"So, are you an ATS now?"
I've heard this from over a dozen staffing firms over the past month.
In a few weeks, Nomad rolls off its last clinician — closing our chapter as a staffing firm and opening a new one as a software company. Since we announced the shift, the inbound from agencies, MSPs, and health systems has been remarkable. And almost every conversation opens the same way: "So, are you an ATS now?"
Now, I'm a product manager and engineer by background. I don't have experience in sales. So when someone asks me a question, I actually try to answer it.
Turns out, that's a problem.
For weeks, we burned half of every meeting explaining how our ATS was different from — and better than — the one they already had.
But we haven't built an ATS, or a CRM, or a VMS. After the tenth meeting that stalled in the same spot, I've finally realized the problem — I was letting the conversation get anchored to existing product categories.
What Nomad has built doesn't neatly fit into any one existing category. So if we aren't selling an ATS, or a CRM, or a VMS, what are we selling?
To borrow from Shreyas Doshi:
Apple sells taste.
Amazon sells convenience.
Disney sells nostalgia.