The Shadow Phase of the Healthcare Buying Committee Journey Is Costing You

Vendors who aren’t accounting for the 70% of the buyers’ journey that occurs before first contact are being left behind. The answer? Is content. 

“Uptime lost us the deal. Ours was better, but the CIO saw theirs on a website or something and that stuck in his head.” 

That’s a summation of a conversation I had with a VP of sales at an enterprise healthcare SaaS company. That kind of loss is almost completely avoidable. 

Your solutions only get one chance to make that first impression, but most of the time in enterprise healthcare tech, you don’t even know that impression is being made. 

B2B buyers aren’t engaging until they’re 70% of the way through their buying journey. And in 83% of those cases, the buyer…not your sales team…is initiating first contact.  This means that the buying committee is investigating your solutions, thought leadership, and vision (or lack thereof) and comparing it to your competition before you have any input. 

The worst part is that in an age of self-service content, you likely won’t even know this is happening. All the buying committee member roles—from finance, to clinical, to administrative, and tech—are on your site, attending conferences, looking at your social presence, following your executives, and sharing information with their peers without your knowledge. 

This is the Shadow Phase of the healthcare buying committee journey, and it’s costing you in more ways that you realize.  

Sales Is Starting From Behind

Let’s start from where a lot of organizations start. I’ve seen this with established tech vendors to startups—sales is primarily responsible for identifying new accounts, making contact, and setting the tone of the relationship. 

Even with great collateral, this is an uphill battle. Different roles on the buying committee have different needs, questions, and concerns. Most want to read on their own and hear from their peers before they want to connect with one of your reps. (Explore the content preferences of different buying committee roles here.)

Content marketing is a chance for you to facilitate this self-directed buying process while simultaneously setting your sales team up for success. Keep things outcomes-focused and grounded in market needs to minimize friction and improve sales metrics. (Explore the system for doing that strategically here.)

You Lost the Narrative

We’re in a weird and wonderful time in enterprise healthcare. Chaos from administrative changes and upheaval from AI has put both established vendors and newcomers back on their heels. 

There are new challenges and new stories emerging…but if you’re accustomed to leaning on your reputation, network, or the novelty of your technology, you risk being left behind. Probably sooner than you realize. 

In a time of shifting narratives, a content-first perspective is critical—but that doesn’t work if you’re just publishing content for the sake of content. 

The healthcare buying committee doesn’t follow a traditional funnel. It builds relationships. 

It doesn’t respect silence. It rewards communication and visionary thought leadership. 

It doesn’t move easily. It responds to the vendors who have asked and answered the hard questions. 

When you drag your feet or phone in generic content, you’re ceding ground to more strategic competitors AND the comfort of your market’s status quo. 

You’ve got about 18 months to seize the narrative around the problems you solve…and that means reaching out with relationship-building content. (Learn how to lean into relationship-building content here.)

You’re Setting an Expectation of Non-Communication

So this is particularly troublesome in the age of AI. 

I was on a webinar for hospital administrator career development a few months back, and the head of nursing technology said something that shifted my assumptions on content. “Healthcare leaders are less tech savvy than we want to admit.” 

It’s easy to assume that the only thing you need to communicate is product updates and company news, but healthcare leaders are looking to their vendors for more. 

This is especially true for incumbent vendors, who leaders already trust and are looking to for guidance in creating new tech strategies. Non-communication is a red flag and a vulnerability in times of change. 

The Shadow Phase Is an Opportunity

Don’t fear the shadow. The uncertainty in modern healthcare buying actually simplifies your strategy even more. Outcomes are your North Star and communicating them should be rooted in the needs and preferences of the healthcare buying committee.

If you don’t have a robust marketing department, don’t think this means investing in an agency or an expensive, high-risk FTE.  

LocutusHealth is your “general contractor” in building out or renovating the relationship-building arm of your organization—connecting you with vetted industry-specialized Talent, Tools, and Tech—all with high budget flexibility and guided by the Outcomes-Based Content Marketing framework. 

This combination allows you to master the Shadow Phase and build out a functional understanding of content’s role in your business strategy before deeper commitment. Grab a quick intro call with Megan today to talk out opportunities in your approach to healthcare tech content.