Selling to Healthcare with Lisa T. Miller

In episode thirty-three of "Selling to Healthcare," Lisa T. Miller jumps past the first meeting to the part almost nobody talks about — what happens after the hospital says yes. Lisa argues that most sales teams treat the signature as the finish line, when it's really the starting line for the next contract, because executives extend initiatives that produce early signal and quietly bury the ones that promise transformation but never land.

She shares why her teams always pursued a visible thirty-day win, and what makes one work: a precise scope, visible math, and speed. Lisa walks through three short problem-action-result patterns — non-labor spend, avoidable readmissions, and clinic room turnover — plus a fuller story of a technology company whose nurse-time product kept dying at the demo until the approach was rebuilt around clinical shadowing, a finance-verified labor model, and a tightly governed pilot.

Lisa also lays out the four delivery artifacts she'd build for every engagement — a pilot scorecard, a who-does-what chart, a benchmark snapshot, and a value review memo — along with the fifteen-second rule for reporting results, the joint strategy session that turns a pilot into a plan, and her practice of setting a goal each year to win one whale client.

This episode offers a practical playbook for healthcare sales professionals who want to turn a first signature into an expanding relationship — by defusing the executive's fear of "great demo, painful rollout" and proving value before anyone has to ask for it.

Highlights of this Episode Include:

• The Signature Is the Starting Line: Executives extend initiatives that produce early signal and bury the ones that promise transformation but never land — so the real sale starts the day they say yes.
• Design a Thirty-Day Win: A precise scope, visible math, and speed. Speed plus competence builds confidence faster than anything else, and confidence is what expands scope.
• Prove One Claim, Not a Transformation: Each of Lisa's three patterns proved a single core claim with minimal disruption — and earned the right to keep going. When telling those stories, keep the obstacles in; executives trust the messy parts.
• Under-Promise, Over-Prove: How a stalled nurse-time product won by shadowing the workflow, pressure-testing a conservative labor model with finance, and running a pilot with green, yellow, and red criteria agreed in advance — and a clean exit if it missed.
• De-Risk the Rollout: Four simple artifacts — a pilot scorecard, a who-does-what chart with a weekly checklist, a benchmark snapshot, and a two-page value review memo — move you from interesting to indispensable, and a forward roadmap shows leaders they won't need to rip and replace you in twelve months.
• Results in Fifteen Seconds: Three to five KPIs, one trend line that matters, a single decision insight, and a peer benchmark. Then hold a joint strategy session that ties the next stage of value to their quarterly objectives and board calendar.
• Win One Whale a Year: Lisa's former company set a goal each year to win one transformational client — a decision that reshaped its stability, growth, and authority. Many companies already have whales hiding in their existing client base.

Read the full articles:

• https://www.selltohospitals.com/p/executive-level-selling-in-hospitals
• https://www.selltohospitals.com/p/selling-to-hospitals-what-the-c-suite
• https://www.selltohospitals.com/p/the-c-suite-growth-engine
• https://www.selltohospitals.com/p/the-power-of-whalesales-building
• https://www.selltohospitals.com/p/from-stalled-to-signed-deals-mini

Learn more about Lisa at https://lisatmiller.com/about

Book an appointment - https://calendly.com/lisa_t_miller/30min

LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/lisamiller/

Learn about Lisa's Workshops:

• https://fluentinhealthcare.com/
• https://healthcaresalesmasterclass.com/

In episode thirty-four of "Selling to Healthcare," Lisa T. Miller opens up about her own company and what it actually took to win million-dollar deals against billion-dollar consulting firms. It starts with a compliment that stung — a client calling her firm "the best kept secret out there." The results were strong, but the firm was invisible, and every new client meant starting from zero.

Lisa traces how hospital selling has changed since her early days at Stryker in the nineties — from ROI-driven approvals and empowered mid-level buyers to buying committees and champions who go silent. Up against firms with sales armies and full-page trade journal spreads, she couldn't outspend the competition, so she focused on what she could control: being more useful, more specific, and more strategic.

That focus became the C-Suite Stack: be valuable, be different, and be discovered. Lisa explains why selling your product isn't on the list, how deep research turns a salesperson into a business consultant, why performance-based pay wasn't enough on its own, and how a patented invoice analytics tool came from understanding the customer's problem better than anyone else. She also shows how a library of roughly two hundred videos and research reports — and one targeted campaign built around a single client win — brought CFOs, CIOs, and COOs to her asking for a call.

This episode offers a practical blueprint for smaller healthcare companies competing against bigger, better-funded rivals, closing with a simple exercise: name the one thing your company does that a competitor couldn't easily copy, then check what a CFO would find if they searched for the problem you solve today.

Highlights of this Episode Include:

• From Best Kept Secret to Sought After: Great results mean little if executives don't know you exist — Lisa's firm wasn't failing at delivery, it was failing at visibility.
• The C-Suite Stack: Be valuable, be different, be discovered. Selling your product isn't on the list — the sale is the byproduct of the goal, not the goal itself.
• Research Before the Pitch: Understand your buyer's problems as well as your own products and you become a business consultant who happens to sell something — the one who shows the executive the multi-million-dollar problem nobody told them they had. Differences That Can't Be Copied: Performance-based pay proved Lisa's commitment to results, but competitors could replicate it. Her firm's patented invoice analytics software couldn't be — and it came from understanding the problem, not from hiring the best computer scientists.
• Incremental Difference Is a Race to the Bottom: "Faster" and "cheaper" lead to a place where everyone loses. If you want to be truly different, the difference has to be real.
• Engineer Discovery: The sale begins before you know who your future customer is. Instead of fighting past gatekeepers, build a body of work that leads executives to find you and ask for the meeting.
• Content vs. Value: Don't say what everyone already knows. Lisa's client-win video campaign — real numbers, a simple sign-up page, a no-pitch note to select CFOs and COOs, and a question that hit a nerve — brought in multiple six-figure deals.

Read the full articles:

• https://www.selltohospitals.com/p/the-c-suite-stack
• https://www.selltohospitals.com/p/c-suite-selling-system
• https://www.selltohospitals.com/p/why-selling-into-the-c-suite-is-no

Learn more about Lisa at https://lisatmiller.com/about

Book an appointment - https://calendly.com/lisa_t_miller/30min

LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/lisamiller/

Learn about Lisa's Workshops:

• https://fluentinhealthcare.com/
• https://healthcaresalesmasterclass.com/

In episode thirty-two of "Selling to Healthcare," Lisa T. Miller zeroes in on the most overlooked moment in the entire sales process: the first presentation to a hospital executive. Most companies treat it as a formality, opening with ten people on the call and twenty minutes of company history. But C-Suite leaders decide almost immediately whether a conversation is worth their time. You earn or lose the room in the first ninety seconds.

Lisa shares what hospital CEOs, CFOs, CMOs, and CIOs told her when she asked what earns a second conversation, and distills it into the one filter every executive is running: does this person understand my world, or are they here to explain their product to me? From there, she lays out how to open — with a big idea, a believable number, or a reframe that changes how the executive sees their own situation — and why that kind of insight comes from genuinely knowing the customer's world, not from a messaging workshop.

She draws on her own work in purchased services, where ERP systems capture what was paid but not what was inside the invoice, and on moments where knowing a CMS ruling or an emerging payment model before the executive did turned a vendor pitch into an advisory conversation.

Then Lisa turns to the part most teams get wrong: the close. Instead of ending with "let us know if you have any questions," she makes the case for a specific, low-friction data request, a one-page options memo that travels inside the organization, and a relationship with the deputy who operationalizes the executive's agenda.

This episode offers a practical blueprint for healthcare sales professionals who want their first executive meeting to become the start of a relationship, not the end of the conversation.

Highlights of this Episode Include:

• What Hospital Executives Actually Want: Start with their reality, not your product, and reflect it specifically, not generically. Be clear about the outcomes you can move and how you'll measure them. Make it a working session, not a performance. And respect how they operate, from chiefs of staff and deputies to the channels they prefer.
• The Goal of the First Meeting: Reflect the organization's current state, connect your work to a small set of priority metrics, and propose two or three credible next moves. If the leader hears their world described accurately, the second meeting takes care of itself — and none of it is about your company.
• Lead with the Big Idea: Replace "let me tell you about our company" with the specific insight you uncovered. Lisa's go-to opening pairs a defined problem with a concrete commitment: a $500,000 cut in non-labor expense in thirty days, with the run-rate shown by quarter-end. Big numbers are less persuasive than believable ones.
• Open with a Reframe: Shift how the executive sees their own situation, like evaluating implants on whether they enable new procedures rather than on cost per case. In purchased services, finance sees invoice totals, not the rates and quantities inside them. The point of view is simple: you can't save what you can't see.
• Know the Market Better Than Anyone in the Room: A CMS ruling on beneficiary incentives or an early read on TEAM becomes a differentiator because almost nobody on the vendor side does the work to stay current. Building that depth properly takes three to four weeks of focused research.
• Close with a Specific, Low-Friction Request: Ask for a data set the hospital's team can pull easily, and commit to returning their own numbers with your findings within two weeks. It keeps the next step in your hands, and if the deal stalls, that analysis becomes your way back in. Executives can ignore speculative vendor claims, but not their own data.
• Send the Memo, Then Find the Deputy: A one-page options memo with two or three paths, their timing, and how you'd measure them travels to exactly the people who need to weigh in. The VP of Finance, Associate CMO, or Chief of Staff can make your executive meeting sharper, shorter, and closer to a decision.

Read the full articles:

• https://www.selltohospitals.com/p/executive-level-selling-in-hospitals
• https://www.selltohospitals.com/p/from-stalled-to-signed-deals-mini

Learn more about Lisa at https://lisatmiller.com/about

Book an appointment - https://calendly.com/lisa_t_miller/30min

LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/lisamiller/

Learn about Lisa's Workshops:

• https://fluentinhealthcare.com/
• https://healthcaresalesmasterclass.com/

In episode thirty-one of "Selling to Healthcare," Lisa T. Miller makes the case that in healthcare, a lost sale is never just a missed quota. When an outstanding product fails to find traction, patients miss out on better care, hospitals settle for inferior solutions, sales reps fall short of their potential, and good companies struggle in obscurity — which raises the stakes on getting the sale right.

Lisa explains why selling to hospitals is fundamentally different: patient outcomes come first, purchasing decisions involve multiple stakeholders with different priorities, and nothing works in a silo. At the center of every decision is the balance between mission and margin — delivering high-quality patient care while meeting financial goals. Using the Hospital Readmissions Reduction Program and Value-Based Purchasing as examples, she shows how the clinical story and the financial story are often the same number, viewed from different chairs.

She then walks through seven moves for proving you serve both sides: conducting a mission and margin audit, leading with patient-centered benefits, being precise about financial impact, aligning with each hospital's stated initiatives, providing case studies, offering pilots, and overdelivering once you're in. Along the way, Lisa shares how to build ROI models hospitals can verify for themselves, why conservative ranges earn more trust than aggressive projections, and how a simple priority hypothesis sharpens every first conversation.

This episode offers a practical framework for healthcare sales professionals who want to stop telling two separate stories to clinical and financial leaders — and start telling one story that both can act on.

Highlights of this Episode Include:

• A Lost Sale Is Never Just Yours: When a strong product fails to sell, patients, hospitals, sales reps, and the companies behind the product all lose something.
• Mission and Margin Are Often the Same Number: Excess readmissions can cost a hospital up to 3% across all of its Medicare discharges, and Value-Based Purchasing ties a 2% payment withhold directly to quality performance. Clinical failures and financial pressure show up in the same place.
• One Story, Two Audiences: The CNO and CFO may be looking at the same problem from different chairs. Keep the numbers connected, but frame what they mean for finance, operations, and clinical leaders.
• Run a Mission and Margin Audit: Before you approach a hospital, write out exactly how your solution affects patient care and exactly how it affects finances, so you can show the total value, not half of it.
• Lead with Patients, Then Be Precise About the Money: Mission comes first, but leave no room for misunderstanding on cost and revenue. Build ROI from inputs the hospital can observe and verify, and show conservative, expected, and stronger cases rather than one number built to impress.
• Write a Priority Hypothesis: Before asking for a meeting, answer four questions — what is this hospital trying to improve, which metric reveals the problem, what's made it more urgent, and what happens if nothing changes.
• Prove It, Then Overdeliver: Case studies and pilots that track both clinical and financial metrics reduce risk for tight-margin hospitals. Once you're in, obsess over results — that's how small projects become large contracts.

Read the full report: https://www.lisatmiller.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/Selling-to-the-Healthcare-C-Suite.pdf

Learn more about Lisa at https://lisatmiller.com/about

Book an appointment - https://calendly.com/lisa_t_miller/30min

LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/lisamiller/

Learn about Lisa's Workshops:

• https://fluentinhealthcare.com/
• https://healthcaresalesmasterclass.com/

In episode thirty of "Selling to Healthcare," Lisa T. Miller takes on a problem that quietly drains sales teams without them ever noticing — outreach that goes unanswered not because executives are busy, but because it's aimed at the wrong door and carries nothing worth opening. Lisa breaks the issue into two questions: which door are you knocking on, and what are you knocking with?

She explains why supply chain and procurement, the obvious front door into a hospital, is rarely where the conversation should start, and why leaders like the Chief Nursing Officer, Chief Operating Officer, VP of Finance, and VP of Perioperative Services often make stronger entry points. Lisa shares a simple test for choosing your door, how to tailor your opening to what each executive is listening for, and how to use CMS readmissions penalty data to find where a hospital's clinical and financial pressures line up.

Lisa then turns to what sellers bring to the door, making the case that cold email quietly damages your brand while offering only the illusion of efficiency. She walks through the alternatives that actually earn executive replies — genuinely useful newsletters, direct mail, FedEx-delivered sell sheets, short personal videos, and original writing shared for feedback — along with her Golden Rule of Follow-Up.

This episode offers a practical playbook for healthcare sales professionals who are tired of sending more and hearing less, and who want to show up at the right door with something executives are glad they opened.

Highlights of this Episode Include:

• Choose the Right Door: Supply chain is the obvious front door, but rarely where the conversation should start. Ask whose day gets harder if your product doesn't exist, and whose metric moves if it does — that leader is your entry point.
• Match the Message to the Leader: The CFO needs to see value, the COO responds to vision, and the CMO or CNO cares about clinical outcomes and differentiation. The same product needs a different opening for each.
• Use Readmissions Data as Your Opening: Under the Hospital Readmissions Reduction Program, excess readmissions can cost a hospital up to 3% across all of its Medicare discharges. Pull the penalty data for your top five accounts and write a short, specific note in their language.
• The Hidden Cost of Cold Email: Cold email offers a false promise of efficiency — and executives who mark you as spam will never tell you. Ten personal emails to people who know you will outperform a thousand to strangers.
• Build a Newsletter Worth Replying To: Genuinely useful content keeps you on an executive's radar and builds trust over time. Mine sources like Reddit to learn how your buyers describe their own problems — then use their words, not yours.
• Step Outside the Inbox: Direct mail, FedEx-delivered role-specific sell sheets, thirty-second personal videos offering a one-page brief, and original writing shared for feedback all stand out where email doesn't.
• The Golden Rule of Follow-Up: Every interaction must add value. A "just checking in" email breaks the rule the same way cold email does — it asks for attention and gives nothing back.

Read the full report: https://www.lisatmiller.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/Selling-to-the-Healthcare-C-Suite.pdf

Learn more about Lisa at https://lisatmiller.com/about

Book an appointment - https://calendly.com/lisa_t_miller/30min

LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/lisamiller/

Learn about Lisa's Workshops:

• https://fluentinhealthcare.com/
• https://healthcaresalesmasterclass.com/

In episode twenty-nine of "Selling to Healthcare," Lisa T. Miller steps into the room where so many hospital decisions actually get made — the executive meeting itself. Lisa explains why most C-Suite meetings fall apart not because the product is bad, but because of a misalignment between the buyer's problem and the way the solution was presented — and why that is almost entirely within the seller's control to fix.

She reframes the purpose of the meeting entirely: not to pitch, but to solve. Lisa walks through her "digging for gold" approach to preparation, where sellers act as consultants to their buyers, surface problems nobody else has seen, and walk in sitting on the same side of the table. She shares the story of a half-day seminar for 30 hospital CFOs where she taught her method in full — and walked out with two multi-year agreements.

Lisa then breaks down what makes a presentation fail, the four-part framework C-Suite executives actually prefer, the three ingredients every executive presentation needs, and how to close a meeting with clear next steps. She finishes with her Golden Rule of Follow-Up and four post-meeting moves that keep momentum alive without turning you into a pest.

This episode offers a complete meeting playbook for healthcare sales professionals who want to stop blending into the noise and start showing up as trusted advisors executives want to hear from again.

Highlights of this Episode Include:

• Solve, Don't Pitch: Escape tunnel vision — selling to healthcare isn't about your goals or your quarter. No executive wakes up hoping to sit through sales presentations; the purpose of the meeting is to prove you can solve their real problems.
• Preparation Is the Presentation: The success of your presentation is determined by the quality of the preparation behind it. Static features-and-benefits decks blend into the noise, and communication goes dark.
• Dig for Gold: Become a consultant to your buyer. Use earnings calls, press releases, and leadership interviews to see what others don't — and surface serious problems the buyer hasn't recognized yet.
• Win by Teaching: Lisa taught her full non-labor cost reduction method to 30 hospital CFOs and finance leaders — and two multi-year agreements originated that afternoon. Confidence in your capability sells better than any pitch.
• Avoid the Three Presentation Killers: Buzzwords without substance, overly technical detail, and overpromising — "nothing kills trust faster than saying you can do everything when it's clear you can't."
• Build What Executives Prefer: Open with their priorities, focus on outcomes, keep it visual and concise, and allow for interaction — backed by proof of credibility, unique insights, and practical next steps. Act like a seller and you'll be treated like one; act like an advisor and you earn access few salespeople see.
• The Golden Rule of Follow-Up: Every interaction must add value. End meetings with clear next steps, never send "just checking in" messages, and instead send a summary within 24 hours, deliver what you promised, stay visible with insight, and offer a proof of concept.

Read the full article: https://www.selltohospitals.com/p/c-suite-selling-strategies

Learn more about Lisa at https://lisatmiller.com/about

Book an appointment - https://calendly.com/lisa_t_miller/30min

LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/lisamiller/

Learn about Lisa's Workshops:

• https://fluentinhealthcare.com/
• https://healthcaresalesmasterclass.com/

In episode twenty-eight of "Selling to Healthcare," Lisa T. Miller opens with a scene every hospital seller has lived through. You get the meeting, the executive is engaged, she asks thoughtful questions, and she tells you to keep talking. Then it slows. Operations wants more detail, finance wants different numbers, IT raises integration concerns, a clinical leader isn't convinced the workflow holds, and procurement shows up late. The executive is still supportive — but that support never becomes a decision.

Lisa returns to the Decision Zone she introduced in her episode on frozen pipelines, and gets specific about what actually has to be won inside it. Her central point: executive interest is not organizational approval. A hospital isn't a single buyer, it's a decision system, and that system has to resolve three things — whether the solution matters now, whether the value can be measured here, and whether the organization can say yes without creating unacceptable risk. These aren't late-stage objections to handle at the end. They sit underneath the entire deal.

She walks through each decision with the work that goes with it: priority research instead of title research, a four-question priority hypothesis written before you ask for the meeting, the five elements of a credible business case, testable models with visible assumptions instead of one unsupported ROI claim, and mapping the people whose sign-off makes a yes feel responsible. She also shares the bake-off she proposed while running VIE Healthcare — same small pilot for all three competing firms — which won a five-year health system contract by letting the buyer see the work rather than the presentation.

This episode gives healthcare sales professionals a sequencing framework for the middle of the deal, where most hospital revenue gets trapped, and a clear test for whether an opportunity needs more persuasion or better preparation.

Highlights of this Episode Include:

• Executive Interest Is Not Organizational Approval: A hospital is a decision system, not a single buyer. Interest from one leader doesn't move a deal until the system resolves relevance, measurability, and risk.
• Decision One — Is This Important Enough to Address Now?: Most conversations start too close to the solution. Your job isn't to prove the product works, it's to connect the problem to something the organization has already decided matters.
• Priority Research Beats Title Research: Titles tell you what a leader generally cares about. Expansion plans, margin pressure, public quality goals, and value-based contracts tell you what this leader is accountable for right now — and a surgical technology that opens a net-new patient population stops being a save-money story and becomes a growth story a CFO can take to the board.
• Decision Two — Is the Value Real and Measurable Here?: The question executives actually ask is what would have to be true for this result to happen in our organization. Generic ROI claims skip the hospital's current state and cost you credibility.
• Show a Testable Model, Not a Perfect Number: Two hundred avoidable calls a week at three minutes each is five hundred and twenty hours a year — an assumption the hospital can go verify. Strong business cases show a conservative, expected, and stronger case, and translate the numbers for finance, operations, and clinical leaders differently.
• Decision Three — Can We Say Yes Without Creating More Risk?: The biggest competitor in most hospital deals is the current way of working. Map the economic sponsor, operational owner, clinical validator, IT and security, finance, and procurement — they aren't obstacles around the buyer, together they are the buyer.
• Build Pilots as Decision Instruments: A serious pilot has a baseline, a defined population, an accountable owner, a time frame, agreed success measures, and a decision waiting on the other side. Anything less produces activity and no proof. Motion is not progress — complex deals move when you remove uncertainty in the right order.

Read the full article: https://www.selltohospitals.com/p/selling-to-hospitals-three-decisions

Learn more about Lisa at https://lisatmiller.com/about

Book an appointment - https://calendly.com/lisa_t_miller/30min

LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/lisamiller/

Learn about Lisa's Workshops:

• https://fluentinhealthcare.com/
• https://healthcaresalesmasterclass.com/

In episode twenty-seven of "Selling to Healthcare," Lisa T. Miller delivers part two of an argument she started a few episodes earlier — that the health systems sellers are calling on are already running AI against spend, contracts, and patient access, and that the bar for what executives expect from a vendor has quietly moved. She drew a line then between the vendors using AI to send more emails and the vendors using AI to actually think. This episode is the practical half: what that second group is doing, and how to join it.

Lisa anchors the whole thing in the Core Authority Asset — a concise, credible, forwardable piece of intelligence built around one health system's data, pressures, and language, designed so a champion can carry it into a room the seller isn't allowed to enter. What used to make that asset rare was the cost of building it: weeks of research, a team of analysts, deep institutional knowledge of how hospital data works. That cost has collapsed.

She demonstrates with a worked example. Say you're a physician who does some emergency department work, trying to expand into new health systems, with almost no data on the accounts you're targeting. Instead of chasing information you don't have, you sit down with an AI tool and ask what an emergency department actually measures — not how to sell your services. Three metrics come back, sourced from Medicare data and the Hospital Outpatient Quality Reporting program: left-without-being-seen rate, median ED time, and door-to-inpatient-bed time. Run a target hospital through that data and say the left-without-being-seen rate lands at five percent against a healthy benchmark of roughly two percent, with door-to-bed time running around three hours. Those numbers become a customized executive brief — and from there, you could even vibe-code a simple web app that pulls the same three metrics live for any hospital in the country, so you can hand an executive the tool and say, name a hospital. Yours, or a competitor's.

Lisa then pulls the example apart into a repeatable five-step framework and closes on the part that matters most: the barrier is no longer budget, analysts, or code. It is curiosity, better questions, and the willingness to do the work for one specific account when competitors won't — and the window on that advantage will not stay open indefinitely.

Highlights of this Episode Include:

• Built in an Afternoon, Not in Weeks: A single question asked of an AI tool can surface a data source most sellers have never heard of and a five percent left-without-being-seen rate — more than double the benchmark. That one number is the entire executive conversation.
• Start With the Problem, Not the Product: The starting question was never "how do I sell my services." It was "what does an emergency department measure, and where do hospitals struggle." Before your next target account meeting, write down three real questions about that health system you cannot answer yet.
• Go to the Data, Then Verify It: Medicare cost reports, Hospital Outpatient Quality Reporting, CMS bundled payment data, IRS 990s — mostly free, mostly untouched by vendors, and now readable in minutes. But AI tools are confidently wrong, and one bad number in a C-suite meeting doesn't cost you the point, it costs you the room.
• Ask Better Questions, Not Bigger Ones: Dropping a hospital name into a generic prompt returns generic output every time. Ask AI to triangulate across sources, benchmark one metric against peers, and explain what a pattern means to a CFO managing margin pressure and a bundled payment mandate at once. Questions that specific are what surface the metrics you wouldn't have known to look for.
• Build for This Account, Not All Accounts: The temptation to templatize the insight and blast it across thirty systems destroys the thing that made it work. The framework travels; the insight gets rebuilt every time. Gut check — could your last leave-behind have been sent to any hospital?
• Match the Form to the Moment: A Core Authority Asset isn't always a document. Door-opener, one-page brief, forwardable leave-behind, interactive app — same underlying intelligence, different expression depending on where you are in the cycle and who you need to reach.
• The Barrier Is Effort, Not Technology: No analyst team, no data subscription, no code required. Executives have never chosen a vendor for a polished deck — they choose partners who show up having done the work, and that work now fits in an afternoon.

Learn more about Lisa at https://lisatmiller.com/about

Book an appointment - https://calendly.com/lisa_t_miller/30min

LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/lisamiller/

Learn about Lisa's Workshops:

• https://fluentinhealthcare.com/
• https://healthcaresalesmasterclass.com/

In episode twenty-six of "Selling to Healthcare," Lisa T. Miller does something different — she opens up the book she's writing right now and walks through chapter one while it's still in progress. The chapter is called The New Front Door to Your Business, and it's built on a single claim she wants every business owner to sit with: Google isn't disappearing, but the behavior around it has already changed. Lisa traces the shift from typing a few keywords and clicking through websites to asking a full question inside an AI tool — and the difference matters, because AI doesn't hand back a list. It interprets the question, evaluates what's out there, and may recommend a handful of businesses before the customer ever lands on a single website. She backs the shift with research rather than instinct: Yext found roughly 43% of consumers had used AI for local search in the previous month and 28% had tried a new local business on an AI recommendation, while McKinsey projects $750 billion in spending flowing through AI-powered search by 2028. She then works through the harder question — why a genuinely successful business can be missing from an AI answer entirely. Thin content, a site structure or schema that blocks bots, no answers to the questions customers are actually asking, no consistency, and content that reads as machine-generated rather than real. Lisa is direct about what happens next: when AI recommends your competitor, that customer goes there, and the signal compounds in the competitor's favor. She also looks ahead to bot-to-bot conversations, where the agents on your website negotiate directly with the agents doing the searching. Lisa closes with her own evidence — a year of focused work that now has her consistently surfacing in AI, the number one Google spot for "selling to hospitals," and years at the top of YouTube and Google in her consulting firm days that brought senior executives to her directly. Then the personal one: after coming up empty searching for a very specific doctor for her mother, she found the right physician through a back-and-forth with AI. Search isn't disappearing. It's becoming a conversation — and your business has to be able to participate in it. Highlights of this Episode Include:

• • The New Front Door: Customers used to type "Palm Beach Gardens orthopedic practice" and click around. Now they ask a full question — and AI interprets, evaluates, and recommends before anyone visits a website.
  • The Data Isn't Subtle: Yext found ~43% of consumers used AI for local search in the past month and 28% tried a new business on an AI recommendation; McKinsey projects $750 billion flowing through AI search by 2028. This isn't a someday problem.
  • Why Good Businesses Go Missing: Not enough content, a site structure or schema that blocks bots, and no answers to the questions customers are actually asking. Bots that can't get an answer quickly will bounce and go elsewhere.
  • Real Content, Not Machine Filler: AI can edit — Lisa is talking her whole book through and using AI to polish it — but the ideas have to be yours. Stories, examples, images of your work, and consistency are what signal trustworthiness.
  • Losing Compounds: When AI recommends a competitor, the customer goes there and AI reads the signal to keep referring them. Speed is the counterweight — speed to answer, to pick up the phone, to follow up, to quote.
  • Bots Talking to Bots: Today the bots crawl your site. Soon your site will need its own agents to answer, inform, and transact with them. Conversational agents already schedule appointments and triage questions right now.
  • Three Things to Do Right Now: Run a comprehensive analysis of your site's SEO, structure, schema, and AI visibility; build consistent content around what your customers actually ask; and put an agent or two on your website.

Reports referenced in this episode:

• https://www.yext.com/resources/consumer-search-behaviors-full-report
• https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/growth-marketing-and-sales/our-insights/new-front-door-to-the-internet-winning-in-the-age-of-ai-search

Learn more about Lisa at https://lisatmiller.com/about Book an appointment - https://calendly.com/lisa_t_miller/30min LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/lisamiller/

Learn about Lisa's Workshops:

• https://fluentinhealthcare.com/
• https://healthcaresalesmasterclass.com/

Episode Description

Most sellers chase one path into hospitals and stall out when it closes. In this episode, Gavin and Lisa map the full set of routes: national GPOs and their RFP cycles, regional purchasing coalitions, government and VA contracting, direct health system deals, MWBE certification, buy-local initiatives, and hospital innovation funds. Lisa breaks down her issue-impact-urgency-outcome framework for arming a clinical champion, explains why good products still get rejected at value analysis, and shares the one move a seller with no contracts and no connections can make this quarter. She ran her own healthcare company for 23 years before selling it, and now advises companies on hospital contracting strategy.

In This Episode

Why national GPO contracts hinge on timing, not pitching (00:31) Vizient, Premier, and HealthTrust control roughly 60 to 70 percent of the hospital supplies market. Lisa explains how their multi-year RFP cycles work and why the biggest mistake sellers make is missing the window entirely. She also covers innovation grants and custom contracts as ways around standard contracting.

When a regional GPO beats a national one (04:54) Regional GPOs and local coalitions are more accessible and buy in categories national contracts often skip. Lisa notes the tradeoff: those coalitions expect a much higher-touch relationship from suppliers.

The government path most sellers forget (07:45) Lisa covers the VA system, one of the largest in the country, and the preferential treatment given to veteran-owned and disabled veteran-owned companies. She also mentions a federal hospital-at-home fast track program for expedited review of innovative solutions.

Selling direct without a GPO contract (10:15) There is no rule stopping a supplier from selling straight to a hospital. Lisa explains when price alone wins the deal and where state-run hospitals run their own RFPs.

The order number that cost a hospital hundreds of thousands (11:58) A real example of a logistics glitch blocking major savings, where swapping an item number in the system was the only barrier. Lisa's fix: write out the switching process step by step and make it visibly frictionless.

Why the CFO does care about your commodity product (15:32) Lisa pushes back on sellers who assume finance leaders will not engage. Low-risk, easy savings are exactly what CFOs want brought to them.

Using MWBE certification as leverage (17:15) State certification can be done in about 30 days, while national certification is a longer path. Lisa shares her own experience getting certified during COVID and describes hospitals like Northwell that host dedicated supplier days.

Buy local as a hidden advantage (20:26) Lisa won a New Jersey RFP and only later learned the health system's CEO had made buying local a strategic priority, tracked by spend volume. She points to the Healthcare Anchor Network, where systems across the country have committed to large local purchasing targets.

Why hospitals want local vendors (23:22) The motivation is community economic impact, and the loyalty runs both ways. Local vendors show up faster because the hospital serves their own families.

Hospital venture funds and innovation partnerships (24:41) Lisa explains how these programs work, who they suit, and why hospitals now hunt for non-patient-care revenue. Co-development and commercialization deals can matter more than the funding itself.

Two stories from the innovation channel (27:14) An acquisition inquiry that arrived unprompted during a sales process, plus the UPMC decision to buy the largest third-party Epic consulting firm rather than hire implementation consultants.

What a clinical champion can and cannot do (30:17) Champions open doors but rarely carry purchasing power alone. Lisa explains why even a department chair can stall, and why hospitals need gatekeeping to avoid stocking every product a physician likes.

Arming your champion: issue, impact, urgency, outcome (34:27) Lisa's framework for the two-to-three page document a champion actually needs. Issue defines the problem or bottleneck. Impact is the measured ROI. Urgency ties to something real, like new cases coming in. Outcome demands specificity, down to named DRGs and dollar figures per case. She stresses writing the talking points for physicians rather than expecting them to sell on your behalf.

Why good products get rejected at value analysis (39:18) Lisa explains the two purposes of value analysis, clinical safety and financial threshold, and argues sellers should respect why the process exists. Her advice is a complete value package built for a three-dimensional decision, not a linear pitch.

Adoption in the first 90 to 180 days (45:03) Signing the contract is not the finish line. Lisa covers protecting your clinical champion's early success, then expanding to other physicians, facilities, and ASCs inside the same network.

One move to make this quarter (46:45) For sellers with no GPO contract, no certification, and no investor connections, Lisa recommends going local and direct. Pick five to ten nearby hospitals and pursue each with a specific strategy.

Where to find Lisa and Gavin (49:20)

Key Quotes

"The biggest mistake is not knowing those cycles of when they're gonna do RFPs and looking for your products, so you gotta keep an eye out for that." (Lisa)

"I would actually make it frictionless. And I don't think sellers do that enough." (Lisa, on removing the logistics barriers that stall a direct deal)

"You're asking them to articulate a commercial. You're asking them to do your work as a salesperson." (Lisa, on why clinical champions need written talking points)

Connect with Lisa

Website: LisaTmiller.com

Connect with Gavin

Email: [email protected]