If you’re selling an enterprise SaaS solution into U.S. health systems, you already know the cycle is slow. A 12- to 18-month sales process isn’t the exception—it’s the expectation. For more complex solutions, 24 months isn’t out of the question.
What’s worse is getting nearly to the end and stalling out. You’ve aligned with clinical sponsors, operational leaders, even navigated legal and compliance reviews. Then the CIO team enters the conversation, and the deal slows to a crawl—or dies altogether.
When that happens, the problem usually isn’t your product. It’s how your product is being perceived—particularly by a buyer who sees risk in every new vendor and doesn’t think you’re solving enough problems to justify that risk.
Let’s talk about what’s happening in that moment, and more importantly, how to fix it.
Understanding How CIOs See the World
The CIO at a health system is responsible for far more than infrastructure and uptime. On a given day, they focus on cybersecurity threats, interoperability and data integration, and managing the explosion of health data, among tens of other clinical, operational, and financial issues.
In 2023 alone, more than 134 million patient records were exposed in healthcare data breaches—a 141% increase from the previous year. That’s not theoretical. It’s a CIO’s Monday morning.
On top of that, CIOs are accountable for system reliability across mission-critical applications: EHRs, imaging systems, ERP platforms, medication administration tools, scheduling infrastructure, and dozens of vendor dependencies stitched together through multiple integrations. The cost of introducing risk—even from something that seems small—is often perceived as too high.
So when your solution hits their desk, they’re not asking “does this work?” They’re asking “is this necessary?”
And often, they decide it’s not.
Why You’re Seen as a Point Solution (Even If You’re Not)
You built something that touches multiple parts of the care continuum. It improves staff workflows, reduces documentation burden, drives patient engagement—you’ve mapped it all out. But to the CIO, you’re just another third-party vendor asking for access to sensitive patient data.
This is the point solution problem. And the definition isn’t about what your product technically can do. It’s about how the buyer categorizes you. If you’re not solving multiple high-priority challenges—patient and provider satisfaction, security, revenue, compliance—you may be slotted into the “point solution” bucket.
And that bucket is heavy. Because most point solutions require an implementation. Every implementation creates support overhead. Every vendor adds risk.
This is where deals go to die. Not because the solution isn’t valuable. But because it doesn’t look valuable enough from where the CIO sits.
Security Reviews, BAAs, and the Organizational Cost of Saying Yes
Every time a health system signs a BAA with a third-party vendor, they’re taking on legal risk and compliance obligations. A new integration often means touching PHI, which triggers full security and privacy assessments. It means onboarding processes for IT, project resourcing, and often an executive sponsor.
That’s why CIOs may view approving your solution through a very critical lens. What you see as innovation, they see as more endpoints to protect.
Unless your solution directly supports strategic priorities—reducing readmissions, improving quality performance metrics, enhancing provider and patient experience, expanding revenue streams, or replacing legacy infrastructure—it’s going to be a tough sell.
And even if it does help in one or two of those areas, it might not be enough.
The Platform Play: Reducing Friction, Reframing Perception
Instead of trying to sell as a standalone solution, companies are increasingly choosing to embed into broader health data platforms. Companies like b.well, Innovaccer, and League have already earned trust inside health systems. They’ve gone through the security reviews. They’ve executed BAAs. They already live in the ecosystem.
By listing your product on a platform like these, you bypass a lot of the resistance that slows direct deals. You’re not asking the CIO to take a new risk. You’re asking them to enable a new module via a platform they’ve already approved.
This changes the perception of your solution from “yet another app” to “another capability inside a broader solution set.”
The economics shift, too. You may enter into a revenue sharing agreement with the platform partner, but you’re saving on sales cycle length, customer acquisition cost, and internal headcount burn.
I’ve seen teams cut their enterprise deal cycles by 6–9 months using this approach. That can be the difference between hitting this year’s number or missing it.
You Don’t Have to Choose: Building a Hybrid GTM Strategy
None of this means you have to abandon your direct sales motion. What it means is that a hybrid go-to-market strategy—direct plus platform—is often the more resilient path.
If you’re a growth-stage digital health company, you’re already making trade-offs between control and access. Direct selling gives you margin and brand control, but platform selling gives you reach and speed.
The right strategy is usually a mix of both. Sell direct where you’ve got an existing sponsor, existing footprint, or strong clinical ROI data. Sell through platforms where the procurement barrier is lower and the CIO is most likely to greenlight a new vendor relationship.
But in both cases, your product needs to be positioned in a way that maps to the CIO’s mental model. That’s the real unlock.
What Senior Revenue Leaders Should Be Doing Now
If you’re leading GTM for a digital health company in 2025, here’s what I’d be doing:
Revisit how your solution is being positioned—not just in marketing copy, but in enterprise buyer conversations. Ask yourself: does this solve enough of the CIO’s problems to warrant the organizational cost of adoption?
If not, look at whether a platform play can get you there faster. Identify the ecosystems your target customers already trust. Study how those platforms package partner solutions. Get your product aligned to that framework.
If you’re running into late-stage stalls, it’s likely not a sales problem. It’s a positioning problem. Fix that, and the sales numbers will follow.
How I Help
This is exactly the work I do. I partner with digital health CEOs, revenue leaders, and investor-backed teams to turn sales friction into strategic momentum.
I help you assess whether you’re being perceived as a point solution, reframe your messaging to reflect what enterprise buyers actually prioritize, and accelerate your path to revenue by building the right mix of direct and indirect sales strategies.
If you’re tired of burning cycles on late-stage deals that never close, or wondering whether the problem is your pitch, your product, or your packaging—I can help you get clarity by leveraging my own experience in the field.
Let’s make sure your buyers see the full value of what you’ve built and give your team the strategy to win in the rooms where healthcare buying decisions actually happen.
Reach out if you want to build a GTM engine that actually closes.
