Mykola Sravronsky, sales director of the Synevo Medical Laboratories chain and MIM-Kyiv MBA believes that creating the new demand helps to develop the market. He openly shared his experience of doing so, explained the difference between patients and clients, talked about fears of Ukrainians related to healthcare institutions visits, and offered his remedy against that. His main points were:

• It is good to pioneer the market. In 2002, when we started, the medical laboratory services market did not exist. We rented the laboratory facilities. Nobody knew us. In 2006 we had negotiated an international partnership and became a part of the international group under the Synevo brand;
• Laboratory business in Ukraine is about production. Everyone was talking about quality. But, honestly, those who sell “quality” have no idea about their own product;
• Earlier, nobody cared about patients. We understood that patients need to be taken care of and tried to learn everything about patients. Who are they? Who is ordering? Who is paying? Who is making decisions? It is not about medicine; it is about marketing. I think we are lucky to have non-medical managers. Medical professionals should do their job of curing people;
• We have stopped calling our customers "patients" and started referring to them as clients. It is commonplace now, but in 2010 it was outrageous. We started studying our customers and their fears. At heart, most of us are afraid of learning about serious diseases. We are also afraid of spending too much time when visiting medical institutions. We could address that fear and decided that our patients should receive quick service, no longer than 20 minutes. Nowadays, due to online registration and payment, our clients are served in 4 minutes and 30 seconds;
• Your customers need to understand you. We take that for granted now! When we started we used the word “Tests” everywhere. That helped us to increase the number of our clients because people understood what we were offering;
• Our Swedish partners selected us from the number of competitors because we were doing business rather than practicing medicine. They were asking only one question: if we give you money, what would you do? Most of the competitors answered that they would buy the equipment. I was talking about chain expansion and sales team development. They liked my business approach;
• We are expanding our chain. So far, we are having 320 outlets, and we are opening more. When we started, we were small and far from everywhere. People underwent tests only when it was critical for their health situation. Now, when we have our outlets in so many places people are undergoing more tests and very different tests. We are proud that we created the market.