How to Create a Medical Sales System to Grow in A Rapidly Evolving Healthcare Economy

As the uncertainty of the economy continues, medical sales reps are expected to generate more business and do so in an environment still reeling from the Covid-19 crisis, which has redefined the way salespeople contact potential customers. The best way to get to the top and stay there is by adopting a system for success. This blog post will discuss how to create a successful medical sales system that will help you grow your business and provide solutions for uncertain times. This includes developing a marketing plan, understanding your prospect's needs, following up with prospects after meetings, and creating a prospecting sequence that will define and track progress towards goals.  

Here are the seven steps to build for your prospecting sequence to help you achieve your customer goals. 

This step, of course, is essential to selling your product effectively. However, you're not just getting to know what your product is, but also what it does or what its value proposition is. An effective sales rep takes it one step further than just knowing the technical specs, features, and benefits. They understand the why behind the product design. 

For example, let's say a sales rep was selling a plate for a hip revision. To represent the product effectively, they need to understand why a lower profile plate is appealing for doctors who operate on thinner patients -- who may feel the bulkiness of a thicker alternative. By understanding this design rationale, the sales rep would then discuss this during product discussions with prospective customers. By really knowing the why behind your product design, you can effectively show your audience why your product stands out among the rest. 

To efficiently define who your customers are, you must first identify competitors. From there, understand who they are selling to, how they are advertising and selling to their customers. This way, you can know what works and how you can improve on what's being accomplished. 

A customer profile is a picture of the type of company that is most likely to want to buy your products and services. Be aware that just because you have a product that will help with heart surgery, for example, does not mean you should sell to all heart surgeons. By applying the first step in this list, you can deduce which customer will most likely want to use your product or not by seeing how they accomplish their tasks. Your product may make their job easier or more efficient, or it may not. From there, ask how these potential customers consume information, whether through podcasts, face-to-face interactions, or other mediums. 

In this step, it is also important to consider who your top 20% of current customers are and what makes them your best customers. 

In this chart, you'll list the pain points your customers are experiencing. Then rank each of the problems and determine the best solutions your product can provide to the higher-ranking problems. 

The conclusions from your problem identification chart will help you create outreach messaging that clearly defines the problems you know your customers face and your product's solutions for them. Whether your outreach is through brochures, emails, or interactive videos, you need to include these problems and ask thought-provoking questions to help your customer arrive at the right conclusion—that your product offers solutions. 

The goal here is to disqualify potential customers quickly so you can optimize your time with interested prospects. Ask questions that will help you reach an answer for whether a certain prospect will qualify for the benefits of your product or not. Ask questions like, "Do you have issues with this problem?" and "What kind of patients do you see?" to name a few examples. Once you get a yes or no on these questions, you are ready to either move forward or disqualify them as a prospect. 

This is your prospecting phase, whether it's reaching out through calls, stop-bys, or implementing verbTEAMS. If you've implemented the steps above, then you should know what to say and when to say it. You got this! 

If you're interested in expanding your medical sales strategy to include a virtual component, check out verbTEAMS! This platform allows you to create dynamic content that can be shared with prospects at different phases of the buying process and is optimized for mobile devices. You also have access to analytics and actionable insights about how your message resonates with potential buyers, which will help you tailor future pitches. With verbTEAMS, it won't matter where prospective customers are during the consideration phase because they'll always have your pitch on hand!  

To learn more about how verbTEAMS can help your sales efforts, click here.