Why Your Clinical Champion Win Rarely Guarantees Commercial Success.

Michael Colling-Tuck
Oct 15
5 min read

The wrong messaging for the wrong audience can leave everyone confused. Except... most products in healthcare seem to only have one set of messages. That's where they go wrong.

Last week, I had a conversation with a lawyer that gave me the perfect analogy for a problem I've been watching in healthcare sales for years. We were discussing his work with international companies, and he mentioned a translation firm that had struggled for years. They'd built their business on accuracy—translating documents word-for-word from one language to another. Technically flawless. Commercially failing.

The problem? Direct translation doesn't create resonance. A phrase that works perfectly in English often falls flat when translated literally into French, Mandarin, or Arabic. The successful translation companies, he explained, don't translate—they interpret. They understand what the message is trying to achieve and recreate that impact in the target language.

This perfectly captures a pattern I've seen across 20 years in healthcare sales.

The Misplaced Confidence

I see it constantly. A sales rep wins over the clinical champion with strong outcomes data and thinks they've done the hard work. The clinical champion loves the product, becomes an advocate, gets departmental approval. The rep is celebrating. Victory, right?

Wrong. That's just the starting gate.

Now comes the actual hard bit: stakeholder management. The finance director who needs ROI. The value assessment committee with their procurement frameworks. The operations director worried about implementation. The C-suite assessing strategic fit. Each one speaks a completely different language.

Each one evaluates success using completely different criteria. Each one has the power to kill the deal.

And here's where it breaks down. Most companies create one pitch—the clinical pitch—and then leave their reps to translate it for all these other stakeholders. The rep who just won over the clinical champion with complication reduction data now has to somehow turn that into a financial justification for the CFO.

"Well, better outcomes probably mean shorter stays, right? So there must be cost savings?"

It's guesswork. And the variance between what one rep says versus another, what gets emphasized versus what gets missed, what lands versus what falls flat—that variance is killing deals.

Why This Keeps Happening

I spent time thinking about why companies do this. Why create one pitch and hope for the best?

The answer is usually legal and regulatory. They identify the clinical USPs, the claims that can be made, the evidence that supports them. The original pitch gets built on those approved claims. Then it gets locked down. Nobody wants to deviate from what legal approved. The clinical pitch becomes the pitch, and everyone assumes that's the only story you're allowed to tell.

But here's what's strange. Healthcare products themselves evolve all the time without anyone batting an eye. Minoxidil was developed to treat heart conditions, then someone noticed it was growing hair.

Viagra came out of cardiovascular research and ended up treating erectile dysfunction. Medical devices find new applications, new value propositions, entirely new markets—all without changing the product itself. Mass clinic availability creates completely new economic value propositions without any product development.

Products naturally find new facets. New indications. New benefits. So why does the messaging stay frozen in clinical language?

You don't need different claims. You need different interpretations of the same value. Your product solves multiple problems simultaneously. The clinical champion cares about outcomes. Finance cares about cost. Procurement cares about value frameworks. Operations cares about implementation. C-suite cares about strategic positioning. Same product. Different problems being solved.

But most companies never build that interpretation. They build the clinical story, then leave the translation—and all its variance and risk—to individual sales reps in individual conversations.

What Interpretation Actually Looks Like

The companies that consistently win aren't the ones with better clinical data. They're the ones who've mapped their stakeholders first and built interpreted messages for each.

They know the clinical champion needs to hear: "This reduces your complication rates by 23%, helping you achieve your target outcomes."

They know finance needs to hear: "This delivers £2,400 cost avoidance per case through reduced length of stay—12-month payback on your investment."

They know the value assessment committee needs to hear: "This addresses your procurement criteria with 0.8 QALY improvement and an ICER within NICE thresholds, aligned to your trust priority of reducing surgical site infections."

They know operations needs to hear: "This integrates into your existing pathway without disruption, with two-hour training and four-week adoption timeline."

They know C-suite needs to hear: "This positions your trust as the regional leader in this clinical area, attracting referrals currently going to competitors."

These aren't different spins on clinical evidence. They're fundamentally different value propositions drawn from different facets of the same product. That's interpretation. And the companies that build this systematically—rather than leaving it to individual rep translation—see completely different results.

I watched this play out last quarter with two companies selling similar products into the same trust.

Company A: Strong clinical data. Clinical champion loved it. Rep tried to translate the clinical pitch for the finance committee. "Better outcomes should mean cost savings, right?" Finance asked for specific budget impact. Rep scrambled to get data from marketing. Got generic ROI claims. Finance passed. Deal died.

Company B: Same clinical data. Clinical champion loved it. Rep provided the clinical champion with a pre-built financial justification module before the finance meeting even happened. When finance asked about budget impact, the clinical champion said: "£2,400 cost avoidance per case based on our current volumes. Here's the model with our data already populated." Finance validated the assumptions. Asked about value assessment criteria. Rep provided a complete dossier addressing the procurement framework. VAC approved it as the most complete submission they'd received that year.

Same product category. Same clinical strength. Completely different outcome.

The difference? Company B had mapped their stakeholders, identified what problems each needed solved, and built interpreted messages before their reps ever walked into a meeting. Company A left the interpretation to individual reps in the moment.

The Hard Bit Isn't the Clinical Win

If you're a sales rep reading this and thinking "but I do adapt my message for different stakeholders"—you probably do. And some reps are brilliant at it. But the variance between your best reps and your average reps is costing you deals. And even your best reps are reinventing the wheel in every account, rather than executing a repeatable system.

If you're in marketing or sales leadership reading this and thinking "we can't possibly build separate messages for every stakeholder"—you don't need separate claims. You need to interpret the value you already have into the problems each stakeholder is actually trying to solve. That's not a regulatory risk.

That's strategic demand creation.

The hard bit was never winning the clinical champion. The hard bit is stakeholder management, pitch adaptation, and message adaptation that ensures every decision-maker understands how you solve their specific problem.

That's tough. But it's significantly easier when you've mapped your stakeholders first and built the interpretation systematically, rather than leaving it to chance in every deal.

If you're recognizing these patterns—clinical wins that stall at finance, deals that die at procurement, inconsistent messaging across your sales team—you're not alone.