Performance pay becomes the price of a digital health contract.

The friction is verification: 38% cannot independently verify vendor-reported outcomes, and poor member engagement is a leading reason to switch.

For sellers, a dashboard is no longer proof. Marketing and sales need auditable outcomes, defined on the full eligible population, and an engagement story buyers can reconcile against their own claims data.

For digital health sellers, the marketing asset that matters most this cycle is verifiability. Publish how outcomes are defined — measured on the full eligible population, not the engaged minority — and how a buyer can reconcile your numbers against their own claims data before signing. Treat engagement as part of the product story, with the activation plan and the member-marketing support named in the proposal, because weak engagement is now a stated reason buyers switch. Sales teams should bring the measurement plan into the first serious conversation, not the contracting phase. In a market where fees are at risk, proof design is positioning.