Approximately one-third of adverse events in cardiac surgery are preventable.
These avoidable mishaps are directly caused by operating room errors.
To address this, one MedTech company raised multiple seven-figure rounds of growth capital for its product.
This firm developed a complex digital health platform designed to eliminate user error in the operating room.
In launching the product, the firm’s leaders focused on the health system’s C-suite but ignored the end user: the physicians.
This product was seemingly well-positioned to succeed, especially in light of the cost of legal and financial liability for failed surgical procedures.
But physicians hated the concept.
That’s because their input was ignored.
Adoption failed.
In hindsight, the CEO of the MedTech company forgot to ask one of the seven key questions required to ensure the product’s commercial success.
An assessment of the CEO’s insightfulness—and an awareness of the seven questions—would have highlighted this gap.
This article will reveal the seven questions your CEO should be asking to impact the odds of commercial success for your MedTech company.
1. Who is your end user?
The importance of developing a detailed buyer persona may seem obvious, but it is surprising how few organizations, even sophisticated ones, spend any time on this vital step.
Why spend time and resources on this activity?
When you invest the time to dig into the discovery process of detailing your ideal customer, you may discover that you have more than one buyer persona, possibly with varying motivations, needs, and objections to the product or service you offer.
Businesses around the world use buyer personas because they work.
The more detailed and granular you get on the specific characteristics of your ultimate consumers, the more you tend to discover the various triggers that motivate them to buy—or not buy—what you are offering.
You need to know whom you’re selling to, because you need a firm understanding of both the rational and the emotional triggers.
These triggers will dictate each buyer’s reasons for buying your product (especially if there are multiple influencers).
Though you may be considering the logical factors in a purchase decision, there are always personal, emotional factors that are powerful drivers too, such as the decision maker’s career, financial considerations and other concerns.
To avoid flops like the story told above, take a look at some key questions to consider when developing your buyer personas:
- What is your buyers’ mission?
- What industry are they in?
- What is their job title/function?
- Where are they located geographically?
- What is the organization size (in employees and revenues)?
- Are they the decision maker (or are they an influencer making decisions with other people)?
- How old are they (Gen X, Gen Y, boomers, etc.)?
- What is their educational background that shapes their world view (PhD, MD, MBA, etc.)?
Each one of these questions should take you down a data trail that will uncover triggers and motivators.
These are the broad questions that will guide your specific line of questioning when identifying your potential buyers.
When you know how all your buyer personas fall into one or more of these categories, then you will know how to craft your product’s narrative to address their buying motives.
2. What problem is your product solving?
During the initial stages of concept development, three tests are often overlooked:
- Have you developed solutions to a problem that doesn’t exist? (If so, you should be sure that your solution is so superior, end users will want it on its merits.)
- Are your customers unaware that they have a problem? (If so, you must start on a mission to make them aware.)
- Is your solution easily solved elsewhere? (If so, there may be entrenched competitors that will be VERY challenging to unseat.)
Does your product fail any of these three tests?
3. How does your product solve that problem?
The product may solve a problem, but that still may not be enough.
How the product solves the problem (that is, how easy or difficult it is to get the desired result) needs to be taken into account.
For instance, recall the early days of desktop computing. With all its promise, the PC was difficult to use. It was not widely adopted until the icon/mouse graphical user interface was introduced, making it easier than learning keyboard commands.
How does your product solve the problem at hand?
Is your product easy or difficult to use?
4. What makes your product unique?
Can you define in one word how your product is distinctive?
What makes it different: safety, efficiency, economy, security, reliability?
If you can describe your product in this way, you have separated yourself from the pack.
How does your product separate itself from its competitors or alternative solutions to the problem you are addressing?
Look at how often companies fail on this point.
Their communication is muddled, overly complex and dispersed. As a result, both the company and its products are unmemorable.
From a leadership perspective, being able to simplify the essence of the product or service concept solidifies the value proposition.
It is yet another test to challenge the reason for the product’s existence.
When we speak of a CEO as an evangelist, it comes from this ability to distill and communicate a message that will embed itself in the minds of stakeholders, employees and customers.
5. What is your product’s freedom to operate?
Freedom to operate (FTO) can be your firewall to protect against intellectual property infringement.
We all have heard about highly complex medical devices that have been reverse-engineered and sold as knockoffs, with all the work, trial and error, and development costs being hijacked by an unethical bad actor.
Evaluating your FTO is essential in the hypercompetitive global economy.
If your product lends itself to patent protection, then a search of patent literature would be an essential first step to see whether patents exist that limit your freedom to operate. The second step would be your own patent filing.
Establishing your product’s IP high ground is a cost that will need to be factored into your profit and loss.
Addressing the company’s FTO early on is a way to mitigate the risk of future litigation and IP theft.
6. How will you distribute your product?
Does your product have a simple or complex sales cycle?
Simple and complex products require different types of distribution.
A simple product could be sold to a physician’s office or directly to consumers.
In the case of distribution to physician’s offices, typically doctors will know whether they need or do not need the product. The sale requires little, if any, education or sales support.
Distribution method: independent distributors, reps and groups.
A home health direct-to-consumer product would be a device that the consumer buys directly from a retailer and uses at home.
Distribution method: brick-and-mortar retailers and online retailers.
On the other hand, a complex product could be a robotic surgical device requiring connectivity, imaging, training and education, and a complex sales cycle.
Distribution method: direct employees. Typically, one employee introduces and generates interest for the product, and then additional employees provide technical, training and sales support.
7. What is your profit and loss?
You could answer all these six questions correctly.
But if you can’t sell your product at a price point that the market will support, then you have a problem.
Managing your P&L is an ongoing process; it’s not something that’s done sequentially or periodically.
All the decisions you make after asking (and answering) the first six questions need to be viewed in light of your P&L.
Summary
Like a pilot using a preflight checklist before every takeoff, consider these seven questions as your checklist for commercial success.
No matter how much you think you know your marketplace, this seven-factor checklist will help ensure you’ll have a smooth product launch and greater odds of success.
JP Boyle & Associates is a national and international executive search firm serving large multinational corporations to tech startups in the medical device, digital health and nanomedicine market verticals.
