Growth in an Underserved Market
Written by: Joel Sangria, VP of Operations at CareMessage
When you’re planning a road trip, you may find yourself with a key decision to make: do you take the shorter and more direct route or do you take the longer and more scenic route? The answer depends on a number of factors, including, among other things, who is along for the ride and whether you need to arrive at the destination by a certain time.
Our Growth team at CareMessage — the team responsible for sales, marketing, and partnerships — has to make this decision all the time when working with prospective customers. On the surface, it would be fair to assume that our team prefers to take the short and easy route when selling to a new customer, and oftentimes, customers themselves want to take the fastest route with us, too, especially if they know exactly what they want. One demo, a signed contract, and boom — the customer is on board.
But if you get to know us more, you’ll find that we proactively choose to take the longer route because it’s in the new customer’s best interest to take the necessary time to understand how CareMessage can help achieve their organization’s goals.
Humans, by our very nature, are wired to tell and absorb stories. It’s in our company’s DNA to share our story, and we love sharing that story with customers. We think it’s important to draw the connection between our story and the problems that customers are trying to solve, and we’ve found that’s best done through sharing human stories. Sure, the process may take longer because we may have to tell our story multiple times to multiple stakeholders, including clinical directors and C-Level executives at the organization, but it’s time well spent.
Trust takes time to build, and we’re in the trust business as much as we’re in the software business.
Sometimes prospective customers in underserved markets are given a lower level of attention and service, and sometimes they’re completely ignored. We approach things differently at CareMessage. Our company and our product were built from the ground up with underserved patients in mind from the start. This gives us a unique perspective — and a large degree of credibility — that our competitors are missing. It also means that when our Growth team starts fostering a relationship with a customer in this underserved market, it can take more time than initially expected. We accept that challenge because we take the long view, and we know that reaching all underserved patients may take a while.
The best thing about being part of the Growth team is hearing how CareMessage has helped a customer achieve their goals and changed the lives of their patients for the better. It feels great to see another customer woven into our story, which we will continue to tell with pride. Most of all, it confirms that taking the long, scenic route was worth it.
Joel Sangria is the VP of Operations at CareMessage. He oversees all customer-facing and operational functions at the company.