Augmedix

Frank V. Cespedes

Teaching Note | HBS Case Collection | March 2018

Augmedix

Abstract

Teaching Note for HBS No. 817-048. Augmedix provides a service that live-streams video of patient appointments to a remote scribe, freeing up significant physician time from electronic medical record data-entry tasks. The venture is confronting decisions in areas such as customer segmentation, pricing, and sales hiring. The case and teaching note examine factors that drive adoption of a service, how these factors vary by segment or buyer type, and the implications (and trade-offs) for customer acquisition cost (CAC), customer lifetime value (LTV), pricing, and sales hiring in a venture that has achieved product-market fit and is seeking to scale.

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Sales; Management; Marketing Strategy; Growth and Development Strategy; Technology Adoption; Customers; Segmentation; Health Industry; Technology Industry; United States;

Language: English

Format: Print

11 pages

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Citation:

Cespedes, Frank V. "Augmedix." Harvard Business School Teaching Note 818-117, March 2018.

Sales methodologies play an important role. A common approach in a sales force allows for consistency, dissemination of best practices, acceleration of learning, and it helps the firm to scale because management then has common metrics to monitor and evaluate. However, it’s rare that the same methodology is relevant across the buying situations encountered by salespeople in a market. This article discusses and provides examples of variables relevant to analyzing sales tasks and evaluating the relevance of a selling methodology: differences within an industry, within a category, and when target buyers change.

Common advice in sales is to provide insights to customers during sales calls. But this advice generally stays at the level of “tell people something they don’t already know” and results in sales conversations littered with many irrelevant factoids. This article provides examples of how salespeople develop and deliver resonant insights in customer conversations and why the framing of insights depends upon to whom they are talking and when in the sales cycle.

Most research and training in sales focus on acquiring new customers. But winning back previous customers is increasingly important: mergers, choice in supply chains, and uncertainty about trade wars mean that B2B customers are constantly re-evaluating relationships with suppliers and making changes. Meanwhile, large buyers account, on average, for over 25% of revenues at publicly traded firms, up from 10% in the 1980s. This article discusses how and why the process for reacquiring lost customers requires a different approach than acquiring new ones and illustrates the process and its implications via a case example.

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Augmedix

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