Don't run from business headaches. Relieve them. How firms benefit from a make-it-better approach:
• Feel their pain. Entrepreneur and software developer Dan Rodrigues was doing consulting work in the medical field when he waded into the perplexity of the health care reimbursement process. He told IBD, "It really made my head spin." In a good way. "I saw it as a problem-rich environment. I like to solve problems."
• Ease it. Consumers enjoy easy-to-use apps. Businesses — even medical ones — should too. That was Rodrigues' approach with Kareo, the health care billing software firm he founded in 2005.
"At the core of what we do, we help doctors get paid," he said. "We work hard to make it an intuitive solution."
More than 12,000 physicians have adopted the platform.
• Make a healthy pitch. Winning them over is no knee-jerk reaction. A doctor's typical response: Sounds great, but does it work? "It's a noisy product market," Rodrigues said. "It's hard for physicians to cut through all the noise."
After warming them up with demonstration videos, Rodrigues offers a 30-day free trial.
"It's a way for them to ease into the relationship," Rodrigues said.
• Probe deeper. John Davie had zero restaurant experience when he and his father launched Dining Alliance, a food service consultancy. But they'd heard firsthand how smaller restaurateurs struggled to compete with big chains. Why not help the independents band together to get better pricing on everything from ketchup to cola?
To perfect the collective approach, Davie pulled up to the table. "For the first few years, I would just pepper people with questions," he said. "It's kind of amazing what people tell you when you ask direct questions."
• Chip away. Dining Alliance now has more than $1 billion in buying power among thousands of participating eateries.
It didn't start that strong.
"We were going around selling the future," Davie said, trying to get diners and bistros to sign onto an unproven approach.
A few early believers buoyed Davie's spirits. "We had some restaurant owners who were passionate about what we were doing," he said. Initially distracted by pie-in-the-sky possibilities, he achieved growth by concentrating on achieving results for existing clients.
"Things changed when we focused on a relatively small goal," he said.
• Pump them up. PBA Health CEO Nick Smock grew up working in his father's pharmacy, so he understands the pressure of competition that big-name drugstores place on smaller operators.
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