September 2025·8 min read
The New Healthcare Growth Model: Aligning Sales and Marketing to Serve the Modern Patient
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Healthcare is at a crossroads. Year-over-year cost increases are unsustainable for all parties, with the total cost of health care continuing to rise at a pace consistently exceeding overall inflation, rising to $33,214 in 2025 for a family of four (Bell et al., 2025). Regulations are tightening, and patients’ and their caregivers’ expectations are shifting more rapidly than most organizations can adapt to. A digital-first mindset is no longer optional, and the demand for transparency and personalization has become central to how patients select and interact with healthcare providers and services. At the same time, investors, boards, and executives are applying relentless pressure for growth and efficiency.
Yet many healthcare organizations rely on outdated structures where sales and marketing operate in silos. Sales needs the data and analytical power of marketing technology to drive the most effective targeting and relationship-building insights. We now rely on cross-functional intellectual horsepower to provide clear value to customers. Each function cannot operate on distinct metrics and objectives. The result is fragmentation that slows growth and leaves revenue potential untapped.
The healthcare leaders who will thrive in the future are those who treat sales and marketing not as separate disciplines but as an architectural structure to build a growth engine.
The healthcare industry is characterized by a complex value chain, uncertainty in the regulatory environment, and government guardrails. Unlike consumer industries, where the buyer and user are often the same, healthcare decisions frequently involve multiple stakeholders, including patients, providers, payers, regulators, and caregivers. Each of these groups has its own expectations, budgets, pain points, and decision-making processes. Each of these business entities has different economic and operational factors to consider in the buying journey.
When sales and marketing are not aligned, this misalignment shows to potential customers. Marketing may craft compelling campaigns that highlight patient-centered care, but sales teams often lack the necessary insights to convert those leads into meaningful relationships. Meanwhile, sales representatives may uncover valuable market intelligence through direct engagement; however, if that information does not flow back to marketing, opportunities for more targeted outreach are lost, and investments by sales and marketing teams can be stalled or wasted.
The patient and healthcare product buyers are empowered with choice, and they will spend on better experiences and coordinated relationships. They expect seamless engagement, consistent messaging, and experiences that reflect an understanding of their needs during what are often some of the most challenging moments of their lives as they engage with healthcare services. Fragmentation from your solution undermines all of that.
Damon Sgrignoli has spent his career helping healthcare organizations unlock revenue growth, scale sales pipelines, and accelerate go-to-market strategies. His track record shows how disciplined sales leadership can redefine what growth looks like in complex healthcare markets.
At Evernorth, Damon led the development and launch of new solutions that impacted more than 11 million lives by tapping into underutilized talent and clinical services across the organization. With the assistance of a strong marketing push he created strong narratives on the overall client value and ROI. His ability to structure nimble teams, align sales processes with organizational objectives, and implement digital tools positioned the company for sustained success. At Included Health, he led a team with a $20 million annual recurring revenue pipeline, fueling the company’s growth trajectory.
One of Damon’s most powerful insights is that sales excellence goes beyond volume. Success requires building trusted relationships and aligning the sales function with the broader organizational mission. For example, during a sales advisor project with a private equity-backed provider organization, Damon partnered with leadership and the PE firm’s managing team to create a path for the company’s revenue to double from $40 million to $80 million in under two years. The key was combining strategic partnership optimization with artificial intelligence tools that streamlined outreach, refined targeting, and accelerated decision-making.
In each of these roles, Damon proved that sales leadership is not just about hitting targets. It is about creating scalable systems, forging meaningful partnerships, and driving consistent, repeatable revenue growth that sustains organizations in competitive markets.
Where Damon focuses on building pipelines and accelerating sales, Akash Pathak brings deep expertise in marketing transformation and patient engagement. His career spans more than two decades of leading marketing and digital transformation for major brands, including Humana and AbbVie. In healthcare, his experience has been particularly impactful, creating measurable growth by rethinking how marketing connects with patients and providers.
As the Head of Marketing for Humana’s $9 billion Pharmacy Solutions business unit, Akash introduced disciplined planning and data-driven processes, which led to a dramatic increase in growth. Under his leadership, Humana Pharmacy achieved a compound annual growth rate of 10 percent, more than triple its previous performance. His success came from building a marketing function that prioritized analytics, customer insights, and disciplined execution.
At AbbVie, Akash led digital and CRM strategy for Humira, one of the world’s most successful pharmaceutical products. By advancing CRM and digital marketing, he enabled AbbVie to achieve the highest return on investment among channels for the drug. His leadership exemplifies how marketing transformation can have a direct impact on sales results and patient outcomes.
Akash emphasizes that marketing must do more than build brand awareness. It must drive measurable engagement, loyalty, and long-term trust. Today’s patients are digital-first, and they expect healthcare to provide the same seamless, personalized experiences they receive from leading consumer brands. That requires marketing strategies built on data analytics, technology integration, and a relentless focus on the patient journey.
When viewed together, Damon and Akash’s perspectives create a clear blueprint for what the new healthcare growth model should look like. Sales and marketing cannot run parallel tracks with different objectives. They must operate as one unified function with shared accountability.
The foundation of this model is shared organizational, operational and financial goals. Instead of marketing being measured only by impressions or leads, and sales being measured only by closed deals, both functions should be jointly accountable for metrics that matter most: revenue growth, patient retention, and long-term engagement.
Sales insights should directly inform marketing campaigns. Marketing should then feed analytics back into sales teams to sharpen their targeting and improve conversion rates. Technology and data create the connective tissue between the two, enabling constant feedback loops that refine strategy in real time.
Cross-functional planning is another cornerstone. Rather than developing strategies in isolation, sales and marketing leaders must design go-to-market plans together, ensuring alignment at every stage from brand messaging to pipeline management. This collaborative approach reduces duplication, eliminates misalignment, and delivers a consistent experience to patients and stakeholders.
The benefits of uniting sales and marketing are both immediate and long-term.
Short-term gains deliver stronger pipelines, accelerated revenue growth, stronger member and patient engagement, and more effective go-to-market strategies. By aligning messaging and targeting, organizations can improve conversion rates and shorten sales cycles. AI-driven tools can further streamline processes, identifying the right opportunities and optimizing resources.
Long-term gains secure even more compelling advantages. Patients and their caregivers who experience a seamless, personalized journey are more likely to remain engaged and loyal. Stronger retention translates into predictable revenue streams and better health outcomes. For healthcare organizations, this means sustainable growth that is less vulnerable to market volatility.
Perhaps most importantly, a unified growth model positions healthcare organizations to adapt more effectively to future changes with speed. Whether new regulations, emerging technologies, or shifts in patient behavior, organizations with aligned sales and marketing functions can respond with agility, precision, and confidence.
The healthcare organizations that will thrive in the years ahead will not be the ones with the largest budgets or the most ambitious sales goals. They will be the ones who understand growth as a unified discipline where sales and marketing function as a single, integrated engine.
Damon Sgrignoli and Akash Pathak exemplify this model through their complementary expertise. Damon brings the rigor of sales excellence, the discipline of pipeline building, and the vision for revenue acceleration. Akash brings the innovation of marketing transformation, the precision of analytics, and the creativity to engage patients in meaningful ways.
Together, these two Chameleon Collective experts demonstrate how healthcare leaders can develop a growth model that benefits both the organization and the modern patient. Healthcare leaders and their investment teams who embrace this unified model will not just grow faster; they will build organizations resilient enough to lead the industry forward.
Bell, D., et al. (2025, May 27). Milliman Medical Index: 20th anniversary edition. Milliman, Inc. [Press release]. https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20250527971263/en/Milliman-Medical-Index-20th-anniversary-edition-Healthcare-costs-for-an-American-family-reach-%2435119-in-2025-increasing-on-average-6.1-annually-since-2005
Purchaser Business Group on Health. (2025, August). Creating a transparent data framework: Health Care Data Project report. https://www.pbgh.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/Creating-a-Transparent-Data-Framework-2025.pdf
Alex Pacia
Expert, Deal Maker, Internal Viewer, Admin, Collective Manager
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