Engaging a 10-Person Buying Committee Through a 13+ Month Sales Marathon

What Traditional Health Tech MarketingGets Wrong

If you’re running a health tech company, this probably sounds familiar: Your team is working harder than ever, executing campaign after campaign. You’ve got leads coming in, but they’re not converting. Your sales team is frustrated. The deals that do move forward seem to take forever to close.

And despite all your efforts, it feels like you’re just throwing spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks.

You’re not alone. I see this pattern all the time in health tech. The traditional B2B marketing playbook just isn’t cutting it anymore.

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The Current State of Health Tech Marketing

Traditional B2B marketing approaches can create a lot of waste.

Marketing teams cast too wide a net, reaching prospects who aren’t a good fit. They treat all leads equally, despite vastly different potential values. There’s often misalignment between marketing and sales teams, leading to friction and missed opportunities.

And in health tech, these challenges are amplified by several unique factors.

The Complex Healthcare Sales Environment

Let’s talk about what makes healthcare different. According to recent HIMSS research, sales cycles in health tech average 13+ months, with many extending beyond 24 months. Some deals may even take years to close.

Why so long? Healthcare organizations operate under intense financial pressure and strict budget constraints. A budget that’s approved today might be frozen tomorrow due to shifting priorities.

IT teams in healthcare juggle hundreds of projects simultaneously. Despite the value the CIO sees in your solution, it still might not make the priority list that year.

The Stakes Are Higher

In healthcare, the consequences of a wrong technology decision extend far beyond financial impact. While a misguided tech purchase in retail might hurt profits, a poor technology choice could affect patient safety.

This reality creates a level of risk aversion that’s unique to healthcare. Decision-makers often prefer to stick with the status quo rather than risk a failed implementation.

The Multiple Stakeholder Challenge

Perhaps the most complex aspect is the number of stakeholders involved in each purchase decision. We’re not talking about two or three people – 60-70% of organizations report five or more people are involved, according to HIMSS, with over 25% saying 10+ people spanning executive leadership, clinicians, finance, operations, and more.

Healthcare buying groups typically include:

Clinical leaders evaluating patient impact
IT teams assessing integration requirements
Compliance officers reviewing security and regulatory alignment
Finance teams analyzing ROI
Operations staff considering workflow implications
C-suite executives weighing strategic fit

Each stakeholder brings their own priorities, concerns and evaluation criteria to the table.

Imagining a Better Way

What if you could transform this complex, lengthy sales process into a more strategic, efficient approach?

Imagine if you could:

Identify your most valuable potential accounts before investing significant resources
Create personalized campaigns that speak directly to each stakeholder’s specific concerns
Align your marketing and sales efforts around the same high-priority target accounts
Measure success at the account level rather than by individual leads
Significantly reduce wasted effort on poor-fit prospects

This is where Account-Based Marketing (ABM) comes in.

A Strategic ABM Framework for Health Tech

Account-Based Marketing isn’t just another marketing tactic – it’s a fundamental shift in how we approach B2B healthcare marketing.

Think of it like this: Traditional marketing is like casting a wide net in the ocean, hoping to catch any fish. ABM is more like spearfishing – you identify exactly which fish you want and use specific techniques to catch it.

Here’s how to implement ABM effectively in health tech:

1. Define Your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP)

Your ICP is the foundation of any successful ABM program. In health tech, this means looking beyond basic firmographic data to consider:

Technology infrastructure compatibility
Clinical specialty alignment
Patient volume and type
Recent technology investments
Regulatory readiness
Budget cycles
Organizational change readiness

The goal is to identify organizations where:

The pain point is acute enough to drive change
The infrastructure can support implementation
The budget cycle aligns with your sales cycle

2. Map the Buyer Collective

This is crucial in healthcare, where buying decisions are never made in isolation. For each target account, you need to identify:

The Champion: Your Internal Advocate

Champions are your ground-level heroes. They’re the ones living with the problem day in and day out, and they’ve finally reached their breaking point with the status quo.

Think of the Director of Clinical Operations who’s watching her staff struggle with inefficient workflows, or the IT Manager who’s patching together three different systems to accomplish what should be a simple task.

What makes a Champion valuable:

They have first-hand experience with the pain points
They understand the real-world impact of the current situation
They’re motivated to drive change
They can articulate both the problem and potential solutions to others
They have enough organizational influence to get people to listen

Champions are your most important allies because they’ll do the heavy lifting of internal advocacy. They’ll set up the meetings, gather the requirements and fight the internal battles necessary to move the process forward.

How to identify your Champion(s):

Who owns the problem your solution solves?
Who has the most to gain from implementing your solution?
Who has the organizational influence to drive change?

3. Outline Your Buyer Personas

The real magic happens when you develop detailed personas – but not in the traditional marketing way. Here’s what makes health tech personas different: They need to reflect how people buy as a group, not as individuals.

Instead of creating personas for every possible stakeholder, focus first on developing deep, actionable profiles of your Champions. Why? Because Champions are your key to understanding and influencing the entire buying collective.

When developing your Champion personas, limit yourself to no more than four. Each should be a scannable, one-page document that helps you understand who they are and how they can successfully drive consensus within their organization.

4. Develop the Buyer Journey Framework

You’ve probably seen the classic buyer journey: Awareness → Interest → Consideration → Decision. It’s clean, it’s simple and it’s also completely inadequate.

Let’s break down how healthcare organizations actually buy technology solutions:

Problem Definition Stage (Months 1-3)

This isn’t about awareness – it’s about collective agreement on what needs to be solved.

Your champion and their colleagues are asking:

What’s the real cost of our current situation?
Who else in the organization is affected by this problem?
How does this issue impact our strategic objectives?
What metrics should we use to measure the problem’s impact?

Your role is to help them:

Frame the problem in business terms
Gather relevant internal data
Build consensus around the problem definition
Identify all affected stakeholders

Solution Definition Stage (Months 4-6)

Before evaluating specific vendors, the buying collective needs to align on their approach.

Key questions include:

What types of solutions could address our problem?
What are peer organizations doing?
What internal resources would different approaches require?
How would various solutions fit into our existing infrastructure?

Focus on helping them:

Understand different solution categories
Evaluate various approaches
Define success criteria
Build internal alignment around solution requirements

Vendor Evaluation Stage (Months 7-9)

Now the collective begins comparing specific options within their chosen solution category.

They’re investigating:

Which vendors meet our technical requirements?
How do different solutions compare on our key criteria?
What are the total cost implications of each option?
Which solution poses the least implementation risk?

Your task is to:

Provide clear comparison frameworks
Demonstrate concrete differentiation
Address stakeholder-specific concerns
Facilitate technical validation

Decision-Making Stage (Months 10-13+)

The final stage isn’t just about selecting a vendor – it’s about achieving collective buy-in.

The buying collective needs to:

Build consensus across all stakeholder groups
Align implementation timelines with organizational capacity
Secure final budget approval
Develop risk mitigation plans

Support them by:

Providing internal champions with advocacy tools
Addressing final stakeholder concerns
Offering clear implementation roadmaps
Demonstrating organizational readiness support

Remember: the buyer journey isn’t about moving prospects through your funnel – it’s about supporting a buying collective through their decision process.

5. Create Targeted Content

According to research from 6sense, buyers typically don’t reach out to vendors until they’re 70% through their buying journey. Even more critically, 84% of buyers end up selecting the first firm they contact.

Let that sink in.

By the time a potential customer reaches out to you, they’ve likely already:

Defined their problem
Researched potential solutions
Created a shortlist of vendors
Started building internal consensus
Developed preliminary requirements
Estimated their budget

And if you’re not the first vendor they contact, your chances of winning their business drop dramatically.

This is why traditional “wait for them to come to us” marketing fails in healthcare tech. Your potential customers aren’t starting their research on your website or by talking to your sales team. They’re out there doing their own research, in their own way, long before they ever reach out to a vendor.

The question isn’t whether healthcare tech buyers are researching solutions – it’s whether they’re finding your content during that critical first 70% of their journey.

Before you create a single piece of content, understand what drives healthcare organizations to start looking for solutions like yours.

Common triggers include:

Regulatory changes requiring new capabilities
Failed audits exposing system gaps
Staff turnover highlighting process inefficiencies
Merger/acquisition driving system consolidation
Budget cycles freeing up new resources
Competitor implementations creating FOMO

These triggers should shape your content strategy because they indicate when organizations are entering the market. Then, you can move on to creating content for each stage:

Problem Definition Content

Industry trend reports
Problem impact calculators
Peer perspective interviews
Regulatory requirement guides

Solution Definition Content

Approach comparison guides
Implementation methodology whitepapers
Resource requirement calculators
Integration consideration checklists

Vendor Evaluation Content

Technical specification sheets
Security documentation
Customer case studies
ROI analysis tools

Decision-Making Content

Implementation roadmaps
Change management guides
Training program outlines
Success measurement frameworks

The goal isn’t to create content for content’s sake. It’s to provide your champions with exactly what they need, when they need it, in the format and location they prefer. Your content strategy should reflect their buying journey, not your marketing preferences.

Making The Transition

Moving to ABM doesn’t happen overnight. Start with these steps:

Identify your top 10-20 target accounts based on your ICP
Map the complete buying committee for each account
Create personas for 2-4 Champions.
Audit your current content against stakeholder needs
Develop account-specific engagement plans
Align sales and marketing around account priorities

The Path Forward

Health tech sales will likely continue to involve multiple stakeholders and lengthy decision cycles. That’s not going to change. But by implementing a strategic ABM approach, you can stop throwing spaghetti at the wall and start taking a more precise, strategic approach to market engagement.

Want to learn more about implementing ABM in your health tech organization? Connect with me on LinkedIn for regular insights on healthcare marketing strategy, or reach out directly to discuss how I can help your team make the transition to ABM.

About the Author

Heather Lodge

Fractional Chief Marketing Officer & Founder of The Hybrid CMO

Heather helps growing health tech and healthcare service companies transition from ‘spaghetti-against-the-wall’ marketing to scalable operations so they can go toe-to-toe against better-funded rivals. She helps establish clear market positioning, develop focused account-based marketing programs and build the systems and teams needed to scale effectively. Heather’s approach combines strategic leadership with hands-on execution, building marketing programs that drive consistent revenue growth.

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Engaging a 10-Person Buying Committee Through a 13+ Month Sales Marathon – What Traditional Health Tech Marketing Gets Wrong

Heather Lodge

Discover a strategic framework for navigating complex healthcare buying cycles, from mapping stakeholder dynamics to creating targeted content that reaches buyers during the critical first 70% of their journey.