Kaycee Kalpin has worked in healthcare-focused lobbying, marketing and sales for more than two decades, and is now the chief marketing officer at Premier, a healthcare giant that was recently acquired by a private equity firm for $2.6 billion. Premier sells into one of the most challenging channels, namely hospitals, which has made Kalpin one of the smartest thinkers I know on the topic of growth inside the provider markets. That’s key for so many venture-backed startups these days that sell AI into healthcare.
I sat down with her for an hour last week to discuss how start-ups can sell into provider channels, not just at a high-level but leveraging practical advice and wisdom she’s learned from the field.
Interview with Kaycee Kalpin, the Chief Marketing Officer for Premier Inc.,
As Chief Marketing Officer at Premier, Inc. She helped steward one of healthcare’s most significant transformations — from public company IPO through $1B+ in mergers and acquisitions, brand monetization, and our sale to private equity.
You call yourself “healthcare’s chief marketing officer” on your personal LinkedIn? What does that mean in practice?
My specialty is growth inside provider markets, where trust and clarity determine whether a product scales or stalls. I sit at the intersection of brand, commercialization, and health system strategy.
What I really do is help companies answer:
“What are we selling?”
“How should it be packaged?”
“Who are we actually trying to reach?”
“And how do we cut through the noise in a market that is drowning in it?”
The takeaway here: Brand presence is a growth lever — not a luxury.
Notably, I do see many more companies now looking to understand how to reach health systems as a buyer. A lot of that has been accelerated by the rise of venture-backed healthcare AI startups, many of which count hospitals and providers as their buyers.
What tactics actually work when selling into health systems?
The biggest wins come from building networks, not funnels. We’ve built digital and in-person affinity networks around specific ‘jobs to be done,’ like convening a group of experts around topics like improving maternal health.
These networks deliver real value by:
Benchmarking and shared data amongst peers;
Highlighting deep subject-matter expertise;
Hosting safe spaces for honest exchange: what worked, what failed, what to never try again;
And these are not ‘pay to play’ opportunities, which is what makes them valuable to the customer-set. They’re far more authentic, and everyone who attends is there on a voluntary basis. The company that hosts these kinds of forums can build up goodwill over time.
“These groups work because they’re not commercial. The second it becomes a sales tool, it collapses.”
Takeaway: Provider markets reward authenticity, expertise, and peer learning — not thinly disguised sales motions.
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What if a team has a limited budget? How do you build community then?
You don’t start with a giant checkbook. You start with consistency. For example, start with a marketing plan that considers:
A monthly virtual roundtable;
A Slack or Teams community;
A simple benchmarking survey;
A quarterly in-person meet-up.
I can’t say this enough even as a marketer that continues to function in a digital era. Events matter. Relationships matter. And for health systems, the peerset matters more than the swag bag.
“Community at its best is grassroots. Start small, stay consistent, and the value compounds.”
Takeaway: You can build a powerful network with a limited marketing budget — but stay small, targeted and consistent.
How do you make the case for brand marketing dollars inside an organization? I’m not talking here about performance marketing or paid ads because that’s so well established with health-tech companies (even as it’s gotten more expensive). But the idea of building a company’s brand presence and reputation. That seems so crucial in healthcare, which is an industry built on trust.
First, people must unlearn the idea that “brand = ads.” Brand is everything that shows up in the market:
The promise you make to your customers about what you will do and not do;
The language you use;
The experience across touchpoints
The consistency of how your company’s leaders show up.
Brand is the relationship engine.
“Today, the relationship with your customer is exponentially more valuable than a click or a form fill.”
When I talk to CEOs, I make it simple: if you want smoother sales cycles, build a brand people trust before you ever pitch them. That takes some work as it might not be immediately obvious in the metrics, or even quantifiable from Day One. But those that invest in it will find results within a few quarters. Consider the impact of your company executive showing up to a conference, and three people approach them right away to say they loved that podcast or really resonated with the timely and thoughtful analysis published on LinkedIn. That kind of brand lift is priceless, even if it can’t be tracked as precisely in a spreadsheet.
Takeaway: Brand is a sales accelerant, not a cost center.
Okay, you know I love tactics versus high level advice. Imagine you’re the CMO of a hypothetical company. What’s the right way to allocate a $1M marketing budget?
Well, it depends on the customer that any company is trying to reach and the skill-sets on the team. But directionally, I would structure it like this:
Take a $1M Budget Breakdown:
$200–300K → People (3 headcount + some outsourced support)
$200K → Digital + technology + demand gen
$200K → Events (That includes IRL + virtual)
Remainder → Campaigns, launches, and what I call “fastvertising,” meaning an advertising strategy that emphasizes speed and responsiveness to current events.
“Fastvertising is the ability to jump on the cultural moment. The trend cycle moves too fast for rigid annual plans.”
Roughly:
30% digital
70% IRL/relationship-driven work
Takeaway: Leave flexible dollars in the budget — rigid annual plans kill relevance.
So you span all of marketing. What’s working in PR and communications today, particularly at a time when newsrooms are shrinking and founders are having a harder time than ever reaching journalists?
Earned media has diminishing returns for startups, even as they continue to invest more and more into it. What works is founder- or CMO-led storytelling, especially when anchored in proprietary data.
I recommend that early-stage startups consider investing in:
A scrappy comms operator
GEO-optimized content (formatted for AI search like ChatGPT)
Insightful data stories
finding ways to share real customer narratives, even on owned channels
“ChatGPT is becoming your new homepage. If your content isn’t formatted for generative engines, you’re invisible.”
Takeaway: The formula for modern PR = data + a unique POV + human or patient-centered storytelling.
Speaking of Data - Would any founders reading this post be willing to help us crack one of the biggest early-stage questions. We will share the results on an anonymized, aggregated basis for the benefit of other founders:
When should founders hire their first sales lead? And what is the ideal profile of a first sales hire in health-tech? A quick survey, anonymous and aggregated. Your insights help everyone!
Gif by coventryuniversity on Giphy
So you mentioned direct channels. What do you think about owned content? It seems to be moving from the old days of sponsored content no one read to now far more creative.
Everything should ladder back to the brand promise. I think of the core message like the tree trunk, and every piece of owned content is an ornament hanging off it.
We map content directly to buyer-journey friction points:
What’s stopping someone from moving forward?
What modality removes that friction?
Which customer story proves it?
“Nothing replaces customer stories. It’s the first section I look at when evaluating a startup or an M&A target.”
Takeaway: In healthcare, owned content should ideally be structured, intentional, and anchored in the customer’s voice.
There’s also potential to really enhance GEO with owned content, particularly if it can be useful in mapping out markets and segmenting companies accurately. That information hardly exists via Google Search. Try typing a healthcare company into ChatGPT and ask about the problem space and competition. It’s very unlikely to be accurate.
I’ll give you another hypothetical. Imagine you’re running the marketing team for Casper Mattress. Now, at a certain point the company stops just selling mattresses and starts selling eye masks, pillow cases, and everything else related to making bedtimes comfortable. Are you now a “sleep solution” company? And are you still Casper Mattress or just Casper? In other words, how do you expand in the market while maintaining a clear identity? I know a lot of healthcare companies are struggling with this.
That’s a tough one. I’m probably now branding myself as Casper, versus just Casper mattress, but it’s absolutely critical that a customer think of the mattress at the point of sale. So I’m definitely not averse to being called Casper Mattress in the market, and strongly emphasize that I do sell mattresses. We have been through a version of this at Premier. We are heavily thought of as a GPO (a group purchaser selling into health systems), but now we have diversified our revenue. So we still talk about group purchasing but we also talk about our data and technology.
Bottom line: Every organization wants to grow its share of wallet — but you can’t lose the core. For Premier, the GPO is our core. We’ve diversified significantly, but the strength of that core is what earns the right to expand into analytics, consulting, and new brands.
“Providers reward companies that do one essential thing exceptionally well — and then thoughtfully expand.”
Takeaway: If you weaken the core, you lose the trust required for expansion.
What is your #1 piece of advice to startups trying to scale in healthcare?
Two things change the game consistently - and I’m speaking here more to those trying to sell to health systems, versus say consumers:
1. Co-develop with one or two major health systems. Give them a sliver of equity (or more). Build the solution together. Make them your marquee partners.
2. Integrate with the platforms that run healthcare, whether that’s Epic, Workday, or any other major EHR and workflow systems.
If you aren’t integrated, you stay niche.“You cannot fake authenticity in healtople can feel it instantly.
Takeaway: Build with the system and integrate it versus trying to boil the ocean.
Final Section: The Kalpin Playbook (Short Cheat Sheet)
Brand equals trust. Trust equals growth.
Communities outperform funnels in provider markets.
Consistency beats budget — start small but deliver value.
Leave room for fastvertising; relevance cannot be pre-planned.
Customer stories > category theory.
Co-development with health systems accelerates credibility.
If you sell into providers, integration with Epic/Workday and other systems of record is non-negotiable.