Imagine you are walking down Main Street in Healthcare Town, USA. Stores of all sizes are all around you. The big box stores draw your attention first, with their fancy backlit signs illuminating names like HCA, Tenet and Community Health Systems. Then you see the midsize stores. Their signs are smaller and a little harder to distinguish, but you can pick out a few familiar names. Finally, your eyes move to the rows of small stores stretching out as far as the eye can see. But try as you might, you can’t distinguish one store from another in the healthcare marketplace. So, off to the big box stores you go…
This is healthcare’s growing identity problem. More and more companies are organizing into mega-conglomerations, and it’s easy to stand out on Main Street when you now own half the block. But when you’re a small to mid-size healthcare company fighting for market space in the big boys’ shadow, getting noticed in the healthcare marketplace is much more difficult… but not impossible.
Define your Purpose and Positioning
First things first, make sure your company’s positioning is clear and differentiated. Start by defining your purpose—i.e. why your company exists. Not what you do or how you do it but why you do it. To make the world better? To change how people are treated? Starting from a lofty, inspiring “why” will help you define “who” your company is and “what” you do that differentiates you in the marketplace. (Google “