Case Study · VUE Health
From Casting a Wide Net to a 75% Close Rate:
How Kathryn Wilson Rebuilt VUE Health's Growth Engine Around One SuperConsumer and a Funnel That Works While She Sleeps
In Her Own Words
Hear Kathryn tell it.
Kathryn Wilson, founder and CEO of VUE Health, built her Boston pharmaceutical marketing agency the way she was taught to. Cast a wide net. Pitch for everything you can get in front of. For seven years, it worked just well enough to keep going…
One win in seven.
The math was brutal. Seven pitches for one win. And every one of the six she lost took the same work as the one she won.
Same prep. Same team hours. Same late nights. One in seven.
"Year zero through year seven, it was one out of seven if I was lucky. And that's a ton of work. You're pitching for seven pieces of business to get one."
The agency was growing, but growth that depends on the founder winning a numbers game is not a system. It is a treadmill.
That search for something better led her to Predictable Profits®.
Doing none of what the MBA playbook says.
The first thing the Predictable Profits® Operating System asked of her was the opposite of her training.
Stop casting the wide net. Niche down. Find the one buyer who gets the biggest value from what VUE Health does best, and build the business so that buyer can find her.
"Everything we were taught in MBA school says don't niche yourself. Cast a wide net. And Charlie says, do none of that. Find the person who is going to get the biggest value from what you do, and help them find you."
That buyer is the SuperConsumer. Kathryn honed the agency's model around them, doubled down on what her team does better than anyone, and turned those strengths into points of differentiation she could name out loud.
The shift came down to three moves:
- Identifying her SuperConsumer and lining up the agency's strengths with their need.
- Doubling down on what VUE Health does better than anyone.
- Naming the points of differentiation so the right buyers recognize themselves.
But the biggest unlock?
Demand that no longer runs through her.
A funnel that works while she sleeps.
Before, every piece of new business ran through Kathryn. The framework moved demand off her plate and into a system: thought leadership that puts VUE Health in front of the right buyers, and retargeting that follows up with the people who already raised a hand.
The result was not one lucky win. It was volume. Inquiries from buyers who were dialed into exactly what the agency does before the first call ever happened.
"It wasn't one thing that won us a piece of business. It was the volume of inquiries, the volume of people coming to us who were really dialed into exactly what we did."
From the Founder
Kathryn on the framework behind a funnel that works when you sleep.
Pitching seven. Winning five.
Heading into Q4, VUE Health has roughly $35 to $37 million in business pending, on top of what the agency has already won this year.
Kathryn expects to close three out of four of those deals. That is a 75% conversion rate on the same kind of pitches that used to close one in seven.
"Now I'm pitching for seven pieces of business and I'm getting five. That's a much better return on investment than where we were before."
From the Founder
Kathryn on the key behind a 75% close rate.
Final advice to other agency founders.
Kathryn's advice comes down to one word: trust. The process will contradict most of what you were taught. Do it anyway, and give it time to work.
"The thing about Predictable Profits is you have to trust the process. There's so much about it that flies in the face of everything we were taught."
Today, the right buyers find VUE Health before Kathryn ever picks up the phone. And the pitches she does make close at a rate she could not have imagined in year seven.
"If you've truly lined up your strengths and their need, the results are going to follow. You just have to take a deep breath in and take that leap."