Networks Connect

CFOs are staring at obstetrics spreadsheets that don't balance anymore. 500 deliveries annually. 200 Medicaid patients generating $2.5 million in revenue. OBBBA cuts Medicaid reimbursement 15% and adds 50 uninsured deliveries. That's $375,000 in lost revenue plus $250,000 in uncompensated care. A $625,000 annual hit. Obstetrics units require 24/7 nursing coverage, physician call, anesthesia services, and specialized equipment whether you deliver 200 babies or 500. You can't proportionally reduce fixed costs to match revenue declines. The optimization playbook doesn't work here. You can improve efficiency, reduce per-case costs, enhance productivity. None of it changes the fundamental economics when your payer mix shifts toward uninsured and underinsured populations. Almost 150 rural hospitals with obstetrics units face high risk of closure. Not because they're poorly managed. Because the math stopped working. Dr. John Cullen in rural Alaska put it plainly: "People will have to drive hundreds of miles before they can get prenatal care, much less delivery." That's not a service line decision. That's abandoning communities because the reimbursement model collapsed. #NCInsights

SMBs often make the same hiring mistake: interviewing SDRs and AEs with the exact same process. Resume review. “Tell me about your greatest sales achievement.” Behavioral questions. Salary discussion. And six months later… ❌ The SDR is burning out after constant rejection. ❌ The AE can’t generate pipeline. ❌ Both roles are underperforming. Here’s the truth: SDRs and AEs require fundamentally different skills to succeed. Treating them as the same role in your interview process guarantees you’ll optimize for neither. 👉 SDRs need resilience, activity tolerance, and sharp messaging in high-volume outreach. 👉 AEs need discovery skills, deal navigation, and the ability to close multi-stakeholder opportunities. What do you think? Should SDRs and AEs be evaluated with separate frameworks, or can one process cover both? Comment your thoughts below! #SalesHiring #SMBGrowth #InterviewProcess #SalesDevelopment #TalentStrategy #NCInsights #NCInsightsSMB #NetworksConnect #HealthcareFinance

Last week, I talked about Medicaid. Today, I want to warn you about something that could hit even harder: the ACA subsidy cliff. Starting January 1, 2026, premiums on marketplace plans jump by 38% overnight. That means patients who were paying $200–$300 per month will suddenly face $600–$800 bills. Hospitals are about to see: - A surge of uninsured patients - “Underinsured” patients with insurance cards but $6,000–$12,000 deductibles they can’t pay - Financial counselors trying to explain immigration eligibility and subsidy rollbacks to confused patients - Bad debt spikes we haven’t seen since the early ACA years This isn’t theoretical…I’ve lived through this kind of coverage disruption before. And the hospitals that survived were the ones that prepared early. The question isn’t whether this will affect your commercial volumes. It’s how ready your team is to absorb the shock. Tell me what you think below! #HealthcareLeadership #ACAChanges #RevenueCycle #NCInsights #NCInsightsHC #NetworksConnect #HealthcareFinance

SDRs live in a world of high volume and low conversion. 80-100 touches per day. 1-5% email reply rates. AEs navigate complex buying committees with 6-10+ decision makers. Industry-standard demo conversion rates of 15-20%. These aren't different versions of the same job. They're fundamentally different roles requiring opposite personality types. An SDR who seems "too aggressive" might be perfect. An AE who seems "too slow" might be appropriately consultative. But you'll never know if you're using the same evaluation criteria for both. Companies that optimize interview processes for each role see 40% higher meeting generation for SDRs in the first 90 days and 60% higher quota attainment for AEs in year one. That's not incremental improvement. That's the difference between scaling successfully and burning through hiring budget while your growth stalls.  

The average cost of a bad sales hire? 30% of their annual salary. For a $100K AE, that’s $300K–$500K in lost revenue, hiring costs, and opportunity costs. The kicker: most of these mistakes are preventable. SMBs don’t need more interview rounds or more resumes, they need interview processes that test for: ✅ Contextual fit (can they sell in your environment?) ✅ Real skills (live cold call, discovery session, territory planning) ✅ Adaptability under resource constraints Companies that implement skills-based, context-driven hiring see: - 54% greater new hire productivity - 50% higher retention - 2x revenue performance from top sales hires Your interview process isn’t just about filling seats, it’s about building the revenue engine that powers your entire growth strategy. I outline the 4-phase SMB-optimized interview framework in my latest newsletter, check it out here: https://lnkd.in/g3uMZapp #SMBGrowth #SalesHiring #RecruitingStrategy #SalesManagement #NCInsights #NCInsightsSMB #NetworksConnect #HealthcareFinance