Six foolproof ways for workplace wellness companies to attract business. Creating a competitive advantage for wellness solutions takes planning. You’ve identified your ideal customers – what’s next?
6 Ways Workplace Wellness Companies can Gain a Competitive Advantage
Creating a competitive advantage takes strategic planning and extensive research. You’ve identified your target audience and ideal customers – what’s next? Here are six foolproof ways for workplace wellness companies to attract business and outshine the competition.
1. Differentiate yourself. What makes your wellness solutions different from, and better than, the others? There are several different ways to achieve differentiation. Be sure to pick the differentiation method that will be the most effective for your company and ideal customers - research potential clients’ wants, know what your competition offers, and learn about any potential holes in the market.
- Product differentiation: These are the key features, performance, conformance, reliability, or guarantees your company offers.
- Service differentiation: Outstanding ease, delivery, coaching, etc. that come with your services.
- Relationship differentiation: Competence, credibility, reliability, responsiveness, and communication are all areas that can be considered differentiation points between you and the competition.
- Reputation differentiation: Perception, communication and advertising aren’t just superficial aspects of wellness programming. They’re vital parts of any successful wellness program, and strength in these areas can be considered a competitive advantage.
- Price differentiation: This is the most obvious differentiation: price by customer, by quantity, and/or by segment are can make or break a deal.
A perceived differentiation is worth advertising (or communicating) when it is valuable (the perceived benefit outweighs the cost), it’s important (delivers a benefit vital to success), cannot easily be copied, is affordable, and/or is profitable (produces ROI).
2. Prove ROI. Which brings us to ROI. There’s extensive research showing that worksite wellness creates ROI. Do your clients know about it? We work with many wellness companies that struggled to communicate ROI. When they started communicating ROI more clearly, they saw a marked upswing in sales. Read one case study where a Wellness Provider Found Their Competitive Advantage when they used data to drive wellness program decisions.
ROI is typically reflected in healthcare savings. But it can also be seen in increased productivity from reduced sick days taken by employees, and as a competitive benefit to attract and maintain talent. It also improves culture and employee motivation, resulting in even greater ROI.
3. Use technology to showcase and deliver your unique programs. Technology is key for wellness solution products. Having a clean, easy-to-use online account, dashboard or wellness portal for clients to log into is just the beginning. These portals help customers view services, schedule appointments, and help you communicate effectively. Here are some other points technology can cover:
- Integrate data. Integrate clients’ data from health apps, wearables and medical records. Make sure that data is stored in a totally secure system and abide by data privacy laws.
- Offer additional services – for a price. Add-on services like online health coaching, scheduling appointments, and automated screening reminders can give your program added value.
- Develop tailored wellness programs. Using health data, direct customers to customized programs. Determine what would work best for a specific worksite or individual. There is no one-size-fits-all wellness program.
4. Be flexible. Tailored wellness solutions allow you to accommodate each customer’s unique needs. This starts with identifying each customer’s needs. If you already know what your clients need and want, you’ll decrease the number of last-minute surprise requests. Having a backup plan helps too - if a client does have a last-minute demand, have a procedure in place for how to handle it without saying ‘no.’ Make sure you’re still delivering quality programming even if there’s a rush behind the scenes.
It may help to empower your team members to make decisions on their own versus coming to leaders with every problem. Allowing employees to create their own effective solutions will make turnaround time faster – and lessen the load on leaders. With effective communication within your company and between you and the client, flexibility and customer satisfaction will come more easily.
5. Price competitively. The first step to growing your wellness business is creating, or revamping, your business model. This includes pricing. You don’t have to offer the cheapest services on the market: If your prices are higher than the competition, prove your value.
- Communicate with clients about anticipated ROI. Once they see the returns, it may not seem like such a large expense.
- Prove that your programs work. Have case studies, positive reviews, expert endorsements and results data readily available.
One pitfall to avoid is spending too much time with low-revenue, high-cost employees. Make sure to write limitations into contracts to avoid doing extra work for free down the road. Additionally, as you create new program components, make sure to do so at a sustainable rate that’s on track with your sales. We sometimes see wellness companies invest heavily in new innovations without having the revenue to support it. Carefully audit your expenditures and pace yourself, steadily adding components as you build clientele.
6. Provide health coaching. Companies want coaching. Demonstrated results from worksite health coaching show that wellness companies who offer coaching programs are in higher demand as they receive the most positive participant feedback. In this case study, coaching program success was closely measured through pre and post-service evaluations. With the increasing popularity of online health coaching, employees can work with coaches without taking significant time off of work, making coaching easier and increasing employee motivation.
As a starting place, choose one or two goals to work on – and if you feel overwhelmed, we’re here to help. CoreHealth has over a decade of experience helping thousands of workplace wellness companies gain competitive advantages and increase their rank in the market. Schedule a demo today.
Other Helpful Resources
- 10 Signs It's Time to Switch Wellness Your Wellness Portal
- 10+ Must Have's in Corporate Wellness Technology plus Technology Requirements Checklist
- Wellness Apps & Integrations - a Technology Meltdown
About CoreHealth Technologies
CoreHealth Technologies Inc. is the leading corporate wellness platform trusted by global wellness providers for 2+ million employees worldwide. At CoreHealth, we believe that developing the best employee wellness programs is all about giving wellness companies the right code, design and access to the latest innovations. With the most customization, integrations and reliability of any software in its class, CoreHealth’s powerful platform lets users focus on growing great companies. For more information, explore the CoreHealth website.
