As Co-Founder American HealthCare Lending, Nick Sorensen has overseen the company’s growth and ultimate acquisition by Prosper Marketplace. In this latest “Small Business Spotlight” interview, he discusses how to spot opportunity and how Salesforce has helped his business grow.

1. Before we talk about all of the success you’ve seen, how about a bit of background on you?

I was born in sunny Southern California and grew up in Salt Lake City, Utah about 15 min. from some of the best skiing in the country. My beautiful wife and I currently live just South of Salt Lake City with our two adventurous kids. After graduating from Brigham Young University with a degree in Business Management and Entrepreneurship, I got my first experience being part of a technology startup in the outdoor gear and apparel market. It was an incredible education to see something go from concept to funding to reality. After taking a short break from the startup world by cutting my financial teeth as a corporate controller, I was recruited to help found the online financing platform which later became American HealthCare Lending.

2. American HealthCare Lending introduced one of the most disruptive business models to the medical lending market, why was it the right time to shake up the market?

The Patient Financing industry hasn’t changed much since it was created back in the 1980’s. In the past few years, however, a few key trends have helped create the perfect storm for us to enter and disrupt the incumbents: 1) The rise of patient payment responsibility. As health care costs have skyrocketed and enrollment in high-deductible health plans has increased, patients are bearing a significantly increasing portion of health care costs and they need more help affording the care they need. 2) Patients’ needs and behaviors have changed in the past three decades. We want an easier, mobile, more transparent experience that doesn’t negatively impact our credit or financial well-being. 3) Finally, health care providers are realizing that there are healthier and more cost-effective ways to help Make Healthcare Affordable™ than what existed in the past. They get very excited to learn about alternatives to what they thought was the only way to offer financing to their patients.

3. The healthcare industry is in the midst of a massive transformation, how is Prosper Healthcare Lending making healthcare affordable and accessible to consumers?

We are the platform that connects patients who are in need of affordable payment options with lenders who want to provide funding for those purposes. Increased regulation in the credit card and patient financing industries has shone a negative spotlight on certain practices that incumbent players in the Patient Financing industry have used in the past. As a result, more patients and healthcare providers are learning the downside of using health care credit cards to pay for treatment versus the straightforward installment loans that we offer access to. We are excited about introducing a much healthier financing option to the industry and making it available at the point of service, online, and on mobile devices.

4. If we go back to your start at American HealthCare Lending, can you tell us about what the sales organization was like then?  Before Salesforce?  Are you able to share any metrics?

It was definitely rough, and was nothing like how we operate today. We continue to iterate and will never stop. Before we fully implemented Salesforce, there was a lot of manual reporting done in spreadsheets and those reports became outdated the minute they were submitted. We also managed leads ineffectively and had no clear way to predict where we were headed. The day we shifted everything to Salesforce was the day we became significantly more efficient and productive as a company. One of the recent things we did was to integrate our DocuSign e-signature capabilities into our Salesforce process. This has decreased the time to get a signed contract by 54% — and that’s obviously a very important step forward for our sales organization.

5. How has Salesforce helped grow your business?

Salesforce has completed changed the way we do business and we’ve developed our entire company around it. If I had to summarize how Salesforce has helped us grow, I think I would say that it has allowed us to automate, standardize, and improve the most basic components of every department in the company. When you add up all of the incremental improvements across the organization it starts to make a significant difference.

6. What is your favorite productivity tip/trick? What is your productivity philosophy?

I wrote about a few of my favorites on the Salesforce blog last year. My philosophy is definitely that “less is more” and I find that applies to every aspect of productivity.

7. What are the keys to your company’s successful growth?

One of the things that has helped us grow is that we have focused. Sometimes saying “No” to opportunities is difficult, but it has definitely helped us succeed. A business school professor of mine used to always say, “A specialist always beats a generalist,” and I agree with that advice. It also helps to be in a market that is growing at an amazing rate and that is ripe for disruption.

8. What is the one thing you wish you knew about the acquisition process at the start that you know now?

How important culture is. We were very blessed to become a part of a company like Prosper Marketplace that shares a similar culture to ours and that is helping to enhance and build upon the amazing culture we have worked hard to develop. Had we known that earlier on, it would have been a lot easier to sift through alternative paths we were presented with and zero in on Prosper Marketplace as the perfect fit for us — that could’ve saved us some time and effort.

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