in the healthcare world knows about RSNA to some degree. It’s, as you say, this monstrous thing that takes up Chicago in itself in its entirety for a few days every year right after Thanksgiving. And it really is, in my opinion, I think, changed its focus a little bit. It used to be specifically about the modalities and the PAC software and the vendor neutral archives that sat under that and the infrastructure. My opinion is that it’s morphing, as are most healthcare events, to be more innovative, more focused on the broader care journey. And yes, of course a high focus on the modalities themselves and how we create that integrated diagnostic journey for the patient, but it’s really more about live predictive patient insights across the care journey and how all this things come together to actually help provide clinicians with the right support to make the right decisions.
I think it’s important also, at least for me, to share a personal philosophy, which is that everybody has a reason they do a thing that they do. I’ve been a patient and I’ve worked in healthcare and I’ve got clinicians in my family. And at the end of the day, I think for me at least, it’s really important to keep that in mind, because I know that’s what our healthcare systems are keeping in mind. How do I serve my clinicians better? How do I serve my patients better? How do I drive overall holistic health, not just in acute, but as we think about more holistic healthcare in and out of the home, that’s the future of where we’re going.
And so, to your question, John, Philips is looking at all of those pieces, but I think all of the care providers, which is really the engagement portion, are thinking about all those things too. And so, speaking to them and understanding what their future focus is, future meaning next week or next year or next five years, are all relevant things to think about.
John Farkas:
Yeah, I think when I’m considering… I’m loving this conversation, because it’s bringing me back to some fundamental things that I need to make sure I’m holding. When I think about the idea of translation layer and I think about what we’re doing in the context of healthcare, and I think about what marketing’s role is in that, every sale has an emotional component. Everything we bring to market has… I mean, we are human beings after all. It’s not all about specifications and ROI equations. It’s a lot about that. Let’s not lose that. I mean, business is business. And there are reasons people make decisions, especially when you’re comparing two entities that are remarkably similar in their spec. There could be an emotional side of this. And an organization who’s carrying a soul element into the equation is understanding what the people mean, understanding what the impact is, understanding those elements. That can be a difference maker. And how you carry that and host it and serve in the translation function to bring that forward is an opportunity. I’ve got to think. Are there any examples of how you’ve brought that idea to roost in your work?
Aaron Hillman:
Yeah. It’s a great lead. So in short, I think that’s a lot of what the advisory and focus groups are really about. And we get very focused on those when we bring those to bear, because we have sometimes very specific questions and sometimes a little bit broader conversations. What I really want to do in that moment is ask. I think the number one thing I can do there is ask what they’re thinking about and how they’re thinking about the next steps about whatever that context is. And an example might be around data and integration, for example. We’ve all been in the space of trying to figure out how to bring our data together into a single place to be usable from an analytics and comprehension perspective, to look at patient throughput workflow, storage; whatever it may be right. And all of that translates to efficiency and cost and patient care and clinician satisfaction.
I’d argue, and a key CIO cited this earlier this year, I won’t name names, we have the same problem today that we’ve had for the past 20-plus years, since we started creating data silos. Creating a way to analyze and understand all that information at a very basic level through whether it’s artificial intelligence, or an algorithm that brings these things together, or simply providing an integration tool that maybe a healthcare system hasn’t had before or didn’t exist before, is a way that we can provide assistance as the vendor side to this healthcare systems that are trying to put these puzzle pieces together.
John Farkas:
Yeah. Yeah. Sure.
Aaron Hillman:
Did I answer that, John? Okay.
John Farkas:
Let’s push a little farther into the consultative grid. When you’re looking at the teams that you’re working with and commercialization, put a pragmatic layer on what consultative looks like. What does it look like as you are interacting with a buyer target? And bringing the team to bear and looking at how you engage those entities, what does consultative… how does it work itself out?
Aaron Hillman:
I think it depends on the situation. If we’re talking an individual client, it requires knowing who the key stakeholders are at that client. It requires doing the discovery to learn about what’s going on at that client, what their needs are, what they have for existing solutions, where their gaps are. That means talking to them. It means having an actual conversation, and probably with multiple people in multiple care settings or service line settings or IT settings. You really can’t do the whole process justice without that level of discovery. And then it literally means working through the end-to-end process of what do they need, when do they need it, how do they need it, where is it going to go, who is it going to apply to, what are the key stakeholders. Every healthcare organization has a different process for procurement: who gets involved at what levels, dollar amounts being spent, how that stuff gets approved. It’s some similar, some different everywhere.
If we’re talking about on a larger scale, let’s say RSNA is a good example, privacy is a very real concern. So as a vendor we get this list of everybody who’s coming, but we don’t have contact information. And so, we have to do our own diligence to say, how do we want to reach these people? What’s the best way to get in touch with them? We have to cross-reference against our own information and we have to learn really the best way to communicate with them, to think about how we do that discovery. And then the process begins from discovery through to closure. Some of it might be thinking about how we move a sale more quickly. Some of it might be about how we resolve a challenge that the client is currently having or concern they have. Some of it might be my hair’s on fire and please help me immediately.
All of it starts with discovery and understanding who you’re going to be speaking to and what their needs are at the beginning, and then from there we can begin the conversation. And to your point earlier, it might include an ROI or a TCO. It might include a solution overview to help them understand how it’s going to fix specifically the problem that they’re trying to overcome. It might be training sessions. It might not be selling anything at all, because sometimes selling things isn’t the answer. And forgive me, commercial people out in the world, but standing at somebody’s elbow sometimes and showing them how a thing works from a client services perspective or client success perspective is just what the doctor ordered. And so, I think it’s understanding what is needed to make the situation right.
The Importance of Intelligence Gathering
John Farkas:
Yeah. This gets at something that we’ve heard just surface very clearly and prevalently in the conversations we’ve had with healthcare system leaders in this very studio. A lot of what we heard is, don’t come to me with your blanket messaging. Don’t come to me without knowing me. And nobody got time for that. They’re some of the most pressed, challenged human beings on the planet, super resource constrained, super time constrained, and they don’t have time to sit through a 15-minute vendor spiel that the first three quarters of which has nothing to do with the specific problems they’re trying to solve. I’ve heard that refrain multiple times in the context of the conversations we’ve had here, and that presents a real problem, my estimation, for marketing in its conventional shell. I think that the way we’ve done it is you come up with a message and you throw it out to the market.
Part of what is needing to happen that I’m hearing really clearly, and this is why it’s important to break down the silos and have a collaborative growth conversation as opposed to a segmented tactical conversation; how are we going to go after X, Y, Z health system? What do we know about them? What do we know about their needs? What are they facing right now that’s pertinent, and how are we going to get pertinent information about their specific needs into their ecosystem for them to ingest and respond to? That’s not an easy thing to do.
And the thing that’s important, unless you have just a solution that is a one size fits all, which are so few and far between right now, the spray and pray days are done. I think this consultative, this knowing, this tailored approach that has a lot more to do with intelligence gathering and collaborative work on how we’re going to communicate out to a prospect, seems like an increasingly important discipline to get familiar with and carry forward.
Aaron Hillman:
Yeah, without a doubt. I’d add something to it, and you touched on it as part of your flattery, but it’s truly about building the relationships. And to me it’s about learning the people. Because as you say, you could have the widget that is perfect for everybody. Like you said, very few and far between, and/or doesn’t exist at all. And that’s fine. Because it shouldn’t. It’s hard. Everybody’s a little different and that’s a good thing. But to build trust and to really be able to get deep and understand what it is that is needed, relationships matter. Whether it’s at a one-to-one level or whether that’s a strategic vendor, healthcare system provider partnership level, or somewhere in between, or both. But to me, the whole thing is about trust and how we can really support person to person and vendor to provider and provider to patient. Because in the end, the patients have to trust, when they’re going into the healthcare systems too, that they’re going to get well and that they’re going to get the help they need, and that’s scary too.
And so, I think that the chain of trust actually goes both directions, and it’s really important to think about how we partner to drive to the future too. Because you’ve got to solve the problems of today, but we’ve also got to solve for the problems of tomorrow, which includes thinking about how we continue to responsibly and sustainably deploy new artificial intelligence tools or predictive algorithms, or how do we co-develop with providers and healthcare systems to understand really what they need at the point they need it. Do I need a pneumothorax detecting device at the point of portable x-ray? Yeah, probably. And that exists, by the way. Do I need something that’s going to look at arrhythmias in stroke patients and tell me a week from now if they’re going to likely have another arrhythmia which is going to cause another clot and another stroke? Yeah, definitely. And by the way, that exists.
That’s the kind of stuff that partnership and trust and the relationships can help build and will further the cause of the whole process. And so, to the point of this whole conversation, that’s how we get consultative, is learning and understanding and building those trusting relationships to have these deeper conversations to get to the root of what is needed.
John Farkas:
Talk about some of the challenges, because I know that if you’re carrying the banner, I know some of the challenges or things you’ve encountered. What are some of the challenges about breaking down the traditional silos between marketing and sales and product? I mean, that’s a world you live in constantly. I maybe even saw you living in it at HLTH. But talk about what some of the practical challenges are at the end of the day.
Aaron Hillman:
So, I mean, there’s nothing new in working in a commercial organization in terms of breaking down those silos. I’d actually even argue it’s the same thing as my last point, which is building the relationships and building the trust and then leadership, particularly senior leadership, that have the line of sight and oversight of all of those things that come together within a particular business is super-duper helpful. And I think it’s really important to lead by example. I think it’s important to broker those relationships between the different teams, and same thing that clients expect from a healthcare vendor. I think accountability is really important.
And so I think to me, breaking down those silos is about communicating and doing the things together and not working separately. And that builds not only the trust and the value, but also will yield results, which everybody likes. So I think in the end it becomes a win-win-win when we endeavor to do those things together, and I think everybody sees that.
Meeting the Needs of the Market
John Farkas:
You may have just inadvertently coined a term, a healthcare provendor. I like that. There was parts of that I like. Yeah, it’s really, really true. I think that that level of cooperation is… The thing that I work with a lot with our clients is to help instill a different ideology in how they approach the market. It really is. We are one team with one objective. We have a meaningful solution that can transform things in meaningful ways. And if we have it broken down into siloed objectives, you’re going to have siloed factions. If you can figure out what it means to build combined objectives that are inherently collaborative and cooperative, then that’s an opportunity where everybody starts seeing this as a combined opportunity. This is about growth and this is about how we are going to meet the needs of a market together. That’s super easier said than done, because we are bucking a lot of tradition.
But if we’re looking at the nature of this market today, it just demands it. Because again, if we’re hearing things from the buyers like, “I am awash in a sea of potential solutions, none of which are presented to me in a way that understand me really, and I don’t have time,” how do we solve for that?
Aaron Hillman:
Well, it’s interesting, because I’d argue there’s always going to be some of that. And some vendors are solving for that and they’re seeing success, and some vendors are not and they’re maybe having a hard time. Maybe they’re not. Maybe they’ve got such a big client base that it’s perfectly fine. But I think you’re right. I think much like any other, let’s call it consumer, people are getting savvier and health systems are getting savvier and asking deeper questions and longer term questions around partnership and value and outcomes. And so, I think that that is solving that problem I think you’ve already done. We’ve got to create that loop of feedback and engagement and consultative thinking and support and service. But I think that we adapt to the new status quo, or you don’t. And if you don’t, you run the risk of not making it through that.
John Farkas:
Yeah, I think that that’s the question, the question that I think that marketing people need to look at. I think marketing people have an opportunity right now, and that is to lead what I consider to be the concert. We have a concert that we need to bring to the market. It’s intricate and needs to be well performed. And because we’re the translation layer, because we’re the point at which the initial connection gets made, we get to figure out how best to orchestrate that and work with our teams to help them understand what needs to happen for that initial connection to effectively get made.
And so, the opportunity in that is, okay, sales team, what is your on ground intel telling you about X, Y, Z opportunity that we can apply in some detailed channel marketing that might have us a shot at getting through to this health system. What do we know? How are we going to bring that forward? And coordinating those efforts in a way to play the concert that people actually want to hear. Make sure that it’s tuned to their particular musical tastes.
Let’s turn this and get a step more practical perhaps and talk about channels. What are the channels that you’re seeing emerge right now and that you’re pursuing? Talk about what that looks like. What’s the trend?
Aaron Hillman:
Yeah. There’s quite a few, and actually what we’re doing here today is a really great example. A podcast is a great opportunity to provide really interesting thought leadership and overarching content to a lot of people in a relatively facile way that is easily absorbable. Whether they’re listening while they drive. That they don’t need to be looking at us. They can listen to what we’re saying just fine.
John Farkas:
They’ll be missing out if they don’t, let’s face it. But…
Aaron Hillman:
For sure. There’s no question. But the point remains. I’ve got to be honest, I still love a good webinar, because we reach huge amounts of people and it’s evergreen. Until that piece of content is no longer truly relevant, it can continue to be shared. Whether it’s re-watched or watched anew. I think that’s really valuable. I think events are changing dramatically, how we approach that. And to a phrase you said earlier, it’s no longer spray and pray. You can’t just show up to a trade show and expect people are going to come to your booth and ask you questions anymore.
John Farkas:
Yeah.
Aaron Hillman:
It’s about pre-planning, doing the discovery that we talked about, setting appointments, and having a plan. For each of the accounts. And then of course the overarching strategy around those is, what are the right places to play now? What are the right hot topics? What are the right organizations to partner with? And so, I spent a lot of time thinking about that and working with the sales teams and the clients to understand where they’re going and what they’re hearing and what they want to do. So if I went out in the world today and I said, “Hey, Southern California healthcare systems. Where are you going to go in 2024? Which events are you actually going to attend, and what is it you want to learn?” They might not have the very specific list, but they’d have a pretty good idea. And then some might get added on and some might drop off. But they’re not bringing the 30 people to HIMSS that they used to. It’s just not cost effective anymore and not needed. Other channels, certainly digital. Social is really important. Looking at how we optimize for search is really critical. Paid social is actually a really interesting proposition. And then you can get creative with some of that too. Do we do-
John Farkas:
That’s where targeting can be very-
Aaron Hillman:
… geo targeting? Yeah, exactly.
John Farkas:
… very effective.
Aaron Hillman:
Yep, it is. And you have to know what to say to the right people and where they’re looking. So market research, market intelligence and analysis becomes a really critical part of the marketing machine. One of those pretty good-sized cogs in that marketing machine. And I think really understanding that information becomes truly relevant to understanding what channels. And I might do one thing for a very large trade show, and I might do something entirely different for something very small or hyper-focused or very network oriented without a booth. So there’s lots of ways to go about it. It’s really figuring out what will work for that particular instance and who you’re trying to reach in that moment.
Asserting Value Propositions through Content
John Farkas:
Yep. That makes sense. As you’re thinking about the creation of content… Because we just talked about webinars, and I tend to think right now, another thing we hear very clearly from the folks that we’re talking to in the C-suite of healthcare systems, so important to lead with a very clear value assertion. This is not about your specs, it’s not about the things that… Those are downstream important. The first equation is, what’s this going to do from a value perspective and how clear is that and critical is that? Because I’m balancing a whole set of critical components right now and I got to give deference to the most critical, most compelling. So when you’re talking about the creation of content and how you are approaching that, what are some of the ways that Philips at least is thinking about that part of the strategy?
Aaron Hillman:
Well again, I think it depends on what we’re trying to do with it. I’ll give you a good example. Just before HLTH, our enterprise informatics business leader and chief innovation and strategy officer, Shez Partovi, released a blog post. Go out there and find it, folks. You can just search for Shez and you’ll find it. S-H-E-Z. But it’s really thought leadership and an interesting piece talking about new technology out in the world as it pertained not only to health but some of the other big events: RSNA and Arab Health and HIMSS and ECR and things that will follow. It really is thinking about what the right person or people is for that audience. So Shez does great thought leadership, but if I’m doing a webinar, they probably don’t want to listen to Philips people talk the whole time. Right?
John Farkas:
Yeah.
Aaron Hillman:
And so, I actually want to work with clients.
John Farkas:
Because that’s getting to the value. That’s getting into the value in a hurry. I’m not interested in Philips talking about Philips. I’m interested in Philip helping us into what their value is.
Aaron Hillman:
Yeah. And also probably understanding from credible sources like their peers. So if I bring a CIO on to talk about their thought leadership and experience, whether it’s with a particular solution, or whether it’s with solving a problem that is not unique to that individual healthcare system, that becomes a really relevant conversation to a much wider swath of interested learners. As a marketer, we should be thinking one to many 9 times out of 10. There’s a really good opportunity to get very narrow and focus on account-based marketing, as you said so well before. But a webinar is a broad reach, so you’ve got to tell a story that’s interesting to lots of different people. And 9 times out of 10 it’s not me or Shez or one of our business leaders talking, it’s talking with. Some of the most successful panels I’ve ever seen are highly interactive conversations amongst multiple healthcare systems and maybe one or two key leaders from a vendor. And I think those lead to really provocative, really thought-inducing conversations.
John Farkas:
Yeah. I think that that’s… I’m at the point now where I don’t think healthcare technology companies need to spend any time… I’m about to make an emphatic statement that I’m willing to live by. I don’t think they need to spend any time creating content that doesn’t have a very strong presence of third party validation. Nobody’s got time to just read another thing about a company telling us why they’re so great. There’s too much of that out there. Again, value is important. And don’t take my word for it, listen to somebody who has experienced that value directly and is excited about talking about it. Because that’s going to at least open the door of trust. It gives me the opportunity to say, “Okay, there’s a peer of mine who’s saying this isn’t BS. This is something they’ve actually realized in their world.” That’s a hard bar. I mean, that’s a high bar to set, because the easy thing is to talk about yourself. I mean, it’s far easier.
But as you mentioned, it comes back to those relationships. And if you have a relationship where you’ve won the trust and had the opportunities, put emphasis on that and figure out how to get them into a conversation that helps you underscore your value, and how you can tell that story in a way that might have some strong connect points to a bunch of different other similar entities and build from there.
But don’t put out another blog article that doesn’t bring that component with it. I think it’s really important, especially when you have an innovation in the market, I think it’s really important that you work hard to help people know how to think about it. Because that’s a gap technologists often leave is, here’s innovation, you should love innovation, and we’re not going to help you across how they think about the innovation. But if you can do that by bringing along an early adopter who’s realized the value of that and can help them know how to think about it, that’s going to be a big change. It’s going to be a big transition.
Aaron Hillman:
Yeah, I think that’s right. And data is always very supportive. I also think, just a little devil’s advocate here for you, John-
John Farkas:
Yeah, bring it.
Aaron Hillman:
… I think you’re right 99% of the time. I emphatically agree with you. Data is critical. Support and credibility in your statements is critical. But I also think that there are moments for vision, whether it’s created from a vendor side or a provider side. Because I want to hear that from them too. They live it every day. What is the thing that you can imagine but isn’t real yet? That we say we’re thinking about this, or this is what we think we’re seeing out in the world, or we think the next trend is going to be. Where there isn’t an actual live solution yet, or there is no defensible data to support it yet, because the thing doesn’t exist. I think there is a time and a moment for that as well, and it might be through a blog post and it might be through a webinar and it might be from standing at a stage at an event, or it might just be sitting in a healthcare system CIO office saying, “Let’s figure out the next thing.” That happens too. And that’s again, back to your point and then my point, which is ultimately the relationship and the trust and that partnership that gets created over the course of time through those trusted relationships.
John Farkas:
Yeah, I completely agree with you. I think the opportunity in that, even to push it a little farther, when you are bringing that vision, tying it to a real actual scenario where a problem exists, a problem that has real lives and real people associated with it, and springboarding off of that to say here’s the vision, I think is the ultimate way to bring it. Not just bring it from a void, but bring it from a real world scenario that says here’s where the pain and suffering is right now, and here’s an example of how it’s working out and what it’s costing, and here’s what the future is going to mean and look like. I think that if you can do that, that helps bring credence in a way that can be really strong.
Aaron Hillman:
Yeah, completely agree.
John Farkas:
I’m curious, Aaron, as you are framing your own point of view, what are some of the things that you’re soaking in right now? What are you reading? What is informing your view on things right now?
Aaron Hillman:
Yeah, there’s quite a few things. I try to keep current on all the healthcare publications that we all read every day. And I won’t go through the litany of what those are.
John Farkas:
Is there one or two that you’re finding as favorites?
Aaron Hillman:
I like Healthcare IT. I read Becker’s. I like the blend of trends and then also the most current holy cow, this is happening right now between the two of those. I assiduously read the CHIME information and I sit on one of their boards around data analytics as well, and I’m grateful to be a party to that organization. I think it goes back to something I said earlier, which is I want to learn from the clients, and I want to read or understand where they’re getting their information and where they’re sharing their information.
And so, it’s those publications and those sources and the events, but I really do personally try to attend a lot of the ad boards and the focus groups that we run, because I want to hear directly and I want to probe and ask questions in the moment. I’ve had the privilege of maybe being at 15 or 20 of those this year through a variety of different places. And to me, that’s how I really stay current with what the healthcare providers are asking for and what they’re thinking about. And I think that’s a really relevant thing for a marketer to do, it’s a really relevant thing for our business leaders to do.
And they do participate in each of these different things. We try to record them for posterity’s sake. Don’t ask, I won’t share the recordings with you. But we can go back and listen and understand what people were saying in those moments. Because writing notes is a great way to capture and solidify information in my brain, and in all of our minds if that’s the way you learn, but hearing it again in their words often is a thing that’s super helpful. And so, I think there’s lots of ways people learn and understand what is going on out in the world. I think finding the thing that works for you and is applicable to the work that you’re specifically doing, either at that moment, or over the course of the year, or in your planning for the next year, is also a bit of an individualized endeavor.
Closing Thoughts
John Farkas:
Yeah, for sure. That makes great sense. What else haven’t we covered? Any final thoughts here as we come up on our little curfew?
Aaron Hillman:
Look, I think the short of it is, we’ve touched on a lot of really interesting points today. And again, thank you so much for having me here and also for having me on the board with Ratio. I love this mission. I think in the end we’re all trying to help.
John Farkas:
That’s right.
Aaron Hillman:
Right? And in our world today, that’s so very needed and, I think, not a think. So many people are going through such a hard time out in the world, whether it’s in Israel and Palestine, whether that’s struggling for healthcare or being able to afford basic care. It’s a struggle out there. And so, all of the things that we do as healthcare marketers or healthcare vendors or providers, I think it’s really important to acknowledge and try to continue helping in whatever capacity that is that we’re doing. And we can do that in our personal lives, we can do that in our professional lives. I think it’s really important to just remember what we’re here trying to do, which is help the patients in the end. And so for me, that’s the key message that I take away from all of this, is what we’re trying to do. That’s what I’m trying to do. And I don’t touch them with gloved hands or a respirator or a modality, but in the end we’re all contributing. So for me, that’s the message to take away.
John Farkas:
And a great takeaway. I mean, it does come down to the fact we’re not just in this to bring more tech into the world. It’s about helping caregivers give care. And at the end of the day, if we’re doing that well and helping those equations come resolved in better ways, that’s really essential. And holding that true as a north star as we’re looking at these marketing efforts and how we’re bringing things across, is going to humanize this world that we’re in, and that’s an increasingly important thing. As technology continues to push farther and farther into the equation, holding what’s true in the human equation is increasingly important.
Aaron Hillman, thank you so much for joining us here and having this conversation. I’m really grateful and look forward to more of what you are going to bring forward in the context of Philips and the road ahead. Thanks for joining us here on Healthcare Market Matrix.
Aaron Hillman:
Thank you, John. Have a great day, everybody out there.
John Farkas:
Healthcare Market Matrix is a Ratio original podcast. If you enjoyed today’s episode, then jump over to healthcaremarketmatrix.com and subscribe, and we’d really appreciate your support in the form of a five-star rating on your favorite podcast platform. It does make a difference. Also, while you’re there, you can become a part of the Healthcare Market Matrix community and get access to courses and content that’s created just for you by signing up for InsightSquared, a monthly newsletter dedicated to bringing you the latest health tech marketing insights right to your inbox.
Ratio is an award-winning marketing agency headquartered in the Nashville, Tennessee. We operate at the intersection of brand and growth marketing to equip companies with strategies to create meaningful connections with the healthcare market and ultimately drive growth. Want to know more? Go to goratio.com. That’s G-O-R-A-T-I-O.com. And we’ll see you at noon Central next week for an all new episode from our team at Ratio Studios. Stay healthy.
Transcript (custom)
Introducing Aaron Hillman
John Farkas:
Greetings everybody, and welcome to Healthcare Market Matrix. I’m your host, John Farkas, and joining me in the Ratio Studios today is my friend and Ratio Advisory Board Member, Aaron Hillman. I need to tell you that Aaron and I were just at HLTH, at the big conference in Las Vegas, and had the chance to intersect several times while we were there. And something I’d want you to know about Aaron is, and from my perspective this says a lot about who Aaron is; every time after Aaron departed a group that we were in together, the people that know Aaron who were in that group made comments, unsolicited comments, that just were talking about how much they like and respect this guy. And I love that. That just says a lot about who Aaron is and what I’ve come to know of him. It’s really true.
So, why are we talking to Aaron today? He has spent a good chunk of his life marketing products and solutions into the healthcare enterprise, including a number of years with Meditech, with Nuance, with GE and now Philips, where he is currently the Senior Director of Global, Client, and Industry Engagement. We’re going to learn what that means, because that’s one of those multi-syllable titles. And in fact, Aaron and I met at HLTH in the Sky Box that Philips had overlooking the convention center floor where he was set up there exclusively above the fray. It was a nice break. But needless to say, Aaron has a lot of experience marketing enterprise level solutions into healthcare, and I know he has some strong tenets that he holds onto regarding how to approach marketing into this space. So we’re going to learn. Let’s welcome Aaron to the platform here. Glad you’re joining us here today, Aaron.
Aaron Hillman:
Thank you so much, John. And I’m flattered. That’s a very kind thing that you’ve shared there, so don’t quite know what to say. But thank you for that and truly my pleasure connecting with you at HLTH and for joining the Ratio advisory board. It’s truly my honor to work with such a group of illustrious folks and you yourself and the ratio team. Of course, thrilled to be here today.
Unifying Growth Efforts with a Consultative Marketing Approach
John Farkas:
Great. Well, thanks. I’m curious, as we jump in here, I know a lot of our conversations have been around the importance of bringing in a consultative element when you’re marketing into this space. And what I know is that there’s organizations that silo product marketing and sales and marketing and have that all segmented. And in my experience, that’s never really a great approach. It has to be a unified effort toward growth. And I think when we talk about bringing a consultative element in, it certainly transcends just a traditional approach to marketing. But what does it mean to be a consultative marketer? What does that approach look like?
Aaron Hillman:
You mentioned briefly my storied career. It’s almost 20 years now, which is a hard number to swallow some days. But I started off in EMR with Meditech back in what I’ll call the first EMR revolution, arguably first and a half. And it’s a really particular thing to talk to the service lines and then also the C-suite. They need different things, but they’re also looking for the same things. Through my career, as I moved from Meditech to Nuance, thought about global solutions marketing really at a very distinct level, but how that played with product, how that played with client success, how it played with implementation, which could or could not be different than client success, and how it played with the sales team. It really helped develop my thinking around this. Through my time at GE, both as a central marketing leader as well as a solutions marketer again globally for deep IT solutions, it embedded very deeply my thinking about how we approach the leadership. Whether it’s departmental, whether it’s IT across the enterprise, or whether it’s truly C-suite enterprise leadership. And now here at Philips, I have that opportunity truly through this engagement role to think about how do we reach these people.
I think you’re exactly right, John, in the sense that there’s no right or wrong way specifically to structure an organization. There’s lots of ways to skin that cat, if you’ll. But I think that exactly to your point, it’s really critical that they align around what the mission is, how to bring this to the clients repeatedly, scalably, and effectively. And I’d argue with cost and time as very specific components of that ideology. And then also, when we talk about the word commercial, most often people think about sales. But as far as I’m concerned, anybody that’s talking to the client-facing realm is commercial.
And so as a marketer, I think about what it means to help provide deep understanding of what it is we’re bringing to bear, what the value is. Not just the feature function fits and starts, the things that go click in the night, it’s the things that help drive outcomes and value for the organization. And to me, when we talk about that, it’s the sales, it’s the marketing, it’s the product, it’s the vision or product roadmap, it’s the client success components. It’s all of these things that come together to bring a holistic story to the client. Whether that’s through marketing or sales or all the things. So I’d almost say it’s being a consultative commercial person. If that makes sense.
John Farkas:
Yeah. I think that that’s really consistent with a lot of my thinking. One of my favorite quotes, it comes from Peter Drucker, and he said, “The purpose of business is to create a customer. And the business enterprise has two and only two basic functions. One is marketing and the other’s innovation. Marketing and innovation produce results. All the rest are costs.” That puts a broad stroke on marketing. It’s commercial. It is the commercialization of the innovation. And if you divide up that segment, if you really intentionally take a big black marker and draw lines in between marketing, sales, and product, you’re going to lose the story. It’s really important to have a throughline through all of that, because that’s what it means to bring something to market after all.
Talk about how that works itself out in the context of… What does it mean to be a consultative marketer?
Stewardship as a Consultative Marketer
Aaron Hillman:
Yeah. I’d argue it’s a circle, maybe not even a throughline. Because there’s no beginning or end to it, especially in terms of the client journey. At some point the client joins in the client journey, but ostensibly that’s a fairly easy osmosis sort of thing through the border of that circle. But once they’re in, the way I think about it is that it’s a continuous loop. And in an ideal world where marketing is bringing back what the clients are saying, sharing out what product or solutions marketing is saying, helping to enable the commercial or sales teams very specifically with all this information… I say commercial because we should all be educated on the materials and the value proposition and the story and what it does. Because at any moment I could step into an elevator and there’s John Farkas waiting for me and says, “Aaron, what are you up to these days?” And how do I think about this thing? I want to be able to actually give you some relevant information.
It’s a feedback loop, for lack of a better way to say it. And it really does require a concerted and ongoing effort and really listening to the clients about what they’re experiencing, what their pain points are, what they need help with, what they want to get to for their organization and the healthcare industry as a whole.
John Farkas:
In that context, when you think about stewarding that, to me, one of the most helpful definitions of the marketing function I’ve heard is that marketing serves as the translation layer. It’s the connective tissue making sure that what we have that needs to find its way into the market, has the translation layer necessary to connect itself to the market. And that is a dynamic. That’s not just a one-way conversation, it’s a back and forth. There’s a lot of both in, and that’s just what you described.
And so, talk a little bit about that dynamic and what are some of the things that you’re doing to care for and steward the story. Because you have a lot of experience with large enterprises. You’re working with big organizations with lots of moving parts and some meta narrative that needs to flow in there mixed with specific solutions. Talk about how you steward the story.
Aaron Hillman:
Well, it’s a couple of different ways. In my current capacity, a lot of what I’m doing is exactly that, is stewarding the story. But also a lot of what I’m doing is the feedback loop. In previous capacities-
John Farkas:
Which is part of that stewardship. I mean, it… Yeah.
Aaron Hillman:
100%. Yeah. In fact, I’d argue it is the critical component to it. We can all tell stories facing out. If we don’t listen and take that back and learn from it. That’s not a loop, it’s an arrow. It’s a vector. And so, I think that that’s a really interesting thing. As a solutions marketer, the responsibility was the same. I’d argue that any marketer and even commercial person is really an engagement manager, an engagement leader, because the whole point is to connect with the client and the market to understand what’s going on.
In terms of stewardship and how we go about that, there’s quite a few different ways. Going to an event like HLTH is a great example, where you have planned meetings but you also surreptitiously meet people on the floor, you listen to what thought leadership is being shared and you learn from those things. There’s thousands of opportunities for that throughout the year. There’s also lots of publications and trade, and then of course there’s actual visits with clients onsite. And to me there’s nothing more valuable than actually going and seeing how a client is working, what it is that they’re going through. They may be able to tell you about it a little bit on the floor or over dinner or through a nice conversation over a cup of coffee, but until you experience it, until you see it firsthand, I think that’s really important.
And as marketers I think sometimes we forget about that, because we get so stuck in producing content and all the things that also come from marketing. And so, it’s important to get out in the field and experience that as well.
Lastly, I’d say there’s lots of additional opportunities around learning from providers, whether it’s the thought leadership or content they put out in the world through tools like LinkedIn or the other healthcare trade publications. But organizing yourself focus groups and ad boards, proprietary events; all sorts of things like that really provide the opportunity to steward that information back and forth between the client and the internal org, and vice versa.
Critical Interactions in the Translation Layer
John Farkas:
Yeah. As you were talking, there were several things that came to mind about the critical nature of getting out in the field. The reality of what we are talking about marketing is, when we’re talking about healthcare solutions, it can often get pretty removed. There’s a lot of technical, there’s a lot of specifications, there’s a lot of integrations; there’s all those tricky parts. And at the end of the day, Philips. You’re talking a lot about imaging solutions. These are things that are peering into people to understand what is going on in their being that has implications for how the rest of their life will play itself out. No small thing. I mean, that is an intimate and critical interaction. As a marketer who’s part of the translation layer, having eyes on that simple reality, I’ve got to think is really important. And holding that front and center is really a critical component.
I know you’re getting ready to go to RSNA and preparing for that gigantic festival of radiology. I’m curious, as you’re thinking about that and carrying this idea of being… How does Philips cross that bridge? How do you all look at bringing that reality home?
Aaron Hillman:
Well, I mean, Philips has been doing this for over 100 years, right.
John Farkas:
A long time.
Aaron Hillman:
It’s a long time. And what I’d comment on is I know we’re very commonly known for imaging and diagnostics, but I guess what I’d call it is an integrated diagnostic journey, which includes all the other critical data relevant to patient care. That’s something that’s actually very interesting, is we really do carry across the continuum all the different things, from, as you say, the modalities, the diagnostic devices, through monitoring and remote patient monitoring, and emergent care and care management, and the analytics and performance oriented tools to understand all this data, as well as the integration layers. It’s really a complex suite.
And RSNA is a really interesting thing, because everybody in the healthcare world knows about RSNA to some degree. It’s, as you say, this monstrous thing that takes up Chicago in itself in its entirety for a few days every year right after Thanksgiving. And it really is, in my opinion, I think, changed its focus a little bit. It used to be specifically about the modalities and the PAC software and the vendor neutral archives that sat under that and the infrastructure. My opinion is that it’s morphing, as are most healthcare events, to be more innovative, more focused on the broader care journey. And yes, of course a high focus on the modalities themselves and how we create that integrated diagnostic journey for the patient, but it’s really more about live predictive patient insights across the care journey and how all this things come together to actually help provide clinicians with the right support to make the right decisions.
I think it’s important also, at least for me, to share a personal philosophy, which is that everybody has a reason they do a thing that they do. I’ve been a patient and I’ve worked in healthcare and I’ve got clinicians in my family. And at the end of the day, I think for me at least, it’s really important to keep that in mind, because I know that’s what our healthcare systems are keeping in mind. How do I serve my clinicians better? How do I serve my patients better? How do I drive overall holistic health, not just in acute, but as we think about more holistic healthcare in and out of the home, that’s the future of where we’re going.
And so, to your question, John, Philips is looking at all of those pieces, but I think all of the care providers, which is really the engagement portion, are thinking about all those things too. And so, speaking to them and understanding what their future focus is, future meaning next week or next year or next five years, are all relevant things to think about.
John Farkas:
Yeah, I think when I’m considering… I’m loving this conversation, because it’s bringing me back to some fundamental things that I need to make sure I’m holding. When I think about the idea of translation layer and I think about what we’re doing in the context of healthcare, and I think about what marketing’s role is in that, every sale has an emotional component. Everything we bring to market has… I mean, we are human beings after all. It’s not all about specifications and ROI equations. It’s a lot about that. Let’s not lose that. I mean, business is business. And there are reasons people make decisions, especially when you’re comparing two entities that are remarkably similar in their spec. There could be an emotional side of this. And an organization who’s carrying a soul element into the equation is understanding what the people mean, understanding what the impact is, understanding those elements. That can be a difference maker. And how you carry that and host it and serve in the translation function to bring that forward is an opportunity. I’ve got to think. Are there any examples of how you’ve brought that idea to roost in your work?
Aaron Hillman:
Yeah. It’s a great lead. So in short, I think that’s a lot of what the advisory and focus groups are really about. And we get very focused on those when we bring those to bear, because we have sometimes very specific questions and sometimes a little bit broader conversations. What I really want to do in that moment is ask. I think the number one thing I can do there is ask what they’re thinking about and how they’re thinking about the next steps about whatever that context is. And an example might be around data and integration, for example. We’ve all been in the space of trying to figure out how to bring our data together into a single place to be usable from an analytics and comprehension perspective, to look at patient throughput workflow, storage; whatever it may be right. And all of that translates to efficiency and cost and patient care and clinician satisfaction.
I’d argue, and a key CIO cited this earlier this year, I won’t name names, we have the same problem today that we’ve had for the past 20-plus years, since we started creating data silos. Creating a way to analyze and understand all that information at a very basic level through whether it’s artificial intelligence, or an algorithm that brings these things together, or simply providing an integration tool that maybe a healthcare system hasn’t had before or didn’t exist before, is a way that we can provide assistance as the vendor side to this healthcare systems that are trying to put these puzzle pieces together.
John Farkas:
Yeah. Yeah. Sure.
Aaron Hillman:
Did I answer that, John? Okay.
John Farkas:
Let’s push a little farther into the consultative grid. When you’re looking at the teams that you’re working with and commercialization, put a pragmatic layer on what consultative looks like. What does it look like as you are interacting with a buyer target? And bringing the team to bear and looking at how you engage those entities, what does consultative… how does it work itself out?
Aaron Hillman:
I think it depends on the situation. If we’re talking an individual client, it requires knowing who the key stakeholders are at that client. It requires doing the discovery to learn about what’s going on at that client, what their needs are, what they have for existing solutions, where their gaps are. That means talking to them. It means having an actual conversation, and probably with multiple people in multiple care settings or service line settings or IT settings. You really can’t do the whole process justice without that level of discovery. And then it literally means working through the end-to-end process of what do they need, when do they need it, how do they need it, where is it going to go, who is it going to apply to, what are the key stakeholders. Every healthcare organization has a different process for procurement: who gets involved at what levels, dollar amounts being spent, how that stuff gets approved. It’s some similar, some different everywhere.
If we’re talking about on a larger scale, let’s say RSNA is a good example, privacy is a very real concern. So as a vendor we get this list of everybody who’s coming, but we don’t have contact information. And so, we have to do our own diligence to say, how do we want to reach these people? What’s the best way to get in touch with them? We have to cross-reference against our own information and we have to learn really the best way to communicate with them, to think about how we do that discovery. And then the process begins from discovery through to closure. Some of it might be thinking about how we move a sale more quickly. Some of it might be about how we resolve a challenge that the client is currently having or concern they have. Some of it might be my hair’s on fire and please help me immediately.
All of it starts with discovery and understanding who you’re going to be speaking to and what their needs are at the beginning, and then from there we can begin the conversation. And to your point earlier, it might include an ROI or a TCO. It might include a solution overview to help them understand how it’s going to fix specifically the problem that they’re trying to overcome. It might be training sessions. It might not be selling anything at all, because sometimes selling things isn’t the answer. And forgive me, commercial people out in the world, but standing at somebody’s elbow sometimes and showing them how a thing works from a client services perspective or client success perspective is just what the doctor ordered. And so, I think it’s understanding what is needed to make the situation right.
The Importance of Intelligence Gathering
John Farkas:
Yeah. This gets at something that we’ve heard just surface very clearly and prevalently in the conversations we’ve had with healthcare system leaders in this very studio. A lot of what we heard is, don’t come to me with your blanket messaging. Don’t come to me without knowing me. And nobody got time for that. They’re some of the most pressed, challenged human beings on the planet, super resource constrained, super time constrained, and they don’t have time to sit through a 15-minute vendor spiel that the first three quarters of which has nothing to do with the specific problems they’re trying to solve. I’ve heard that refrain multiple times in the context of the conversations we’ve had here, and that presents a real problem, my estimation, for marketing in its conventional shell. I think that the way we’ve done it is you come up with a message and you throw it out to the market.
Part of what is needing to happen that I’m hearing really clearly, and this is why it’s important to break down the silos and have a collaborative growth conversation as opposed to a segmented tactical conversation; how are we going to go after X, Y, Z health system? What do we know about them? What do we know about their needs? What are they facing right now that’s pertinent, and how are we going to get pertinent information about their specific needs into their ecosystem for them to ingest and respond to? That’s not an easy thing to do.
And the thing that’s important, unless you have just a solution that is a one size fits all, which are so few and far between right now, the spray and pray days are done. I think this consultative, this knowing, this tailored approach that has a lot more to do with intelligence gathering and collaborative work on how we’re going to communicate out to a prospect, seems like an increasingly important discipline to get familiar with and carry forward.
Aaron Hillman:
Yeah, without a doubt. I’d add something to it, and you touched on it as part of your flattery, but it’s truly about building the relationships. And to me it’s about learning the people. Because as you say, you could have the widget that is perfect for everybody. Like you said, very few and far between, and/or doesn’t exist at all. And that’s fine. Because it shouldn’t. It’s hard. Everybody’s a little different and that’s a good thing. But to build trust and to really be able to get deep and understand what it is that is needed, relationships matter. Whether it’s at a one-to-one level or whether that’s a strategic vendor, healthcare system provider partnership level, or somewhere in between, or both. But to me, the whole thing is about trust and how we can really support person to person and vendor to provider and provider to patient. Because in the end, the patients have to trust, when they’re going into the healthcare systems too, that they’re going to get well and that they’re going to get the help they need, and that’s scary too.
And so, I think that the chain of trust actually goes both directions, and it’s really important to think about how we partner to drive to the future too. Because you’ve got to solve the problems of today, but we’ve also got to solve for the problems of tomorrow, which includes thinking about how we continue to responsibly and sustainably deploy new artificial intelligence tools or predictive algorithms, or how do we co-develop with providers and healthcare systems to understand really what they need at the point they need it. Do I need a pneumothorax detecting device at the point of portable x-ray? Yeah, probably. And that exists, by the way. Do I need something that’s going to look at arrhythmias in stroke patients and tell me a week from now if they’re going to likely have another arrhythmia which is going to cause another clot and another stroke? Yeah, definitely. And by the way, that exists.
That’s the kind of stuff that partnership and trust and the relationships can help build and will further the cause of the whole process. And so, to the point of this whole conversation, that’s how we get consultative, is learning and understanding and building those trusting relationships to have these deeper conversations to get to the root of what is needed.
John Farkas:
Talk about some of the challenges, because I know that if you’re carrying the banner, I know some of the challenges or things you’ve encountered. What are some of the challenges about breaking down the traditional silos between marketing and sales and product? I mean, that’s a world you live in constantly. I maybe even saw you living in it at HLTH. But talk about what some of the practical challenges are at the end of the day.
Aaron Hillman:
So, I mean, there’s nothing new in working in a commercial organization in terms of breaking down those silos. I’d actually even argue it’s the same thing as my last point, which is building the relationships and building the trust and then leadership, particularly senior leadership, that have the line of sight and oversight of all of those things that come together within a particular business is super-duper helpful. And I think it’s really important to lead by example. I think it’s important to broker those relationships between the different teams, and same thing that clients expect from a healthcare vendor. I think accountability is really important.
And so I think to me, breaking down those silos is about communicating and doing the things together and not working separately. And that builds not only the trust and the value, but also will yield results, which everybody likes. So I think in the end it becomes a win-win-win when we endeavor to do those things together, and I think everybody sees that.
Meeting the Needs of the Market
John Farkas:
You may have just inadvertently coined a term, a healthcare provendor. I like that. There was parts of that I like. Yeah, it’s really, really true. I think that that level of cooperation is… The thing that I work with a lot with our clients is to help instill a different ideology in how they approach the market. It really is. We are one team with one objective. We have a meaningful solution that can transform things in meaningful ways. And if we have it broken down into siloed objectives, you’re going to have siloed factions. If you can figure out what it means to build combined objectives that are inherently collaborative and cooperative, then that’s an opportunity where everybody starts seeing this as a combined opportunity. This is about growth and this is about how we are going to meet the needs of a market together. That’s super easier said than done, because we are bucking a lot of tradition.
But if we’re looking at the nature of this market today, it just demands it. Because again, if we’re hearing things from the buyers like, “I am awash in a sea of potential solutions, none of which are presented to me in a way that understand me really, and I don’t have time,” how do we solve for that?
Aaron Hillman:
Well, it’s interesting, because I’d argue there’s always going to be some of that. And some vendors are solving for that and they’re seeing success, and some vendors are not and they’re maybe having a hard time. Maybe they’re not. Maybe they’ve got such a big client base that it’s perfectly fine. But I think you’re right. I think much like any other, let’s call it consumer, people are getting savvier and health systems are getting savvier and asking deeper questions and longer term questions around partnership and value and outcomes. And so, I think that that is solving that problem I think you’ve already done. We’ve got to create that loop of feedback and engagement and consultative thinking and support and service. But I think that we adapt to the new status quo, or you don’t. And if you don’t, you run the risk of not making it through that.
John Farkas:
Yeah, I think that that’s the question, the question that I think that marketing people need to look at. I think marketing people have an opportunity right now, and that is to lead what I consider to be the concert. We have a concert that we need to bring to the market. It’s intricate and needs to be well performed. And because we’re the translation layer, because we’re the point at which the initial connection gets made, we get to figure out how best to orchestrate that and work with our teams to help them understand what needs to happen for that initial connection to effectively get made.
And so, the opportunity in that is, okay, sales team, what is your on ground intel telling you about X, Y, Z opportunity that we can apply in some detailed channel marketing that might have us a shot at getting through to this health system. What do we know? How are we going to bring that forward? And coordinating those efforts in a way to play the concert that people actually want to hear. Make sure that it’s tuned to their particular musical tastes.
Let’s turn this and get a step more practical perhaps and talk about channels. What are the channels that you’re seeing emerge right now and that you’re pursuing? Talk about what that looks like. What’s the trend?
Aaron Hillman:
Yeah. There’s quite a few, and actually what we’re doing here today is a really great example. A podcast is a great opportunity to provide really interesting thought leadership and overarching content to a lot of people in a relatively facile way that is easily absorbable. Whether they’re listening while they drive. That they don’t need to be looking at us. They can listen to what we’re saying just fine.
John Farkas:
They’ll be missing out if they don’t, let’s face it. But…
Aaron Hillman:
For sure. There’s no question. But the point remains. I’ve got to be honest, I still love a good webinar, because we reach huge amounts of people and it’s evergreen. Until that piece of content is no longer truly relevant, it can continue to be shared. Whether it’s re-watched or watched anew. I think that’s really valuable. I think events are changing dramatically, how we approach that. And to a phrase you said earlier, it’s no longer spray and pray. You can’t just show up to a trade show and expect people are going to come to your booth and ask you questions anymore.
John Farkas:
Yeah.
Aaron Hillman:
It’s about pre-planning, doing the discovery that we talked about, setting appointments, and having a plan. For each of the accounts. And then of course the overarching strategy around those is, what are the right places to play now? What are the right hot topics? What are the right organizations to partner with? And so, I spent a lot of time thinking about that and working with the sales teams and the clients to understand where they’re going and what they’re hearing and what they want to do. So if I went out in the world today and I said, “Hey, Southern California healthcare systems. Where are you going to go in 2024? Which events are you actually going to attend, and what is it you want to learn?” They might not have the very specific list, but they’d have a pretty good idea. And then some might get added on and some might drop off. But they’re not bringing the 30 people to HIMSS that they used to. It’s just not cost effective anymore and not needed. Other channels, certainly digital. Social is really important. Looking at how we optimize for search is really critical. Paid social is actually a really interesting proposition. And then you can get creative with some of that too. Do we do-
John Farkas:
That’s where targeting can be very-
Aaron Hillman:
… geo targeting? Yeah, exactly.
John Farkas:
… very effective.
Aaron Hillman:
Yep, it is. And you have to know what to say to the right people and where they’re looking. So market research, market intelligence and analysis becomes a really critical part of the marketing machine. One of those pretty good-sized cogs in that marketing machine. And I think really understanding that information becomes truly relevant to understanding what channels. And I might do one thing for a very large trade show, and I might do something entirely different for something very small or hyper-focused or very network oriented without a booth. So there’s lots of ways to go about it. It’s really figuring out what will work for that particular instance and who you’re trying to reach in that moment.
Asserting Value Propositions through Content
John Farkas:
Yep. That makes sense. As you’re thinking about the creation of content… Because we just talked about webinars, and I tend to think right now, another thing we hear very clearly from the folks that we’re talking to in the C-suite of healthcare systems, so important to lead with a very clear value assertion. This is not about your specs, it’s not about the things that… Those are downstream important. The first equation is, what’s this going to do from a value perspective and how clear is that and critical is that? Because I’m balancing a whole set of critical components right now and I got to give deference to the most critical, most compelling. So when you’re talking about the creation of content and how you are approaching that, what are some of the ways that Philips at least is thinking about that part of the strategy?
Aaron Hillman:
Well again, I think it depends on what we’re trying to do with it. I’ll give you a good example. Just before HLTH, our enterprise informatics business leader and chief innovation and strategy officer, Shez Partovi, released a blog post. Go out there and find it, folks. You can just search for Shez and you’ll find it. S-H-E-Z. But it’s really thought leadership and an interesting piece talking about new technology out in the world as it pertained not only to health but some of the other big events: RSNA and Arab Health and HIMSS and ECR and things that will follow. It really is thinking about what the right person or people is for that audience. So Shez does great thought leadership, but if I’m doing a webinar, they probably don’t want to listen to Philips people talk the whole time. Right?
John Farkas:
Yeah.
Aaron Hillman:
And so, I actually want to work with clients.
John Farkas:
Because that’s getting to the value. That’s getting into the value in a hurry. I’m not interested in Philips talking about Philips. I’m interested in Philip helping us into what their value is.
Aaron Hillman:
Yeah. And also probably understanding from credible sources like their peers. So if I bring a CIO on to talk about their thought leadership and experience, whether it’s with a particular solution, or whether it’s with solving a problem that is not unique to that individual healthcare system, that becomes a really relevant conversation to a much wider swath of interested learners. As a marketer, we should be thinking one to many 9 times out of 10. There’s a really good opportunity to get very narrow and focus on account-based marketing, as you said so well before. But a webinar is a broad reach, so you’ve got to tell a story that’s interesting to lots of different people. And 9 times out of 10 it’s not me or Shez or one of our business leaders talking, it’s talking with. Some of the most successful panels I’ve ever seen are highly interactive conversations amongst multiple healthcare systems and maybe one or two key leaders from a vendor. And I think those lead to really provocative, really thought-inducing conversations.
John Farkas:
Yeah. I think that that’s… I’m at the point now where I don’t think healthcare technology companies need to spend any time… I’m about to make an emphatic statement that I’m willing to live by. I don’t think they need to spend any time creating content that doesn’t have a very strong presence of third party validation. Nobody’s got time to just read another thing about a company telling us why they’re so great. There’s too much of that out there. Again, value is important. And don’t take my word for it, listen to somebody who has experienced that value directly and is excited about talking about it. Because that’s going to at least open the door of trust. It gives me the opportunity to say, “Okay, there’s a peer of mine who’s saying this isn’t BS. This is something they’ve actually realized in their world.” That’s a hard bar. I mean, that’s a high bar to set, because the easy thing is to talk about yourself. I mean, it’s far easier.
But as you mentioned, it comes back to those relationships. And if you have a relationship where you’ve won the trust and had the opportunities, put emphasis on that and figure out how to get them into a conversation that helps you underscore your value, and how you can tell that story in a way that might have some strong connect points to a bunch of different other similar entities and build from there.
But don’t put out another blog article that doesn’t bring that component with it. I think it’s really important, especially when you have an innovation in the market, I think it’s really important that you work hard to help people know how to think about it. Because that’s a gap technologists often leave is, here’s innovation, you should love innovation, and we’re not going to help you across how they think about the innovation. But if you can do that by bringing along an early adopter who’s realized the value of that and can help them know how to think about it, that’s going to be a big change. It’s going to be a big transition.
Aaron Hillman:
Yeah, I think that’s right. And data is always very supportive. I also think, just a little devil’s advocate here for you, John-
John Farkas:
Yeah, bring it.
Aaron Hillman:
… I think you’re right 99% of the time. I emphatically agree with you. Data is critical. Support and credibility in your statements is critical. But I also think that there are moments for vision, whether it’s created from a vendor side or a provider side. Because I want to hear that from them too. They live it every day. What is the thing that you can imagine but isn’t real yet? That we say we’re thinking about this, or this is what we think we’re seeing out in the world, or we think the next trend is going to be. Where there isn’t an actual live solution yet, or there is no defensible data to support it yet, because the thing doesn’t exist. I think there is a time and a moment for that as well, and it might be through a blog post and it might be through a webinar and it might be from standing at a stage at an event, or it might just be sitting in a healthcare system CIO office saying, “Let’s figure out the next thing.” That happens too. And that’s again, back to your point and then my point, which is ultimately the relationship and the trust and that partnership that gets created over the course of time through those trusted relationships.
John Farkas:
Yeah, I completely agree with you. I think the opportunity in that, even to push it a little farther, when you are bringing that vision, tying it to a real actual scenario where a problem exists, a problem that has real lives and real people associated with it, and springboarding off of that to say here’s the vision, I think is the ultimate way to bring it. Not just bring it from a void, but bring it from a real world scenario that says here’s where the pain and suffering is right now, and here’s an example of how it’s working out and what it’s costing, and here’s what the future is going to mean and look like. I think that if you can do that, that helps bring credence in a way that can be really strong.
Aaron Hillman:
Yeah, completely agree.
John Farkas:
I’m curious, Aaron, as you are framing your own point of view, what are some of the things that you’re soaking in right now? What are you reading? What is informing your view on things right now?
Aaron Hillman:
Yeah, there’s quite a few things. I try to keep current on all the healthcare publications that we all read every day. And I won’t go through the litany of what those are.
John Farkas:
Is there one or two that you’re finding as favorites?
Aaron Hillman:
I like Healthcare IT. I read Becker’s. I like the blend of trends and then also the most current holy cow, this is happening right now between the two of those. I assiduously read the CHIME information and I sit on one of their boards around data analytics as well, and I’m grateful to be a party to that organization. I think it goes back to something I said earlier, which is I want to learn from the clients, and I want to read or understand where they’re getting their information and where they’re sharing their information.
And so, it’s those publications and those sources and the events, but I really do personally try to attend a lot of the ad boards and the focus groups that we run, because I want to hear directly and I want to probe and ask questions in the moment. I’ve had the privilege of maybe being at 15 or 20 of those this year through a variety of different places. And to me, that’s how I really stay current with what the healthcare providers are asking for and what they’re thinking about. And I think that’s a really relevant thing for a marketer to do, it’s a really relevant thing for our business leaders to do.
And they do participate in each of these different things. We try to record them for posterity’s sake. Don’t ask, I won’t share the recordings with you. But we can go back and listen and understand what people were saying in those moments. Because writing notes is a great way to capture and solidify information in my brain, and in all of our minds if that’s the way you learn, but hearing it again in their words often is a thing that’s super helpful. And so, I think there’s lots of ways people learn and understand what is going on out in the world. I think finding the thing that works for you and is applicable to the work that you’re specifically doing, either at that moment, or over the course of the year, or in your planning for the next year, is also a bit of an individualized endeavor.
Closing Thoughts
John Farkas:
Yeah, for sure. That makes great sense. What else haven’t we covered? Any final thoughts here as we come up on our little curfew?
Aaron Hillman:
Look, I think the short of it is, we’ve touched on a lot of really interesting points today. And again, thank you so much for having me here and also for having me on the board with Ratio. I love this mission. I think in the end we’re all trying to help.
John Farkas:
That’s right.
Aaron Hillman:
Right? And in our world today, that’s so very needed and, I think, not a think. So many people are going through such a hard time out in the world, whether it’s in Israel and Palestine, whether that’s struggling for healthcare or being able to afford basic care. It’s a struggle out there. And so, all of the things that we do as healthcare marketers or healthcare vendors or providers, I think it’s really important to acknowledge and try to continue helping in whatever capacity that is that we’re doing. And we can do that in our personal lives, we can do that in our professional lives. I think it’s really important to just remember what we’re here trying to do, which is help the patients in the end. And so for me, that’s the key message that I take away from all of this, is what we’re trying to do. That’s what I’m trying to do. And I don’t touch them with gloved hands or a respirator or a modality, but in the end we’re all contributing. So for me, that’s the message to take away.
John Farkas:
And a great takeaway. I mean, it does come down to the fact we’re not just in this to bring more tech into the world. It’s about helping caregivers give care. And at the end of the day, if we’re doing that well and helping those equations come resolved in better ways, that’s really essential. And holding that true as a north star as we’re looking at these marketing efforts and how we’re bringing things across, is going to humanize this world that we’re in, and that’s an increasingly important thing. As technology continues to push farther and farther into the equation, holding what’s true in the human equation is increasingly important.
Aaron Hillman, thank you so much for joining us here and having this conversation. I’m really grateful and look forward to more of what you are going to bring forward in the context of Philips and the road ahead. Thanks for joining us here on Healthcare Market Matrix.
Aaron Hillman:
Thank you, John. Have a great day, everybody out there.
John Farkas:
Healthcare Market Matrix is a Ratio original podcast. If you enjoyed today’s episode, then jump over to healthcaremarketmatrix.com and subscribe, and we’d really appreciate your support in the form of a five-star rating on your favorite podcast platform. It does make a difference. Also, while you’re there, you can become a part of the Healthcare Market Matrix community and get access to courses and content that’s created just for you by signing up for InsightSquared, a monthly newsletter dedicated to bringing you the latest health tech marketing insights right to your inbox.
Ratio is an award-winning marketing agency headquartered in the Nashville, Tennessee. We operate at the intersection of brand and growth marketing to equip companies with strategies to create meaningful connections with the healthcare market and ultimately drive growth. Want to know more? Go to goratio.com. That’s G-O-R-A-T-I-O.com. And we’ll see you at noon Central next week for an all new episode from our team at Ratio Studios. Stay healthy.
About Aaron Hillman
Aaron is a trusted HCIT marketing leader with more than 19 years of in-depth
experience driving a variety of marketing and commercial functions with a passion for
improving the patient and clinician experience. He leads the Phillips Enterprise
Informatics Global Client and Industry Engagement marketing focused on driving
awareness of the Philips solutions throughout global markets and with industry
associations.
Before coming to Philips, Aaron led global Enterprise Solutions marketing at Butterfly
Network, including all GTM strategy and tactical execution. Prior to Butterfly, he led the
Central Marketing teams at GE Healthcare Digital after leading global solutions
marketing for the VNA and Collaboration solutions. Aaron has experience at Nuance
Healthcare where he was the IDN segment leader for the Clinical Documentation
solutions marketing team, helping to drive solution SaaS transition through global
marketing, as well as owning the Physician Advocacy program. Aaron also worked at
MEDITECH where he held a number of positions including marketing support and
demonstrator for imaging and clinical documentation solutions, creating and managing
the Physician Liaison program, and teaming with development in the early-stage
creation of the physician documentation component of their web-based EHR.
Aaron is passionate about transforming healthcare through developing strong
partnerships with healthcare leaders and provider organizations around the world.