Salesloft MCP Demo Server

# Interview: Christina Patel - MedTech VP Sales ## Interview Metadata **Date:** January 8, 2026 **Duration:** 30 minutes **Interviewer:** Jake Morrison, Senior Solutions Engineer, Salesloft + Clari **Interviewee:** Christina Patel, VP Sales, MedTech (Advanced Surgical Solutions) **Company Size:** $90M ARR **Focus Area:** Capital Equipment Sales & Healthcare Procurement --- ## Transcript **[JAKE]** Hey Christina, thanks so much for making time today. I know you're incredibly busy. We're talking to a lot of healthcare companies right now trying to understand the capital equipment buying cycle better, and your perspective as a VP Sales at a $90M company would be really valuable. **[CHRISTINA]** Thanks for having me. Happy to help. Honestly, the capital equipment space has gotten pretty brutal over the past 18 months. We're feeling it on every front, so I'm always interested to talk about how we can navigate this better. **[JAKE]** Perfect. Let me jump right in. One thing we keep hearing from our healthcare customers is that capital budgets have just frozen. We had a customer say their hospital's CapEx budget went flat for 2025. How are you seeing that play out from a sales perspective? **[CHRISTINA]** Oh man, that's the understatement of the year. We usually see our hospitals and surgical centers allocate capital budgets in September, right? Last year, that conversation didn't even happen until December, and when it did, the budgets were down 15 to 20 percent across the board. And honestly, this year doesn't look much better. The challenge is that hospitals are being crushed by labor costs, supply chain inflation, and reimbursement rates that aren't keeping up. So when it comes to a capital equipment purchase—whether it's our surgical navigation system or an OR suite upgrade—they're asking themselves, "Do we really need this right now? Can we extend the life of the equipment we have?" **[JAKE]** That makes sense. So when budgets are frozen, how are you actually having conversations around ROI? Is that even coming up, or is the door completely shut? **[CHRISTINA]** Great question. The door isn't shut, but you have to be smart about it. ROI messaging doesn't work the same way it used to. Two years ago, I could walk in and say, "This equipment will improve your case throughput by 15 percent and pay for itself in three years." And that would move the needle. Now, the conversation is completely different. They're not asking, "Will this make us money?" They're asking, "Will this help us survive?" And that's a really important distinction. The ROI argument still has to work, but it has to be tied to OpEx reduction or reimbursement uplift—things that directly impact their bottom line in the next 12 months. **[JAKE]** So you've shifted more toward OpEx positioning? **[CHRISTINA]** Exactly. One of our biggest wins last quarter was with a 300-bed regional hospital network. They were never going to get capital approval for our surgical navigation equipment—about a $400K investment. But our team reframed it as an OpEx solution. We modeled out labor efficiency gains, reduced complications, and fewer revision surgeries. We showed them that they could reduce OR time by an average of 18 minutes per case, which meant they could run one additional high-margin surgical case per OR per week. When you do the math across their four ORs and 250 surgical cases per month, that's an extra $1.2M in annual revenue. Suddenly, the capital constraint becomes irrelevant because they can justify it as a service contract instead of a straight capital purchase. **[JAKE]** That's creative. Are you doing leasing or financing deals to make that work? **[CHRISTINA]** We are, yeah. We partnered with a medical equipment financing company last year. It's been a game-changer. Instead of asking a hospital to drop $400K upfront, we can structure a five-year lease at roughly $8K a month. That comes out of a different budget line—operational expenses rather than capital. And most hospitals have way more flexibility on OpEx than they do on CapEx. The trick is making sure the financing doesn't completely eat into our margin. We did have to adjust our pricing model a bit to make room for the financing costs, but the conversion rate on deals went up about 30 percent because suddenly these deals became approvable. **[JAKE]** That's really smart. Now let me ask you about the approval process itself. We work with a lot of sales teams, and everyone talks about Value Analysis Committees—VACs. How much of a pain point is that for you guys? **[CHRISTINA]** Oh, it's a massive pain point. And honestly, I don't think most sales teams understand how broken the VAC process is right now. It used to be that you'd get your equipment in front of the clinical committee, they'd see the value, and within two months you'd have an approval and an order. Now? It's a six-month journey minimum. And it's not six months of linear progress. **[JAKE]** Walk me through what that looks like. **[CHRISTINA]** Okay, so let's say we're trying to get our surgical navigation system approved at a large hospital system. First thing, you've got to get a champion. And I mean a clinical champion—a surgeon or OR director who believes in the technology. You can't just sell to the procurement person; they'll kill your deal in the first meeting. So you spend month one and two building that relationship, getting the champion to understand the clinical benefits, maybe running a pilot or a wet lab demo. If that surgeon is convinced, they go to the VAC. The VAC is usually made up of the chief medical officer, the VP of OR operations, the finance director, maybe someone from risk management, possibly a nurse representative. Everyone's got different priorities. **[JAKE]** And those priorities are conflicting, I assume? **[CHRISTINA]** Completely conflicting. The CMO cares about clinical efficacy and patient outcomes. The OR director cares about workflow integration and staff training burden. Finance cares about cost and payback period. Risk wants to know about adverse event data and complication rates. It's a mess. The VAC meets once a month, sometimes less frequently. So if you miss one meeting, you're now waiting 30 days for your next shot. And that's if your champion shows up and advocates for you, which doesn't always happen because they're busy surgeons. We had one deal that got stuck in VAC review for eight months because they wanted a specific piece of clinical evidence we didn't have. It wasn't that the evidence didn't exist—it was that it hadn't been published in the specific journal format they wanted. That's time we could have spent on other deals. **[JAKE]** So the clinical evidence piece is critical. How are you handling that? Are you building an evidence library, or are you just pointing people to published studies? **[CHRISTINA]** Both, honestly. We have an evidence library on our website, but it's not well organized for how hospitals actually use it. They don't want to click through 40 different studies. They want to know: "Can I use this in my specific patient population? Does this work for trauma cases versus elective cases? What about our demographic—do we have a lot of geriatric patients where outcomes might differ?" So we've started creating custom evidence summaries for specific hospital systems. Our clinical affairs team will pull together relevant studies, outcomes data, and health economic models specific to that hospital's patient mix and surgical volume. It takes time, but it moves deals forward. The problem is we don't have a good system for organizing this. It's kind of ad hoc. Someone on my team spends hours pulling together a custom evidence package that another hospital might also need, and we're essentially rebuilding it from scratch each time. That's inefficient. **[JAKE]** Do you have someone dedicated to clinical evidence management, or is that scattered across your team? **[CHRISTINA]** That's the problem—it's scattered. I have one clinical specialist who's overloaded, and then our sales team is patching together evidence decks in PowerPoint. It's not systematic. I'd love to have a database where I could search by clinical indication, patient population, and outcome metric and get a pre-vetted summary ready to go. And here's the thing—the evidence is constantly evolving. New studies come out, new data from our customer base comes in, outcomes shift. So we're constantly revising. If we could systematize that and make it easy for clinical teams to maintain, that would be huge. **[JAKE]** Let me ask you about something related. You mentioned variability in clinical evidence—different hospitals wanting different evidence. Do you customize the clinical narrative for different hospital systems? Are you essentially selling the same product with different stories? **[CHRISTINA]** Bingo. That's exactly what's happening, and it's actually a challenge for us. Our product—the surgical navigation system—works the same way in a trauma center as it does in an elective orthopedic center. But the value prop is totally different. For a trauma center, it's about speed, accuracy in emergent cases, and reducing complications in complex fractures. For an elective orthopedic shop, it's about precision, consistency, and patient satisfaction scores. So yes, we customize the clinical narrative, the evidence pack, the health economic model. But we have to be careful because we can't misrepresent the evidence or cherry-pick studies that support one narrative and hide ones that don't. That's not just ethically wrong—it'll blow up in your face when the VAC actually does its due diligence. **[JAKE]** How do you handle conflicts between what hospitals want to hear versus what the evidence actually shows? **[CHRISTINA]** Carefully. We always lead with the evidence and then position the narrative around what's most relevant for that hospital. So if the evidence shows our system reduces OR time by an average of 12 minutes, but the range is 5 to 25 minutes depending on the surgeon's experience and the case type, we'd say: "The data shows a range of outcomes. Here's what we're seeing in trauma centers like yours." We never promise outcomes we can't back up. But we're smart about which evidence we prioritize. And honestly, I think most hospitals appreciate that. The VACs that are doing their job properly are going to dig into the evidence anyway, so you're better off being transparent upfront. **[JAKE]** Let's shift gears a bit. You mentioned earlier that you need a clinical champion. How much of the deal actually hinges on that champion? What happens if that surgeon leaves or changes their mind? **[CHRISTINA]** Oh, it's everything. I'd say 80 percent of our deals live or die based on the clinical champion. And I mean that literally. We had a case last year where a renowned surgeon was leading the charge for our equipment. It was going to VAC approval in two weeks. Then he left to go to another hospital system. The deal died immediately. The new CMO wasn't as invested, and without that champion voice in the room, there was no one advocating for us. That's why we spend so much time on champion development. We're not just educating them on the product. We're helping them understand how to sell it internally, what questions the VAC will ask, how to respond to objections. We're basically making them our internal salespeople. **[JAKE]** Do you have a process for identifying and developing champions, or is it pretty organic? **[CHRISTINA]** It's more organic than I'd like. We usually identify potential champions during the initial clinical evaluation. It's the surgeon or OR director who's curious about the technology, who asks thoughtful questions, who sees the clinical value immediately. But the development part is inconsistent. Sometimes it works really well because our clinical specialist and the account manager are aligned. Other times, the champion relationship is weak because we haven't invested enough time. I'm actually working on formalizing this right now. We're trying to create a champion playbook—specific touchpoints, educational content, ways we support them internally. But we're not there yet. **[JAKE]** Okay, so you're managing clinical relationships, which is complex. You're also managing procurement relationships, which is separate. Then there's also the VAC process. How many different stakeholder groups are you really juggling on a typical deal? **[CHRISTINA]** On a big system deal? Usually six to eight distinct stakeholder groups. You've got your clinical champions—usually two or three surgeons. You've got the OR operations team. You've got finance. You've got procurement. You've got risk and compliance. You've got potentially the hospital system's GPO—their group purchasing organization—because they may have contracts that affect what we can sell and at what price. And you've got IT if there's any integration involved. Each of those groups has different priorities, different vocabularies, different objection patterns. It's like running eight separate sales campaigns simultaneously, and they all have to resolve in the same direction at the same time. **[JAKE]** That's overwhelming. How do you even keep track of where you are with each stakeholder group? **[CHRISTINA]** Honestly, not great right now. We use Salesforce, but it's more of a pipeline tracker than a deal complexity tracker. I wish we had better visibility into which stakeholders are aligned, which ones have objections that haven't been addressed, and where we are in the VAC process specifically. I hear a lot about sales intelligence platforms that show you stakeholder maps and buying committee dynamics. That would be really valuable. Right now, my team is relying on their notes and memory, which is obviously not ideal when you're in a six-month sales cycle. **[JAKE]** That brings me to another topic we're seeing a lot—channel conflict. I imagine at your size, you have some channel partners or regional sales folks who might have territorial interests that conflict with enterprise deals. How much of an issue is that? **[CHRISTINA]** More than I'd like to admit. We have a direct enterprise team and a channel partner network. The channel partners represent us in smaller markets and mid-size hospitals. The enterprise team works on large health systems and academic medical centers. The problem is the lines get blurry. We'll have a regional partner who's been selling to a hospital for years, and then a large health system does an acquisition and suddenly that local hospital is part of a much bigger enterprise system. Is that now an enterprise deal or a channel deal? The partner thinks it's theirs because they've got the relationship. We think we should lead because it's part of a large system. **[JAKE]** Who usually wins that argument? **[CHRISTINA]** We do, but it's messy. We've lost partners over it, and honestly, I think we're not managing it well. We don't have clear territory rules. We don't have a good process for when a partner's account gets acquired or consolidated. And the compensation is a nightmare. If a channel partner leads, they might take a 20 percent discount off list. If we lead, we might still honor some discount to the partner for the relationship, but not as much. Some partners feel like they're getting squeezed out of deals they helped develop. We've had situations where a partner brought us into a hospital, we ran the clinical eval, and then when it came time to close, we tried to take the deal direct and pay them a finder's fee. That doesn't feel good. **[JAKE]** Do you have strategic accounts that are off-limits to the channel, or is everything negotiable? **[CHRISTINA]** We have a list of strategic accounts—the top 50 health systems in the country—that are supposed to be off-limits to the channel. But that list isn't enforced well, and it definitely creates friction. Some partners think we're hoarding the best opportunities. Some of them are right. I'd love to have clear rules of engagement. Like: "If a partner brings you into an account, they get a certain percentage. If we bring them in, they get a different percentage. If we work the deal together, we split it this way." And actually enforce it. But that requires alignment with our channel team, and we don't have that right now. **[JAKE]** Let me ask you about the GPO piece, which seems like it might be its own complicated layer. How much are GPOs affecting your pricing and your ability to win deals? **[CHRISTINA]** GPOs are huge. And honestly, they're driving a lot of commoditization in the medical device space. Here's the dynamic: most hospitals are members of one or more GPOs. The GPO negotiates contracts with vendors—us and our competitors—and the hospital agrees to preferred vendor status in exchange for volume discounts. The GPO basically sets the price ceiling. We can't go above that without getting the GPO to approve an exception, which is a nightmare. And the GPO's incentive is to drive the lowest possible price because they make money on the volume commit. So they're constantly pushing us to cut our margins. **[JAKE]** But the hospital still has to go through VAC approval, right? So the GPO price is the floor, but clinical value could justify going higher? **[CHRISTINA]** In theory, yes. In practice, not really. If we're on a GPO contract at $350K and our competitor is on the same contract at $320K, the hospital will ask: "Why should we pay more?" And the answer—"because our outcomes are better"—has to be SO compelling that it overrides a $30K price difference. That's a pretty high bar. What we're seeing is that GPO contracts are driving commoditization. Hospitals view the equipment as interchangeable. They want the cheapest option that meets the VAC's clinical threshold. And once you're on a GPO, you're in this race-to-the-bottom on price. **[JAKE]** How are you differentiating when everything's becoming commoditized? **[CHRISTINA]** That's the million-dollar question. We're trying to move away from just selling equipment and toward selling outcomes and service. So instead of competing on the price of the surgical navigation system, we're selling a complete surgical support package—the equipment, training, surgeon education, ongoing technical support, performance analytics, outcomes tracking. We're also getting creative with bundling. For example, some hospitals want to integrate our system with their EMR and OR scheduling system. That's not just equipment; that's a technology implementation. We can offer that as a premium service and differentiate on the integration and support. But honestly, not all hospitals want that. A lot of them just want the equipment at the lowest price point. And for those deals, we're not winning as often as we used to. **[JAKE]** Are you tracking customer outcomes? Like, are you collecting data on surgical cases where your equipment was used and showing that to prospects as proof of value? **[CHRISTINA]** We're starting to. It's a huge opportunity and also a huge burden. To collect meaningful outcomes data, you need surgeon buy-in, EMR integration to track the cases, and a way to deidentify patient data. It takes infrastructure and ongoing coordination. We have a couple of health systems that are participating in an outcomes study. They're sending us their surgical data, case outcomes, complication rates. We're analyzing that and starting to build proprietary evidence that we can show to prospective customers. It's powerful—"Here's what we're actually achieving in practice with hospitals like yours." But we can't scale it easily. And we're not systematic about it. Different hospitals are sending us data in different formats, with different tracking methodologies. Our data science team is spending time cleaning and normalizing data that should probably be automated. **[JAKE]** If you could design your ideal solution for all of these challenges—the capital constraints, the VAC complexity, the clinical evidence gap, the channel conflicts, the GPO pressure—what would it look like? **[CHRISTINA]** Wow, that's a loaded question. Okay, here's what I think about at night: I need better visibility into our deals. I need to know, in real time, where we are with each stakeholder group. Who's a champion? Who's resistant? What objections haven't been addressed? What evidence do they need? Second, I need a system for managing clinical evidence that actually works. We should have an outcomes database that shows what we're achieving with different patient populations and clinical indications. We should be able to pull a custom evidence package for a prospect in minutes, not weeks. Third, I need better rules of engagement with the channel. If we had clear territory assignments and compensation models, we'd reduce conflict and actually move deals faster because partners would know what they're competing for. Fourth—and this is kind of meta—I need better sales intelligence. Our team spends a ton of time trying to figure out "Is this hospital part of the system we think it is? Who are the decision-makers? What's their budget? How do their clinical committees work?" We're basically doing market research on every deal. And fifth, I need OpEx flexibility. The capital constraint isn't going away. We need to structure more deals as services, leases, and outcomes-based contracts. And that requires finance alignment and potentially a partner financing network. If I had a platform that could give me visibility into all of this—deal complexity, stakeholder maps, clinical evidence management, outcomes tracking, and OpEx options—it would change my life. **[JAKE]** That's actually really insightful. One more question: if you had to pick the top three things that are actually blocking deals right now, what would they be? **[CHRISTINA]** Top three? Capital constraints, hands down. That's number one. It's not a sales or clinical issue—it's structural. Hospitals have frozen budgets and they're not thawing until reimbursement improves or hospital systems consolidate and create new capital capacity. Number two is the VAC process length. A six-month approval cycle is brutal for our sales team and our pipeline predictability. If we could find ways to move VAC committees faster—providing better evidence upfront, reducing back-and-forth, demonstrating value more clearly—that would move so many deals forward. And number three is channel conflict. We're leaving deals on the table because the channel and enterprise teams aren't aligned. We're also burning through partnerships with people who feel like they're not being treated fairly. **[JAKE]** This has been incredibly helpful, Christina. One last thing—if you were talking to your peers at other med device companies, what would you tell them is the biggest mistake you see in how companies are approaching this market right now? **[CHRISTINA]** I think companies are still selling products instead of solving problems. They show up with great equipment specs and assume the clinical value is obvious. But they're not doing the work to understand the hospital's specific constraints—their capital situation, their clinical priorities, their internal politics. The companies that are winning are the ones who are humble about the VAC process. They're building champions. They're providing evidence in the format the hospital needs. They're understanding that the decision isn't made by one person in the OR—it's made by eight different people with eight different priorities. And they're building a solution that addresses all eight. We're learning that lesson slowly, and it's costing us deals. But I think we're getting better. **[JAKE]** Christina, I really appreciate your time and your honesty. This is really valuable. **[CHRISTINA]** Of course. Happy to help. Feel free to reach out if you want to dig into any of this more. We're constantly thinking about this stuff. --- ## Key Takeaways ### Capital Constraints & OpEx Positioning - Capital equipment budgets are frozen across most hospital systems (down 15-20% YoY), shifting conversations from traditional ROI to OpEx solutions - Hospitals increasingly prefer lease/financing models that avoid capital budget approval - Reframing deals as operational cost solutions with monthly service contracts improves deal approvability by ~30% ### Value Analysis Committee (VAC) Complexity - VAC approval process takes 6+ months minimum, with significant variability and monthly meeting delays - Clinical champions are critical (80% deal dependency), but lack formal champion development frameworks - VAC committees have conflicting stakeholder priorities: clinical efficacy vs. operational integration vs. financial payback vs. risk management ### Clinical Evidence Management Gaps - Current approach is fragmented and ad hoc; hospitals require customized evidence packages specific to their patient populations and clinical workflows - Existing evidence libraries are not organized for practical hospital use; standardized outcomes databases don't exist - Evidence customization is time-intensive and currently non-scalable across the sales organization ### Channel Conflict & Territory Management - Unclear rules of engagement between direct enterprise and channel partner teams create friction and lost deals - Strategic account lists exist but aren't enforced; acquisitions of partner accounts into larger systems create gray areas - Compensation models for co-selling and partner collaboration need formalization and clear governance ### GPO Commoditization & Service Bundling - GPO contracts drive race-to-the-bottom pricing; hospitals view equipment as interchangeable once on GPO at similar price points - Differentiation is shifting from equipment specs to bundled services: training, integration, outcomes analytics, and ongoing support - Outcomes tracking infrastructure is emerging as competitive advantage, but requires significant coordination and data management investment ### Sales Process Visibility Need - Teams lack real-time stakeholder map visibility and deal complexity tracking in current CRM systems - Manual market research on hospital consolidation, committee structures, and decision-maker identification consumes significant sales cycle time - Stakeholder alignment tracking and clinical evidence requirement identification remain primarily manual processes