>I'm pretty clear I'm just looking to learn/listen and not pitch.
They have no reason to trust you. I would think you're just looking for an angle to sell me on no matter what you say.
You might try attending/crashing medical conferences in the area. You could also talk to folks on the periphery of the healthcare industry to look for opportunities.
One that I experienced personally is the difficulty in matching a specific person at a specific point in their treatment to applicable clinical trials. Particularly with cancer where there are so many inclusion/exclusion criteria to consider. The terminology is very dense and not always clear. Then you reach out to the PI and find that the window is even smaller than it appeared at first.
If you follow Steve Blank's approach, the ideal thing to do is start with "friendly first contacts" - that is, people you actually know personally and/or people who you are referred to by people you know personally. Then, once you get even a few "friendly first contact" meetings, you ask those people to refer you to their contacts, and so on in turn.
Note that this stuff is never as easy as it sounds on paper, but if you put enough effort in, it eventually works (in my experience anyway).
Also note that even if you're not pitching a product for sale (yet) asking people for their time for an interview is still an ask. Ideally you'd like to be able to offer to compensate people for their time somehow. I don't mean paying them cash or anything, but think about how to structure your invitations in such a way as to communicate that you're offering them something in return for their time. That "something" might be "an early peek at a revolutionary new technology for ABC" or whatever you can think of that is a way of giving some value to them. Be creative.
Also, it's not always the easiest thing to go in asking people "what are your pain points" in an extremely open-ended way. You might find that it's easier to start with a hypothesis about a possible pain point, and pitch things in terms of "We've noticed that firms like yours often have to deal with problem $FOOBAR. To that end, we're developing a novel solution for $FOOBAR, and we'd love a few minutes of your time (no sales pitch!) to talk about how $FOOBAR and related problems affect you. In return for a 30 minute interview, we'll offer you $SOMETHING".
While the hustle is admirable, I think you could use more creativity on the outreach plan. Doctors are likely one of the most harried professions in the world. Cold emails to these folks are not going to work well.
You have to find a way to network.
Look at how pharma reps do it. Attractive people, coming into the office and bring lunch.
Where can you put yourself in a spot to meet and talk to a high percentage of doctors. My first thought is a golf course. Is there a way in that way?
Do you volunteer at a hospital on weekends?
Another tip is for anyone you talk to, ask for introductions. Who else has this problem?? I work in healthcare (not a doctor). Not sure if I can help, but happy to chat if you dm me.
>I'm pretty clear I'm just looking to learn
put another way, you're asking people to take some of their time to teach you. I'm assuming that if you were offering compensation for this time you'd have mentioned it.
getting a 1% interview rate for an ask like that is exceptional. especially considering the people you're asking are known for being extremely busy, and you're asking from outside their industry.
I think your question is really: "how do I find people to interview?"
First, find out where your prospects actually spend time. LinkedIn is garbage for a lot of industries. Most doctors don't change jobs much or building "personal brands", so they're not scanning LinkedIn often. Reddit can also be often a better community.
Second, don't cold message people. Put out HELPFUL (not clickbait) content. It can be as simple as a question ("hey, I'm wondering how people solve X?"). Let the community come to you. Then follow up with the people that engaged with your content. They've shown an interest in your topic AND a willingness to engage.
At the end of every call, ask two questions: can you follow up with them with further questions and is there anyone they can think of that would be helpful to learn more? For that second question ask them, IN THE CALL, to write an intro email/message connecting you. Social validation is critical.
Finally, actually follow up. 1-4 weeks later message an update, thank them for their perspective and connection, and again ask if there's anyone they can think of to learn more from.
Don't. Watch them do their work, or let them describe their work.
From my coaching practice, people are not very good identifying there real pain point. My back hurts, but my back isn't broken, I just sit too much.
Have you considered offering them something for their time? Something as simple as a gift card to a coffee shop, so you can have virtual coffee and chat about their pain points?
I know you don't want to sounds sales-y, and there are ways to offer this without sounding like a salesperson. Just an idea
I'd contact the leaders of professional or interest groups related to your domain and ask if they can recommend some members who might be interested. If you contact that person in a respectful and professional way, they'll feel slightly more obliged not to dismiss you immediately, because they're acting in a semi-official capacity. And if you get through to them, they can pass you on to members who will take you more seriously because you come with the imprimatur of someone they know.
[Before, during, and after the session you treat them well, don't waste their time, thank them, etc., which hopefully goes without saying]
Then when you're done with each interview, you ask the participant "hey, this was so great, can you recommend anybody else I should talk to?"
To that last sentence, I often used to add "... I'm looking for the most outspoken, opinionated expert you know, the person with no filter, who just tells it like it is". Chances are they know a person like that, and that person immediately leapt to their mind. That's who you really want to talk to anyway, the person who will tell you exactly what is wrong with everything out there.
In terms of asking people about pain points, the best approach I've used is to get them to list their pain points, then ask them to stack rank that list. If applicable, ask them how much they'd pay for a product that solved each of those problems, or just the top n. You want to know whether they're just brainstorming minor quibbles, or if there is actually an opportunity there.
If you are in the US, doctor's offices are typically small businesses that function different from hospitals. When I was in insurance, doctor's offices tended to be less savvy about HIPAA.
They became doctors to practice medicine. Most likely, their pain points have to do with all the non-medical parts of running a small business, including staying in compliance with regulations like HIPAA.
Engaging busy professionals, like doctors, is very challenging, especially when your value proposition is unclear. Get clear on what the value of them connecting with you is. If what you're offering isn't compelling, don't be surprised when even friendly connections don't bite. Don't be discouraged, instead learn from it and figure out what you can provide that they find value in.
As others have said, you'd likely have more success leveraging your existing network or attending medical conferences, which may lend themselves more naturally to having these types of conversations (you're right that they're expensive though!).
All things considered, I think a 25% connection rate and a 1% interview rate is great.
Have good experience here.
Doctors are particularly difficult group to get a hold of cold for somewhat obvious reasons (overworked, value privacy, etc).
The most effective approach I've seen is to focus on a niche type of medicine/field and attend one of the smaller conferences. Especially if you can find one that's less academic and more industry-oriented.
That's where you'll find the doctors who actively are interested in startups and getting into new things.
Sometimes these conferences will also have built-in networking functions to help facilitate.
Strongly recommend reading Mom Test: https://www.amazon.com/Mom-Test-customers-business-everyone-...
You might have incorrect expectations - if you are scraping contact info from LinkedIn and getting any responses at all, you are doing well. 25% connections and 1% interview rates sounds like you are doing great.
Can you provide some kind of compilation or useful report they get as a result of the discussion?
"hey, talk to me in an open ended fashion about how you do _____ in your business and I'll summarize the responses, show you how you compare and share all of the solutions I know about that can help you"
Years ago I worked for a bank who would often do UI research and focus groups.
Users, mortals, normal people would come in for a gift card and lunch.
Small business owners, C levels, non bank VP's had to be given (and im going to date myself) a palm V or something of equal value to come in....
Short of putting money on the table your response rates are HUGE. The question is are you getting the responses from the right/best segment of the industry. Remember your competing for their "attention" with every medical sales person out there, drugs, devices, marketing... "golf" is still a thing.
If you feel the need to add something into the mix: Build a News letter (head start on marketing. Run ad campaign (very targeted and expensive) and sign up form or survey (exclude all non dr's you capture).
Consider the situation from your prospects' perspective: most likely your outreach is being lost in a sea of SPAM.
I am not a doctor, but my university email was somehow put on a list of medical professionals.
So now my university email is barraged with all sorts of SPAM targeting medical professionals. It's impossible to unsubscribe/opt out. (I've tried, but I keep getting added to new lists. It's like the original list keeps reselling my email address.) I'm sure it's much worse for an actual medical professional.
I'm assuming you're not calling (Even with calls, I personally don't answer calls from unknown numbers due to the SPAM calls. You need to be leave a text if it is important, or be very persistent.)
Pay! Expert interviews can be had through expert networks. I know it’s a hustle to get free ones, and worth it, but you could go to GLG, Coleman, ThirdBridge etc and just pay for interviews if you need them done. An interesting alternative is with Arbolus, who lets you write questions and get asynchronous video responses. Research interview sourcing is very hard, and made harder when it is commercially motivated since people are wary of SUGR (selling under the guise of research). The expert networks impose codes of conduct and fees that make the process more costly, but also much more productive.
1. decide on an industry you have a bit of experience in.
2. look where those users are. they might be in subreddits or fb groups or wherever.
3. look for apps they use. there are lots of it in android play store and apple store.
4. read the helpful and critical reviews. these statements prove that there is demand, that some people like it, and that some people care enough to voice out their frustrations.
5. if you havent read the mom test, find a pirated copy, or just buy it. this book will course correct your interactions and expectations with your users.
You’re at the end of a long and well-monied line of people (read: pharma companies) that want to get the attention of health care professionals. Lifetime customer value of patients can be extremely high so healthcare companies will spend (within legal limits) a lot of money to influence doctors.
Doctors know this - and they do take advantage of it from time to time. But you’re competing with a lot of money for highly valuable time. Maybe consider going where doctors go (e.g. conferences) and bothering them there?
That's an interesting thought. I've done quite a bit of work in the medical/healthcare space in tech in the past. I think part of your issue is that doctors are notoriously hard to get a hold of. Also they don't make any of the decisions for tech.
If you're just generally trying to get an idea of pain points in the industry I think you should get more specific. Here are some for instances:
- Are you trying to make the interface between the doctor and the patient easier?
- Are you going to look at the way the doctors interact with the EHR (electronic health records) vendors?
- Are you trying to make the check-in process easier for patients?
- Are you trying to provide analytics for long term quality of care metrics on hospitals?
- Are you targeting small clinics, hospitals, or ER/minor emergency rooms?
Also for cold calling doctors on Linkedin, I am not surprised that you aren't getting much feedback. Most of the doctors I've known tend not to be into online stuff. You might have more luck reaching out to a local professional organization.
Also you might think about trying to contact nurses, nurse practitioners, or physician's assistants. There might be a local nurses professional organization that you could reach out to who could ask their members if anybody is interested. Just frame it as you're trying to figure out a way to make their jobs easier.
This ended up being a little rambly, but I hope it's useful. Cheers.
I don't think you can be concise about it. It just feels weird to ask someone you've never met to come up with stuff that sucks about their job, as people will either ignore you or just make up a bunch of things out of politeness.
And even if they do answer you, it's a bad idea to commit to those answers. There's a book written specifically about this (The Mom Test), but the point is: asking people about their problems is not a good way to validate a startup idea.
Read everything Atul Gawande has written. The following article, "Why Doctors Hate Their Computers", would be a particularly good place to start:
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/11/12/why-doctors-ha...
It illustrates a hugely significant problem you will face: decisions about what processes to follow and what software to use are made by administrators and not front-line doctors or nurses.
If you ask front-line doctors and nurses their biggest pain point, I imagine a common answer will be "our administrators are morons". (I have once heard this expressed by a nurse friend, with breathtaking vitriol.) Unfortunately that is not something you can write software to help with.
You might not be trying to sell them but you are still taking up their time. I talk to kind of a lot of folks who reach out to me with a similar ask because I'm happy to help when I can. But 90%+ are warmish intros from someone else I know.
I'm partially talking to the person to help them out, partially to help out the introer who I already know, and partially because who knows maybe this person will actually be good to know.
Can you get intros from others? One way to do this is when a random cold outreach does agree to be interviewed by you, at the end of your call you can say, "Is there anyone else in your industry that you can introduce me to/that I should talk to?"
Even better if you've looked at their linkedin connections and can say, "Hey I noticed you are connected with X and Y. Do you know them well enough to introduce me? I'd love to have a similar conversation with them."
If they say yes then send them a pre-written intro to make it as low lift as possible for them. "Hey x, I asked y if they could introduce us. I'm looking to learn about painpoints for yada yada..."
I've used that strategy in the past and branching like that tends to have a much higher success rate than random cold outreach.
Skip hospital doctors because they don't make purchasing decisions. Doctors who own their own practice either outright or as a group partner are actually very easy to interview: in the US (assuming where you're located) there are at least a dozen within each county. Have you tried door-to-door? I helped a friend with healthcare customer discovery interviews for a few months, and it's surprisingly effective.
I would start with contacting people in your town or area. Tell them that you recently became interested in problem X and offer to meet with them whenever and wherever they choose. You also need to do a lot of homework to ask intelligent questions. Finally, ask yourself if healthcare is the right choice. That's a tough industry if you don't have any contacts and/or background.
Read it -> "The Mom Test: How to talk to customers & learn if your business is a good idea when everyone is lying to you"
https://www.amazon.com/Mom-Test-customers-business-everyone/...
We’ve been developing niche medical software successfully for some decades.
First, it helps that it’s niche—it avoids the “make healthcare better with electronic healthcare records” space, which can only but descend into making a much of text boxes available on a screen and promising that AI will do… something…
Second, we will listen to our clients, and probe their needs. But we’re most successful when we observe our clients. When we’re not in the thick of it, we have more space to ask “does it have to be this way?” We work very hard to formulate the problem so that a piece of software is not the default solution.
Few of the pain points are “exciting” or “glamorous”. But anything that means the practitioner is spending more time with the patient is a big win, even if it means applying some very boring technology.
Best of luck.
Get an actual job in the domain and you'll quickly discover all the pain points. For example, become a medical physicist or dosimetrist and try working in a cancer clinic. Asking to shadow random medical professionals won't work well unless you have a friend on the inside greasing the wheels.
I am sure you are already doing this and the "what their pain point is" phrasing of this post is only for succinctness. In my experience, asking a practitioner about their pain point is seldom the starting point for an unbiased conversation. It can often lead to a freezing of ideas while they try to look and find such pain points, but more importantly here, you are asking them to have identified the problem in a way. Far more effective would be to completely eliminate the word pain point and focus on descriptives like longest or most error prone task, only as confirmation ,after observing for a while. Again I am quite sure from the later description of your question that you are doing something like this, but putting this out there to emphasize the importance of it.
Read this and follow the links to what Jake’s wife wrote as well
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40114696
Article: https://jakeseliger.com/2024/04/22/the-emotional-trial-of-cl...
I think Dane Maxwell is one of the best at doing this.
He published a PDF guide here: https://thefoundation.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Intro-t...
And there are many examples of him doing idea extraction online. While you can do IE via email/chat, phone calls or even in-person meetings are most effective.
---
- Instead of quantity, go for quality. You just need a few good idea extraction sessions. (You may have to cold-call 100's of contacts before that first good session, though...)
I briefly tried doing idea extraction on the dietician market.
My cousin was a dietician so she gave me a wonderful session. (I still have the notes.) She also referred me to a fellow dietician. That session did not go so well.
Very small sample size, but it seems there is a correlation between dieticians and a personality type that is not the easiest (for me) to talk with. Either certain personality types are driven to become dieticians, or the arduous journey to become a dietician filters/forms this personality. Not sure about other fields...
I decided to switch niches when I discovered how complex it would be to follow HIPAA regulations.
I run a sales dev agency and your numbers are decent. Here are two things to try:
- message founders in the space with "I'm working on a new startup and could use your advice"
- after each interview ask them for a referral to someone who you could interview
This creates a referral flywheel and eventually will be a function that brings you customers. I have written a blog post on the topic but I don't think linking here is cool.
What exactly in healthcare/medical space ? Are you interested in Drug discovery, Genomics (diagnostics, genetic testing) or software services for patients , health care professionals. There are plenty of problems in every area including the new AI applications for older problems. Narrowing down your focus area or something that you have personally experienced should be a good starting point.
Find where those people are. E.g. popular healthcare forums, maybe Facebook groups, etc. Go to healthcare events in person, all those people will be there to chat.
I've had luck in another field, finding a very popular forum online that those in the field used. I simply introduced myself and offered to do IT work on their offices as a chance to meet people and learn more about the industry. It worked wonders.
I found the 20 people I needed to talk to.
I found out where they worked.
I called the public number.
I asked to talk to them.
I explained I was thinking about starting a startup and I needed some help thinking through some ideas.
2 of them told me they couldn't give me the time. 15 gave me a longer than 1 hour call at a later date, 3 of them let me fly out to them and spend a day with them.
Took me about 5/6 months.
I really loved this thread. After reading all the comments and based on personal experience I would recommend getting a job in a hospital, anywhere, even in the restaurant. Build up a circle of friends who work there and brainstorm with them every day over lunch. They will soon tell you what works and doesn’t
1. Pay the professional board (by specialty) for access to their listserv. They will send out the email for you. Can be pricey.
2. You can host a booth at/attend a medical conference, and hand out or display QR code links to a survey with the interview questions.
I've found LinkedIn difficult to get feedback from GPs. Have you tried attending medical conferences? In some countries, you can gain access to the world’s largest conferences for free if you apply through certain organizations.
[0] "What problems do you have?" is too vague.
[1] The response rate correlates to the product of how painful the problem is and whether the potential responder has some faith that you have a solution.
1. Pay the board for access to their list serve. They will send out the email for you.
2. You can host a booth at/attend a medical conference, and hand out/display QR code links to your survey
DO tell them you are doing /market research/ and really appreciate their experience and insight. Generally I have offered an "honorarium" of say $200 for a 30 minute interview (for doctors you might want to offer $500). 90% of people never collect the money, just that somehow offering an "honorarium" makes the whole thing seem more legit and organized. A high honorarium (like $500 for doctors) will also demonstrate respect (and they really won't collect the money).
DONT include the question in your request. That will Heisenberg results.
DO ask then about /frustrations/, rather than /problems/. Frustrations are externally caused. Many people proudly believe that they are already handling any /problems/
physicians only have 10 minutes with their patients. How much time are you taking from them? On the rare chance they are looking to learn more about tech, they'll probably be going to health events where they're practically wined and dined to be there.
What city are you in? There must be a health tech meeting of some sort near you. I live in Austin and I run one with 400 members, but there are 5 others programming meetups all the time. pharma, billers, techs, and nurses shouldn't be forgotten either!
asking people for pain points like an interview is never going to work unless you have connections/network to introduce you
there is a hack around this but each industry is different
Really dumb foolish suggestion? Check volunteer opportunities at your local hospital or health clinics.
I crossed over from medical to software because of this issue. The reality is that so much of the software created for us falls short because the depth of knowledge almost always isn't deep enough. It is painfully obvious to us that if the software devs knew medicine as well as we did they wouldn't have made many of the design decisions that they did. I know that is an unsatisfying answer but it's how my colleagues and I feel.
My advice to you is to enter this area only if you or someone involved is capable of getting very deep into the kind of medicine you're writing software for. I don't just mean "they commonly do procedures X and Y and tests A and B a lot".
The reputation of people in medicine not liking tech is wrong. We just don't like using bad tech, which is most of it.
It would help if you gave more targeted thoughts on what specifically you're looking to develop.
Have you tried expert networks? Some of these connect people like you with experts in the industry. Some are practitioners while others are just “thought leaders” so you need to separate the two. They usually cost $xx-$xxx a hour but they’re worth the time and money rather than finding people willing to talk to you
Only when torturing them...
I understand that you're asking a slightly different question than the one I'm answering, but having been involved in the JTBD world, my spidey sense is that you could save yourself a ton of pain if you watch this
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RQjBawcU_qg
and maybe read this (optional)
https://therewiredgroup.com/case-studies/milkshakes/
TL;DR: A lot of folks (myself included) think that the sort of discovery interview you're describing is somewhere between unhelpful and dangerous. People cannot tell you what their problem is, they can only tell you what they think you want to hear. Yes, I'm generalizing, but it's hard to estimate how many entrepreneur-years have been burned by attempting to solve a problem someone told them that they have.
My suggestion is that you figure out a way to deeply embed yourself in a world or industry, possibly for a few years. The less sexy the domain, the better. Pay close attention, look for solvable problems with your own eyes.
Often there are opportunities hiding in plain sight that people don't see because there's an entrenched "way things are done". But frankly, you have no business disrupting how soup gets canned if you have never worked in a soup canning plant. Don't bring on an industry expert as a startup co-founder; be the industry expert.
edenband.io
Not specific advice but are you A/B testing? One very salesy fluffing msg vs one straight to the point?
In the realm of cold calling / emailing, 1% conversion is actually pretty normal. 2-5% would be unusually good. I would stick with what you're doing and don't lose faith!
If you want to try different strategies in parallel, I work in sales for a healthcare SaaS and while my product is results/outcomes oriented, I have much better luck talking to people about RESULTS they want to achieve vs. PROBLEMS they want to solve. At least now we're getting excited about something good vs. something they are already sick of talking about, or know they can't fix.
Some of the pains in healthcare are so structurally embedded in the industry, products purporting to relieve those pains are so plentiful, and ACTUAL pain relieving results are so few and far between, that messages looking for honest input on major pains that doctors experience is too clear of a dogwhistle for "I'm going to try to sell you a solution that doesn't work" and will be ignored.
Many doctors, for example, are still nursing wounds caused by the shift to EMR from paper- pretty much every vendor in that space promises an "easy migration" and the reality is that porting to EMR or switching vendors is a massive massive pain in the ass. ANY solution for a pain, or for amplifying/increasing a beneficial outcome, comes at not only a financial cost, but (perhaps more importantly) an opportunity cost associated with the time investment. Time = patients, patients = reimbursement, reimbursement = money.
Edit: Another thing that works for me is seeding the conversation with something like, "Something I hear from a lot of providers in [specialty] is they have a problem with [problem], or they want to do more [thing]. Is that true in your practice?"