
Ask HN: We have the expertise but no clients. How to reach them? - ghoshbishakh
We started a consultancy company 4 months back with two medium sized projects that we got as individual freelancers.
We have the expertise and experience in healthcare technology ( FHIR, interoperability ), which is a niche. But now we have zero leads from last month. We cannot figure out how to reach the potential interested clients who need this technology.<p>https:&#x2F;&#x2F;alstonia.io
======
gwbrooks
B2B consultant here for 30 years weighing in with broad truths:

* If you are waiting on leads, you die. You create leads -- every day, as your top business priority -- by working to inform and educate people. You deliver value now (information, education) to capture value (a sale) later.

* This is going to mean talking to strangers. It's going to mean experimenting with ads, native advertising, figuring out which channels your buyers frequent, etc. The failure-to-success ratio will be high and that, as painful as it is, is fine. It's part of the process.

* As others have indicated: Don't assume you can just hire someone to do sales or marketing. If the founders don't fully understand the value proposition and the pain points of potential clients, it's very hard to succeed.

* You're new and that means you're likely small. You're also specialized. Consider throwing effort at partnering with larger players who have cracked the code, have a steady stream of clients but don't have your expertise. Subconsulting is profitable and a way to keep the doors open while you figure out how to hunt and kill your own work.

* Your rates have to be high enough to support you with 50%+ of your time unsold/unbooked. During that unsold/unbooked time? You are marketing. With the _possible_ exception of sending out invoices, nothing else is as important.

~~~
JacobAldridge
Fellow B2B Consultant here. I had the thread open to find some time to return
and add my thoughts and experience.

Everything you’ve said is spot on, and I think you’ve hit everything of
substance. Growing a consulting (even a tailored tech solution) business means
making it a sales business first and foremost - you can prioritize delivery if
you reach a point you want to plateau, but 0 leads is not that point.

~~~
chii
> business means making it a sales business first and foremost

i think a lot of people have the misunderstanding that the world works under a
"build it and they will come" model.

~~~
trevyn
Frankly, if you build the right thing, they will come.

And it's very easy to deceive ourselves into believing that we're building the
right thing.

~~~
pembrook
Unfortunately, the world doesn’t work that way. Especially for a commodity
business like consulting/agencies.

Even if you have product market fit, and are experiencing the “pull” of a hot
market...if you have no reliable distribution channels, you have no business.

Humans are busy, and the problems that businesses solve for in the modern
world are not life or death issues. Any product that solves a problem that
tons of people are already searching google for, is by definition, going to
also have tons of competitors.

~~~
trevyn
Think bigger. Maybe things that businesses build are not the right things?

~~~
oblio
And what are the right things?

------
jd115
Lots of condescending negativity in the comments here. Although a lot of it is
true, it's not necessarily helpful.

I've been through this exact frustration, read everything there is on the
topic, and have discovered things that work and things that don't.

First and foremost - DO NOT go hire anyone to do this for you. No one can. You
MUST learn to sell your own products and services, there is no way around it.
And no one can do it better than you.

Second, avoid paid advertising before you've learned how to generate high-
ticket sales WITHOUT it.

Paid ads and sales people are for scaling only, once you've got your offer and
your messaging down to a proven working system.

The good news is, you can get started easily and you can see results quickly,
without spending a fortune on anyone or anything.

If you'd like some hand-holding through this, ping me at code+hn@a115.co.uk

~~~
klft
> and have discovered things that work and things that don't.

Could you share some of your insights?

~~~
jd115
Happy to help. Send me an e-mail with a bit more details about what you do and
what you're currently struggling with.

~~~
newsbinator
It would be helpful to share some general insights, or give some concrete
examples from your particular experience, so we can all benefit.

Then people can email you for their specific situation.

~~~
jd115
Ok, I wrote a blog post about it. Hope it's helpful:
[https://corebrief.com/2020/09/09/a-better-way-to-find-
client...](https://corebrief.com/2020/09/09/a-better-way-to-find-clients-for-
your-it-consulting-business/)

~~~
Oras
Great read, thank you for taking the time to write it and share it.

------
onion2k
This is an incredibly common story among people in tech who learn the skills
to build great things and believe that's enough to start a company. Being good
at building tech is only half the story. You can write the best code, build
the best apps, and design the most amazing UX, but if you can't market your
business and sell to people you won't make any money. To run a successful
company you _need_ to be good at getting your message in front of people who
buy what you're selling.

I don't have an answer beyond the advice that you should _always_ be
marketing, generating leads, and selling even when you think you have years
worth of work in the pipeline.

~~~
kqr
Not to mention that it's a common misconception in technology that a company
creates value by shipping increasing complexity to the customer. I.e. "this is
what we have built, this is how we know how to extend it with more features,
now let's figure out how to sell that."

Starting with an idea and trying to market it is the opposite of what to do.
Instead, figure out what problems your potential customers have (by talking to
them!) and then set about solving those problems with as little technology and
ceremony as possible.

Once you're done with that, your potential customers are practically already
lined up, because they were the ones who ordered your solution in the first
place.

Edit: The key thing is that in the initial exploration of the problem space,
you are not selling anything. Those discussions are all about the potential
customer. You have to put yourself into their minds and view yourself from the
outside.

They will be really insecure. Both because they are not ready to buy something
any time soon, and because they don't want to reveal sensitive information to
an arbitrary third party.

You know that you care about them and their business deeply, so it's easy for
you to assume that everything you say comes from a good place. They don't know
that yet – and worse, they're used to awful salespeople that just want to
trick them into buying more complexity – so they will interpret everything you
say in the most dismissive way possible. You have to show that you're
different and that you're not in it to sell stuff, but that you have a genuine
interest in understanding their business, in which they are the expert.

This is seriously hard but something that can be practised.

~~~
chii
> You have to show that you're different

what if you prove that you're different by making your sales model different -
i.e., you create a solution for a problem of theirs (and hand-hold the
implementation and deployment etc), and if/when said solution is shown to have
value, then you get paid?

~~~
kqr
That sounds like an interesting experiment I would not want to be the one who
makes. One of the issues I can picture with that approach is the extremely
late feedback you'd get, when your customer has no skin in the game.

------
brudgers
_we have zero leads from last month_

I had no idea what FHIR is. I googled. I followed about five or six links
without backing up to land here:
[http://www.hl7.org/about/gold.cfm?ref=nav](http://www.hl7.org/about/gold.cfm?ref=nav)

Start cold calling. Collect names. Fill a rollodex. Don't stop. Fill another.
Follow up in person.

Ask about what's in their current budget. What's coming down the pipeline. How
they currently handle work in your area. See their physical infrastructure.
Know what the decision maker's office looks like. Get a sense of their actual
problems and assure them that you can mitigate them.

Get your ass to work. Out of the chair. In the car and cheap motels. Stop
pretending there are clients on Hacker News. There aren't. It's just easier to
post here than cold call.

Good luck.

~~~
bald
This. In my previous company, I did ~3k cold calls to get it off the ground.
In my current one, ~1k cold calls. Get on the phone. Yes it's painful, so what

------
ageitgey
You won't find clients in a niche like this by setting up a website and
waiting for them to show up. When clients need custom development, they turn
to recommendations from friends or they turn to industry leaders. They usually
don't have the expertise to evaluate a new player on their own.

So you need to either establish yourself as a recommended friend (by
networking and/or completing successful projects) or as an industry leader.
For the latter, you could use strategies like blogging on how a facility
should deploy or consume FHIR, write about best practices in interoperability,
or whatever. That might lead to people asking you questions and eventually
lead to them asking for help with projects.

If you don't know many people in the industry yet, one way to get to know more
people might be to partner with another company on a dev project where they
need extra help. It might not be as exciting as getting your own project, but
you have to start somewhere.

I have a company in this niche and may need help with FHIR and related dev
work in the future. Feel free to send me an email to the details in my profile
and introduce yourself.

~~~
brudgers
_When clients need custom development, they turn to recommendations from
friends or they turn to industry leaders._

Good clients just call the people who they've worked with before...if the
people they've worked with before haven't called the good client first.

------
CapriciousCptl
I'm CTO at one of your target firms. Integration is a _major pain point_ for
us. We don't have a need for you now, but I've noted a few things based on
what I could find on Alstonia.io. My needs are different than others, but
hopefully this helps. If any consultant or agency wants someone like me to
hire you, I want to see that they have used the tech we use, that I can
estimate your cost reliably, that they're reliable people in general and that
I can understand the code they write. The stuff about security and high
availability/fault tolerance kind of comes as a matter of course.

You can check a lot of those boxes by 1) some content on your website
describing previous projects (like whitepaper PDFs or long-form blog posts),
2) GitHub projects, 3) references/testimonials. Then give a giant call to
action form including asking for a phone number (I hate giving out my phone
number, but it seems like everyone requires it, so I imagine it would help you
more than not).

Note that these needs are very different then what I'd need from an employee.
For instance, I can invest in employees and give them time to learn our tech.
For consultants, I can't.

------
mynameismonkey
Hi there, I'm someone who builds and buys SMART on FHIR tech, albeit small
potatoes in the space. A few thoughts from checking out your site to see if I
should follow up with you, I hope these are helpful.

1\. WHo are you? Your site says nothing about you. I'm going to give you the
keys to the PHI kingdom, I need to know who's soliciting me. Are you two
twenty-somethings with amazing skills and ideas, or 20 ex-Epic employees
looking to fill a particular gap you found? Without this general information I
wouldn't know what sort of project to think about including you in.

2\. Where are you? I'm under contract with numerous health agencies that
require data to be on US soil. I have no idea if you are in Romania or
Virginia. (Side note, government is the biggest purchaser of health care and
therefore your paths will cross at some point, even if it's simply being
downstream of federal or state data.)

3\. How compliant are you? Your one page tells me nothing about your
understanding of HIPAA, nor how you ensure the security and privacy of the
data you will be exposed to. It may seem as if anyone in the space _should_
know about this and the reader can assume compliance, but frankly it's not the
case. Yell at me about your third-party audits, your ability to transact PHI,
as well as any SOC/FISMA compliance you have.

4\. What have you done before? There are a lot of corners in the niche, and
I'd need to know what systems you've worked with, what you've built and who
for, so I can get an understanding of whether or not you'd be a good fit.

As for leads, with most conferences going virtual your usual approach of HIMSS
is buggered, but Healthcare Datapalooza just put out a call for presentations
so they're likely looking for (virtual) sponsors already. I assume HIMSS and
HCDP sell attendee data, have you looked in to that? And how about FHIR
aggregators like 1up and Redox, they are likely plugged in to many of your
potential customers.

I'd be happy to chat more, my profile has an E-mail address you can use. Good
luck with your venture!

EDIT - forgot to mention, starting out a great way to get noticed is to
participate on a HIT Challenge, not sure what's up for grabs lately but
challenge.gov - easy way to find the right people to start netowrking with.

~~~
thex10
Having had some exposure to the healthcare interop niche before -- this whole
response is great.

Came here to say #1, which is articulated well here. Basically, who are you
and why should I trust you -- the info I need in order to assess that would
include at minimum your experience (detailed, like you worked with X tech on Y
problem with Z firm, not high level fluff) but could also include your
background (experience working at $EMR, managed $TECH at $HOSPITAL, studied or
taught healthcare tech at $SCHOOL).

I'm sort of looking for your resume. The fact that it's NOT here makes me
think it's not all that impressive (sorry to be so negative).

------
adamsvystun
Meta-advice, don't take all the advice here too seriously :) People here don't
know you situation as well as you do, and following too many different advice
will lead you to not have any consistent direction.

So here are my humble thoughts on the website. I have no expertise in
healthcare technology, so maybe that's the reason, but I could not understand
what types of problems you are solving and what you are doing from your
website.

1\. For example, 'Reimagining Healthcare' is an empty phrase. All your
sentences seem vague to me: "Comprehensive Healthcare Solutions and
Integrations with FHIR, HL7 and SMART", are you consulting on how to create
these solutions? are you developing these solutions? are you selling a created
solution? Are you integrating somebody's else solution?

2\. There is not a lot of connection to your company in your texts: >
Healthcare Data Interoperability and Analytics > Standards like SMART and FHIR
allow healthcare providers to store and share data in an interoperable manner
which enables organizations to derive insights to provide effective care
efficiently.

This is a good description of these standards and why they are important, but
what is your connection here? If you are using these standards, then mention
it directly. Maybe something like this is better: > We use standards like
SMART and FHIR to allow healthcare providers... All other texts in Services
section have the same problem.

3\. I don't understand the Solutions section. It looks like a collection of
icons and slogans. Let's take one example: Cloud. So I can guess that you are
developing your solutions to be deployed on the cloud. But why make clients
guess? Write it directly and mention why this is good. "Our solutions are
deployed on cloud. This is good because <...>.".

4\. This is just a suggestion. I would add a section of Problems that you can
solve. Client come to your sites with problems. So I would write: "1\. You
have problem X? We can solve it by doing Y."

Overall, you have to think from the eyes of the client. What is the client
looking for?

But again, I do not know anything about your field. I don't know who your
clients, what problems they have, and what technology you are building. So you
should be very quick to ignore this advice if you think I don't have the
necessary understanding.

But regardless, good luck :)

EDIT: typos

~~~
igormsg
adam, i liked the way you wrote this feedback.. I was asking to myself how can
I get similar one in this portfolio: [http://bit.ly/bix-
technology](http://bit.ly/bix-technology) if you dont mind. Thanks in
advance.. igormsg at gmail dot com

~~~
ayewo
URL shortening/tracking is frowned upon on HN.

Here’s the expanded URL: [https://www.beautiful.ai/player/-MFqstolmpEWkDs-
Y_mv/Bix-Tec...](https://www.beautiful.ai/player/-MFqstolmpEWkDs-Y_mv/Bix-
Technology-Portfolio)

I’m not Adam but your portfolio uses a non-traditional style which is akin to
a presentation.

Overall, it was easy to navigate for me as a human but doubtful if its current
format is friendly to web crawlers like Googlebot. More specific feedback
below.

1\. The 1st & 2nd demos could use an “Introduction” explaining what the demo
is about, similar to how you have it in your 3rd demo.

2\. Even better would be to copy the “Introduction” text just below each demo
link so the reader can decide for themselves that the demo will be relevant to
their interests enough for them to click-through to a third-party website.

EDIT:

3\. It turns out Beautiful.ai is a third-party presentation tool—I initially
thought it was your domain. Might be better to embed/host the Beautiful.ai
player (if one exists) showing your portfolio on your own domain. This would
give your online presence additional credibility and avoid the mild brand
confusion I experienced.

------
ealexhudson
So, I work in pretty much this exact area. The main issue is you're trying to
sell something that customers don't buy - any integration, FHIR or HL7 or
something, is only ever needed to get one product to talk to another. Usually
a new one to talk to the old one; and the business selling the new product is
the one in whose interest it is to get the integration working.

While it's always possible to take existing kit and do more/better automation,
this kind of operational improvement tends to have little to no budget unless
there's some specific project being undertaken (e.g. going to structured
reporting). Generally, although people are often unhappy with internal
software, the business will be operating as-is pretty comfortably. You'd need
to deliver an awful lot of value to make it worthwhile paying you what you
need.

I would probably look to better define your customer. You might have a better
shout trying to approach ISVs who are selling new healthcare products, and
asking them to use you as a delivery partner. Many ISVs have weak deployment
teams and cannot deal with complex integrations, but they will be the ones
with a customer and a contract. If you can speed up time to implementation,
they get paid quicker and can do more.

~~~
mynameismonkey
I agree it's important to define your customer, although when starting out it
can be difficult to do so as it brings a sense of closing some doors that you
might want open for a bit longer, but in general I'd say your comment:

>you're trying to sell something that customers don't buy - any integration,
FHIR or HL7 or something, is only ever needed to get one product to talk to
another

is not entirely correct. I for one buy small scale interop product, and the
FHIR space is growing quickly, more and more companies will be looking for
small and medium activity in the space as new regulation starts taking hold.

------
danieltillett
I am going to be blunt. If you can’t get the people you used to work for to
hire you or recommend you to their contacts then you are going to fail. Get on
the phone to everyone you have ever worked for (assuming you left a good
impression) and chase those leads.

~~~
ghoshbishakh
Our existing client is very happy with our quality of service. However we
never approached them directly about referring or providing us leads. Show we
do that?

~~~
barry-cotter
You should ask for referrals and you should also ask if you can use them as a
case study for your website. After referrals and case studies you should
probably divide your time between sales calls, cold emails and content
marketing, i.e. white papers on technical topics, blog posts, short videos on
your topic of expertise. Better badly produced videos that a potential
customer can find than planned well produced ones they can’t find. If you’re
confident enough in your skills as a trainer giving classes/courses in person
is a wonderful way to build a name and helps a great deal with the book. It is
very good to have a book you authored on the topic, even if it is a slim book.
Slim books can be the basis for expensive courses, which both make money and
serve as advertising.

------
newmnhn
There are a lot of useful comments already.

Something that hasn't been pointed out yet as far as I can tell is that there
are accessibility and quality errors on your website. If I am looking to hire
somebody it's one of the things I look at when I want to see if they know what
they are doing. Not everybody is like me, but these problems are worth fixing
anyway:

\- The "Explore" button is a span with a click handler, the click handler
updates the URL hash. It's not keyboard focusable, and since it's just a link
to a different location in the page, it could just be a link, but if it must
be JS, it needs to be a button element.

\- The form does not have accessible labels. Placeholder text is not a label.
Also "fullname" looks like an error.

Lighthouse reports some other low hanging fruit.

Overall vibe of that website is that somebody chose some readily-available
bootstrap landing page template and didn't check it for basic errors. That
combined with the scant information about the company & the fact that your
website is really just a single page does not inspire confidence. Even in the
small amount of copy that is on the site, there are three errors in this one
sentence:

"Healthcare providers will need an infracstructure what is open, interoperable
and standards-compliant, which ensures the security, confidentiality and
privacy of presonal data."

If you are not spellchecking your copy & shipping valid HTML for a single web
page you make for yourselves, it would be wrong of me to expect higher quality
in something you are hired to build. FHIR and HIPAA are tough and I have a ton
of respect for you for being able to work in that context. The quality of your
website should reflect the high standard you bring to that work.

------
geekybiz
Talk as much as you can to your potential customers about their problems in
your area of expertise & try to best align. Try to identify, understand and
solve points-of-friction from these conversations.

Where to find potential customers? I'd try in following order: \- Talk to
existing customers / contacts for referrals \- Talk to your past colleagues /
friends for referrals \- Quality cold emails with decent research & pre-work
\- Hang out on social wherever your potential customers hang-out and engage in
meaningful conversations.

You may not strike success right away but do persist & keep identify what's
working / not working. Follow-up regularly. If above gets tiring once-in-a-
while - write content that can market your expertise.

Background : Been offering website speed / scalability services expertise for
3+ years.

------
gk1
Collected some suggestions here: [https://www.gkogan.co/blog/consulting-
advice/](https://www.gkogan.co/blog/consulting-advice/)

Read: Million Dollar Consulting, by Alan Weiss.

Do: Build your visibility and credibility. Fish where the fish are. Where are
your target buyers spending their time and getting their information? Find a
way to publish there.

Figure out who are the best connected people in your network or vicinity and
talk to them, let them know you're taking on projects and be clear in what
kind of projects you can help with. Make it easy for them to refer you.

------
saaaaaam
Without trying to be provocative I just looked at your website and this leapt
our at me.

“Lean Development methologies and modern cloud deployment startagies enable
fast paced development with shorter iteration cycles.”

Apart from the buzzword bingo, you’ve misspelt “strategies”.

Your copy is incredibly bland and nebulous and doesn’t really say anything
about what you _do_.

------
ethanwillis
I do work in a similar space. You need to talk to the safe contacts within
your clients who may know other people in the industry who are working on
similar things and ask for intros.

------
mtnGoat
Healthcare is really hard to sell into, that is why a few companies own so
much of the paying field. The hospital system I worked for had 2,4 and 5 year
cycles for their contracts, so things didn't the often and vendors had to be
around at the right time to get consideration. It seemed very bizarre and
antiquated to me. My best advice would be to to find vendors that have
adjacent solutions and partner with them, maybe making their own sales funnel
easier.

------
projektfu
I’ve often wondered if an opinionated solution — in the Rails sense — would
sell to SMEs in healthcare. Ask any physician group in the US what their pain
point is and it’s probably reimbursement. They have to deal with finicky rules
from different insurance providers, and usually employ a couple people
dedicated to getting reimbursed. They also have to wait long periods of time
for those reimbursements.

A company that could promise to improve that situation by standardizing how
the practice operates and optimizing reimbursement could have a great sales
value. You could also standardize data sharing/HIPAA practice.

You still have to sell it to buyers, one by one.

------
saadalem
1- Offer over funnels : Funnels are important, but if I have to choose between
a funnel or an offer, I’d choose the OFFER FIRST. You can close 6/5 figure
deals over text message, PDFS, ugly 1-page websites, and emails. The offer is
the key. Don’t create offers that you “think” people will like, instead, find
out exactly what they want, do some digging… and give them exactly what they
are looking for, and don’t overthink it.

2- It’s not all about the “one close call” : High Ticket clients have a
different psychology. Part of attracting high-paying clients is knowing what
triggers them to buy (exclusivity, high perceived value, emotional,
psychological, time investment, etc..)

3- Don’t sell, select : Everything in your funnel should be designed with you
SELECTING them, not you begging for their business.

4- Break the rules! You can go through copying what works, and try it out to
get some quick success but eventually you’ll get to a point where you create
something new in the marketplace, and you are the first one to offer it (angle
wise, position wise, offer wise), so take it! First mover advantage is risky,
but that’s where all the upside is, if you get it right.

------
teleforce
Personally I've been researching in healthcare mainly on CVD for the past five
years.

Coming from outside healthcare, I was really shocked initially on how
primitive the technology in clinics and hospitals as if they are still in the
1980s especially in the hospital management and operation. I've come to
conclusion that healthcare is a very well-funded area and it's ripe for
disruption. Consider these scenarios in where I live:

You want a digital copy of your ECG reading, nope they give you the paper
based reading of several seconds recording that will lose their ink in a few
months time.

You want to transfer your health data record to another hospital or clinic,
nope that's impossible since the hospitals or clinics don't perform any
proactive data sharing even between government's hospitals, paper based or
digitally.

You want the over crowded hospital outpatient section to send you SMS or at
least make an online/website call numbers, nope you have to wait physically,
and if you've missed your turn when you're away then you are basically
screwed.

You have a disabled family member who cannot even move to attend the hospital,
nope you need to pay expensive third party doctor to make a visit to your
house.

I think you get the idea by now, and since your expertise in healthcare IT and
depending on where do you live just talk to the hospital management or govt
appointed organization (e.g. NHS in the UK) about any of the above issues and
how you can you solve the above mentioned problems or others for the benefit
of hospitals/clinics and the society in general.

------
gravypod
For HIPAA integrations you're going to need to a lot of security auditing.
Something that might work well is publishing a white paper of your personal
security practices. Things like full-disk-encryption for developers, password
policies, hardware 2FA for ALL company accounts, SSO for all logins with a
single place to delete a credential set, mandatory monthly/weekly HIPAA
training, etc.

Another thing you might want to consider doing is open sourcing some stuff to
help setup FHIR/HL7 integrations. Pretty much the only fully fledged HL7
"solution" you can get for free HAPI [0]. You might want to make some open
source tools around all of this. For example: a reverse proxy that prints all
to a log that's censored for PII for debugging. Make that for free, push that
to github and open source it.

This will get you:

1\. Lead generation: People in this space will know who you are

2\. Trust: Hiring consultants is difficult if you cant see the quality of
their work. If you do a good job on these OSS tools you can prove to people
that your code quality is high. This demands a much higher price tag.

Something else you might consider discussing is what EMRs you have direct
experience with. For instance Epic [1] provides "training services". HL7 has a
"HL7 Certified" exam you can take to prove you can memorize it's obtuse
message structures. Taking, passing, and displaying this might make some
buisnessy-people happy.

[0] - [https://hapifhir.github.io/hapi-
hl7v2/](https://hapifhir.github.io/hapi-hl7v2/)

[1] - [https://www.epic.com/services](https://www.epic.com/services)

------
Foxhuls
I’ve never been in your exact position and won’t claim to be an expert but I
have a fair bit of sales experience and a few close friends who’ve started
their own businesses. One thing that stood out to me is that if I were to
stumble across your website I’d have no idea what you’re actually providing or
looking to provide. It could easily be my personal lack of healthcare industry
knowledge and not an issue for your target market. My advice would be not to
try and rethink the strategy that seems I see as “if you have a tech need in
the medical field, we can handle it” and create something specific. Find a
specific problem, create something that solves it, and sell that. Once you
have customers for that you can move on to try and grow your business with
them. The other big thing is with a field with such sensitive data as the
medical field, you need to establish some level of trust and a relationship
before a business like a hospital is going to take a gamble like that.

------
DoreenMichele
I worked in insurance for 5 years.

If what you do can be sold to doctor's offices instead of hospitals, that's
where I would start cold calling people.

Every doctor's office is a small business. They aren't that good at the
business end of things and their HIPAA training tends to be poor compared to
what hospitals do.

If you can figure out how to educate doctors on why this matters and what the
rules are and how you can solve their problems, I think that's your best shot
at developing a solid customer base.

Larger healthcare organizations, like hospitals and insurance companies, do
their own in-house training and custom solutions. It's doctors offices that
can't afford their own IT department but still need to comply with things like
HIPAA that are in a world of hurt and could benefit from someone coming in and
serving as their part-time IT department and staff expert.

------
cconcepts
I'm sorry to say this but, in my experience targeting very niche needs, a well
targeted Google Adwords campaign is hard to beat and gives you the data to
help structure the rest of your marketing. If you have the expertise you will
learn to get the search terms right.

~~~
ghoshbishakh
I had the completely opposite idea and thought google ads will be of little
benifit. Thank you for the advice, I will try adwords.

~~~
cconcepts
There is a small amount of people searching for what you offer. Adwords lets
you be there when they search for it at a relatively low cost in a very short
timeframe. Hard to beat really.

------
stunt
One of the ways that sometimes works well is to find big potential client, and
then hire (or even partner with) someone that works in their product team. You
can use his network. I know it sounds silly. But, that's one of the tactics
that many companies use.

------
slgeorge
The easiest customer to 'do more with' is the existing customer you have. You
have two projects (presumably two companies), reach out to them and ask them
where else they need more help, "what other projects could we help with?" If
you're doing a good job then it's natural. It's all about forming a strong
relationship at different levels in your customer and having them advocate to
use you in other projects.

The other tactic is that your customers know other companies and contacts in
the space. Ask them for help - "as a new consultancy we're trying to build our
contacts in healthcare, is there anyone in the industry you think we should
speak to?".

------
flatfilefan
Did you try to connect with your prospective customers via LinkedIn? What do
they say to you?

~~~
ghoshbishakh
The issue is these prospective clients are generally hospitals using an
existing EMR system. And when they need some custom solution then they tend to
connect to their provider instead of giving us the deal.

~~~
flatfilefan
Well, what about the decision makers in those hospitals? Do they have accounts
on LinkedIn? If they don’t, where could you meet them, maybe some industry
fairs or conferences?

~~~
ghoshbishakh
We attend conferences such as FHIR DevDays which is more about the technical
aspects and attended by less prospective clients and more market competitors.
The decision makers in hospitals are hard to contact. But you are right,
probably some conference/fair might be there with better target audience.

~~~
mjfisher
Even if people don't have particularly accessible LinkedIn profiles, if you
know their names it's often possible to guess or construct an email address
for them based on the format of other publicly available emails for the same
institution.

There are also tools like [https://hunter.io/](https://hunter.io/) and
[https://rocketreach.co/](https://rocketreach.co/) which attempt to automate
the process for you. I've had very mixed results with those kinds of tools,
but they're worth knowing about.

------
quickthrower2
Random internet advice (not an expert) is to call everyone you know who might
know someone. Also would it be so bad to take a contract from a job site or
even a job in the intermediate time. Maybe one of you does a job the other biz
dev.

------
dade_
E-Myth \ 'e-,'mith\ n 1: the entrepreneurial myth: the myth that most people
who start small businesses are entrepreneurs 2: the fatal assumption that an
individual who understands the technical work of a business can successfully
run a business that does that technical work

Voted #1 business book by Inc. 500 CEOs.

[https://www.amazon.ca/Myth-Revisited-Small-Businesses-
About/...](https://www.amazon.ca/Myth-Revisited-Small-Businesses-
About/dp/0887307280)

------
ponker
The core expertise in a consulting company is getting the clients. Half of the
consultants have absolutely no idea what they're talking about and do fine,
domain expertise is 1/10th of the job, getting clients is 50% of the job, and
putting together a work product that feels like it _could_ represent domain
expertise is 40%. So I'd approach the problem from "I have no expertise in
consulting, how do I build some" which will be more fruitful.

------
jameslk
> We have the expertise and experience in healthcare technology ( FHIR,
> interoperability ), which is a niche.

Cool, but what's the value you offer? Who needs it? Why? What do they usually
do? What's their title? Where do they usually look for solutions to their
problems?

Selling expertise vs selling value is the difference between being an laborer
vs a business owner. If you're trying to sell your expertise, you're thinking
about it wrong.

------
andi999
While I believe even a good webpage wont currently help you, your current one
is missing vital information. First: you business location and email. I mean
you use .io, are you in the indian ocean? Are you a UK, US or India based
company (this matters a lot to possible customers).

Also I find it not clear from the webpage what would be the benefit of hiring
you. (What pain do I have which is solved by you)

~~~
brudgers
For a consultancy, the web page is what Graham calls "playing house." It's
easier to build a web page than find clients and building a web page feels
like meaningful work. It isn't. Nobody hires consultants from a web page.

~~~
ponker
Nobody hires consultants from a web page, but also, nobody hires consultants
without checking their web page.

------
speedgoose
I work for a IT company in healthcare. We also do FHIR, interoperability, and
such.

This is the easy part. The really hard part is to get customers.

It means having a network, a good reputation, to reply to tenders in time with
a ready to use solution that is competitive, adapt to the cursomers needs,
etc... We have more employees doing sales and support than software.

You may find work as a contractor for a healthcare company though.

------
nradov
If you can spare the time, get actively involved in HL7 FHIR standards
development by participating in work groups, showing up at Connectathon
events, and volunteering to write sections of implementation guides. This will
raise your visibility among customers who hire interoperability consultants.

------
indymike
The best way to get leads is to ask you customer to introduce you to other
potential customers. If they say yes, get the intros done quickly and make
sure you do a great job with the new prospects so your customer refers you
more.

------
tenbino
How to get clients.

Or put another way, how to have a business.

The hardest question of all.

As Paul Graham says sell something people want.

------
rbreve
Give free presentations (webinars), youtube videos, show your work, demos,
working products. Meet people in the health industry. Try to reach them and
show what can you do. Ask for intros, show what you can do.

------
dep_b
You need to go where your customers are. Our customers are startups so we went
to every startup meeting we could find in our area, talking to people,
perfecting our pitch.

I assume there are places where your customers gather too.

------
x87678r
You should look at basic marketing 101. Identify market segments, identify
customers, who makes purchasing decisions and how do they decide, target those
people.

------
robertlagrant
Who are you targeting?

~~~
ghoshbishakh
The clients we started with are online nutritionist and dietitian providers.
The had to integrate with FHIR to get referrals from other medical
practitioners.

Similarly potential clients are hospitals, clinics, or EMR development
companies seeking solutions on FHIR.

~~~
libertine
Hey there, just giving food for thought - the closest i've worked with
healthcare marketing was media buying for big pharma.

This is your website claim.

>Reimagining Healthcare & Digitizing Businesses

>Comprehensive Healthcare Solutions and Integrations with FHIR, HL7 and SMART
Digitizing Businesses through Cloud, Mobile, and Automation.

But since you have this insight from your customers:

>The clients we started with are online nutritionist and dietitian providers.
The had to integrate with FHIR to get referrals from other medical
practitioners.

Wouldn't it be better to point that you're helping healthcare businesses get
more referrals by making them integrated with standards?

Something like:

>We will help your healthcare business generate more referrals

>By setting you up to standard integrations - FHIR, HL7 and SMART - and make
you more effective with Automation, Cloud and Mobile.

This was just something I thought quickly, the point is to show how you've
added value to other businesses. This is closer to their reality, just like
you, they might be struggling to get referrals and their lack of integrations
could be costing them business.

Good luck :)

------
bashwizard
Why are so many people starting businesses without even knowing how to sell
their service/product?

No service/product is so good that it automagically sell itself.

------
ghgr
If you are based in Europe drop me an email. We might have something for you.

------
ShradhaSingh
Market yourself on B2B forums of your industry and create a funnel.

------
andi999
How many people are in your sales team?

~~~
ghoshbishakh
Currently we are a very small team. Only one person handles sales and
marketing ( and social media ).

~~~
andi999
At least double that number

~~~
libertine
Just out of curiosity: why doubling the amount of human resources will fix the
issue? What is the indicator that points that they have an HR bottleneck?

~~~
andi999
Well, a) the textbook answer for not enough sales is to add sales power b)any
important function should have at least 2 ppl (so if one is at a trade fair,
sick holiday etc, the other can continue) and also the team can discuss ideas
how to progress

Edit (since reply depth is reached): more ppl might have also different ideas
what to do

I still mantain one of the problems is not enough ppl in sales. There there
might be more problems: probably, but it is not my company (meaning if other
people want to figure out the other problens: go ahead)

Of course also one of the programmers can take over this role. (Aptitude
assumed)

~~~
libertine
But you need to be think critically taking into account what OP said.

>a) the textbook answer for not enough sales is to add sales power

Yes, but ff your lead generation isn't working, or if the current sales team
can't turn them into clients, then the problem isn't lack of sales power. You
could throw 10 sales guys at this problem and still get the same results,
because your conversion rate is 0%.

b)any important function should have at least 2 ppl (so if one is at a trade
fair, sick holiday etc, the other can continue) and also the team can discuss
ideas how to progress

I understand that, but for some companies that's a luxury they can't afford -
they need something to sustain that person. Else every business would start
with 2 of each role, because every role is important.

In my opinion, if the marketing/sales isn't working properly, they need to fix
that first. Throwing more people at the problem won't fix it.

------
ghoshbishakh
Link: [https://alstonia.io](https://alstonia.io)

------
johnjungles
Get a good biz dev person

~~~
ghoshbishakh
How do I start searching for one? Post in job boards?

~~~
reallydontask
that's one way.

It's a tricky position as you want somebody with the right mix of tech
knowledge, business knowledge and bullshiting ability.

Sadly, in my limited experience, there seems to be a large amount of people
that excel at the latter but not so much at the other categories.

