#202 | The NUMBER ONE Reason Clinicians Say They Love Your MedTech Product But Still Don't Buy It

In today's episode, you're gonna learn how to tell whether you're solving a problem that customers genuinely care about enough to change behavior, allocate budget, and adopt that new solution. Welcome to Clinician to CEO, the podcast helping clinicians simplify your go to market strategy so that you can stop guessing and turn your working prototypes into international MedTech businesses. i'm your host, Hakeem Aade. Let's get started.

three things that you're gonna discover in this episode are, number one, why solving a problem isn't enough to get your product adopted. Number two, how to tell whether a problem is actually a priority. Number three, a simple four-step framework to assess whether customers are likely to adopt your solution. So have you ever shown a customer your product and heard, phrases like this, Oh, that's really interesting.

Oh, that's really clever. Oh, I can definitely see the benefits." So you get very excited, but then nothing happens. There's no pilot, there's no evaluation, there's no budget, there's no next meeting, and there's no orders coming in.

All you get is radio silence. Now, if you've ever experienced that, you're not alone because, in fact, one of the biggest mistakes I've seen in med tech isn't actually poor technology, it's not poor solutions, it's assuming that because something that you've developed solved the problem means that people automatically want it Unfortunately, that is not always the case. So don't get too excited when you think you've solved a problem because healthcare is full of problems, and you know that.

Every hospital has problems. Every clinician has problems. Every procurement team has problems. The question isn't for your product or your solution, does a problem exist that you're solving?

The question actually is that problem important enough for somebody to do something about it? And that's what we're gonna explore today. Because the companies that achieve adoption aren't necessarily the ones solving the biggest problems. They're more often than not the ones that are solving the highest priorities.

So what I wanna do now is get into the four-step framework, which will help you assess whether customers are likely to adopt your solution or not. And then at the end of each of those steps, I wanna give you an action to go away and actually implement. So step one is it a problem or is it a priority? Because let's be honest about it.

As I said, you all know that healthcare is full of problems. I don't care where you are in the world, you've got probably long waiting lists, you got staff shortages, you got budget pressures, training gaps, communication issues, workflow inefficiencies. The existence of a problem does not automatically create demand for your product, even if it's solving a problem. Because hospitals don't solve every problem.

They solve the problem that matter the most. Now, let's just take a s- a sidestep away from healthcare for a second and think about your own life. You probably have dozens of problems. Maybe you need to exercise more, as we all do.

Maybe you should organize your finances better. Maybe you should - you need to clear out your garage. They're all problems, but it doesn't mean that you're gonna work on all of them because they may not all necessarily be priorities. And until they become priorities, you don't do anything about them.

So healthcare works exactly the same way. Let's imagine you developed a product that saves nurses five minutes per shift. That is a genuine benefit. So everybody thinks, "Oh I've found a problem.

I've got a solution that can actually reduce that five minutes per shift." So it's a real problem. But if the hospital is dealing with staff shortages, patient safety concerns, and financial pressures, your problem may not make the priority list of that healthcare facility. So you may prove a problem exists, and you may produce the product that solves that problem.

But if you never prove it's important enough to act upon, then actually your product or solution is not gonna be adopted. So the action I want you to take based on this step one, is go and speak to three customers this week and ask them, where does this challenge rank compared with everything else that you're dealing with right now? Not, what do you think of the product? Not, can you see the benefits?

'Cause they'll be - they, they'll say yes, and they'll give you positives. But I want you to ask them that question, because then what you're effectively asking is how important is solving this compared with your other priorities? Because if it's consistently in the top three, then you want to keep going. If it's number 17 for that list, you've found a problem, but you may not have found a priority, and priorities are what drive adoption.

So If you haven't found a priority, you've only found a problem, then you have to do a bit more digging. You need to find out If there's other consequences that can become priorities for that problem. So that's step one. Is it a problem or a priority?

You need a priority before you start moving on. So now let's take that a step further, and the step two is what happens if they do nothing? Because one of the biggest challenges founders find when they're focusing entirely just purely on the benefits, i.e.

, We save time, we improve efficiency, we reduce workload of course, those things matter But what really drives adoption is consequences. What happens if they don't solve that problem? So if a hospital ignores a staffing problem, what's gonna happen? Patients wait longer.

That's a consequence. Staff become overwhelmed. Consequence. Costs increase.

I think you get where I'm going. Performance suffers. That's why staffing becomes a priority. Now think about your product or solution.

If nobody adopts it, what happens? Does risk increase? Do costs increase? Does revenue fall?

Do outcomes worsen? Does somebody lose sleep? i.e.

, what's the consequence? And the term I always use is what is keeping that customer up at night? What are the consequences? Because if nothing really changes or they perceive that nothing's gonna change if they don't do anything, then adoption becomes really difficult.

Because People don't change just because something is better. They change because staying the same becomes uncomfortable, and it keeps them up at night. So the action I want you to take here for step two is go and ask your customers what happens if this problem never gets solved. If the answer is not much really, or they're not that concerned about what the consequence may be, then you've got a lot of work to do.

You need to, again, start finding some consequences that actually resonate with them and keep them up at night. If the answer is, however, it creates risk, it costs money, it slows us down, it affects outcomes, now you're getting closer to what we would describe as a genuine priority. Because priorities have consequences, and consequences get focus from your customers and budget. So you've now tried to identify whether it's a problem or a You're thinking you've got a priority because it's got consequences.

You then move on to step three, are they already trying to fix it? Because we wanna now start looking at behavior, because behavior will tell you far more than what they actually say. 'Cause they may well say, "Oh yeah, it's a priority. These are all the issues that happen."

But we wanna now look at whether they're doing anything about it. Many people will always tell you that the problem is important. Far fewer will actually do something about that problem. So let's imagine that somebody says, "Oh yeah, it's a real big issue."

Obviously, what you're gonna ask them is, "Okay, what have you done about it? Because if it's a big issue, surely you've done something about it." Now, if they've allocated budget or they've created a project team, they've trialed alternative, they've changed processes, they've written policies, they've assigned responsibility, then that's a really good sign that you've got a genuine priority because their behavior is matching their words, i.e.

, they're doing something about it. But If they've lived with the problem for 10 years and done absolutely nothing, then maybe it's not the priority that they've been claiming it is. A-and one of the best indicators of future adoption is whether somebody's already trying to solve the problem today because if they're already looking for a solution, and they've tried different things, then you're joining an active conversation about how to solve this priority. But if they're not trying to do anything, and they're not looking for a solution, then you're actually trying to create a priority or a problem, and that's significantly harder.

So the action that I want you to take here is to go and ask three customers, "What have you already done to solve this problem?" And then what you're looking for, obviously, is evidence of action. The more effort they've already invested, the more likely it is that you're dealing with a genuine priority, and the more likely it is that they're gonna do something with your product or solution So then moving on to step four, who has the most to gain? So let's assume you've now identified a genuine priority.

The next question is, who benefits most if this problem gets solved? 'Cause that's who you really want to be speaking to, because not everyone, cares equally about problems. And this is where actually many med tech companies start to lose momentum. They do the first three steps.

They've got a genuine problem But the challenge is that lots of med tech companies spend all their time talking to people who agree that the problem exists- instead of talking to the people who have the strongest reason to act. So let me just use a simple example. You've developed a solution that reduces theater inefficiencies. The surgeon is going to appreciate that.

The theater team may love it. But who feels the biggest impact? Maybe it's the theater manager trying to increase throughput. it could be the operational lead trying to reduce delays.

it May well be the hospital executive trying to improve productivity. And the strongest opportunity for you to get that product adopted is usually found where the pain is the greatest, and the ability to influence the change is the highest because that's where urgency lives, and urgency drives adoption. And I've got a whole workshop on how you can identify the right people with the problem and the urgency to act, and how you then put that decision-making unit together so that you can influence adoption through that decision-making unit.

But for now, the action I want you to take is write down who experiences the problem, who benefits if it is solved, and who can influence the decision. And then once you've wr-written those down, ask yourself which of those people have the strongest reason to act, because that's the person that you should spend most of your time trying to understand and influence. Because If you can convince the person who cares the most, then everything becomes easier, and it's much more likely you're gonna get your product adopted.

So let's go back to where we started. You show somebody your product. They tell you it's interesting. They tell you it's clever.

They tell you they can see The benefit, and you're getting very excited, but then nothing happens. The problem, as I've said, often isn't your product. The problem is that you've only found a problem, but you've not found or identified a priority, and there's a huge difference, and I'm hoping that in this episode you can clearly see the difference because priorities get attention, priorities get budget, priorities get resources, but problems often do not. So before you spend any more money on developing the product further because someone's given you some feedback, before you spend any more money on marketing, before you recruit another distributor, before you attend another trade show, ask yourself one simple question: Are you solving a problem or are you solving a priority?

Because as I said before, the companies that are gonna achieve adoption are not necessarily the ones with the best technology. They're the ones solving problems that customers cannot afford to ignore And if you're building a MedTech business and you're not sure whether your next move should be around evidence, market access, commercialization, distributor strategy. Or adoption. Do not guess.

Book a healthcare export accelerator diagnostic Call with me. Use my link in the show notes. And in that session I'll help you identify the specific constraints blocking your momentum and the commercial move most likely to unlock your progress. Thanks for tuning in.

Until next time, thanks for listening. Keep challenging your assumptions and keep growing.