Innovating Your Sales Approach In A Value-Based Care Environment
The glory days of selling primarily on the clinical value of a product are long gone! The rising awareness and push of evidence based medicine and the increasing pressure to reduce healthcare costs has led the life sciences industry to contemplate a new sales approach to how healthcare systems purchase their products and services. Instead of vetting a list of targeted physicians, we find ourselves meeting with lean six sigma consultants, purchasing and financial officers who only want to know what category your product fits into and how much it costs without focusing much of their analysis on the weight of your differentiating clinical features. With this evolution of selling to targeted, sophisticated buyers the sales teams are finding themselves in forced sales cycles based on contracts and spreadsheet analytics. The question soon becomes “How do we innovate our sales approach to navigate a value-based care (VBC) environment?”
Changing times call for a change in sales process.
Many companies adopt a common sales process and never go back to evaluate its effectiveness over time. As the marketplace conditions change, the sales approach you take with your customers must change with it. Features and benefits which were at the front of a sales process in the past are no longer effective because your audience wants to know about price and clinical outcomes before they hear about the new shiny red button. Educating your buyer with global commercial insights on what the marketplace is doing and targeting their specialty is where you add value and grab their attention. It lays the ground work for continuing the conversation that will lead to your solution in the end.
Once a sales process has been implemented it can be challenging and complex to change it as these changes will require sales, training, education and marketing to align their message as well as considering factors for marketplace conditions outside the US. Companies that have drivers who access large accounts and leverage large sales will need to evaluate their approach, which should vary from a sales educator focusing primarily on the day to day product utilization. Some organizations should consider creating a hybrid-style approach for each sales team. Instead of an “off-the-shelf” sales model, consider providing a unique, company-branded training program that aligns your sales strategy with the marketplace.
Speak the language of the audience you must interact with.
Hitching your wagon to a physician champion may still provide success stories but you would be ill advised if this is your only audience. Sales teams need to adjust and continually learn how to engage with the audience that will be pushing or stopping their deal. This new savvy economic buyer may not be interested in relationship building activities and will want to keep their minds focused clearly on the facts, financials and clinical outcomes.
Give your buyers the facts they are seeking and challenge them to make an educated change in behavior.
Your sales message needs to align with the company’s core mission to improve patients’ lives and the more substantial your facts are, the better. In a complex selling environment where the final decision on a product could potentially be made by a financial analyst and not a clinician, we need to hold the core company mission close to our hearts now more than ever. Your products make a difference in patients’ lives each and every day. We have substantial facts to prove it and we can show you how these outcomes are changing our healthcare environment for the better. No price tag needed.
So, how do we innovate our sales approach in the Life Sciences to navigate a value-based care (VBC) environment?
Navigating through these sales complexities requires working with someone who can provide you the roadmap from vision to implementation with end to end solutions. Creating the right content and quality delivery of your sales training and medical education programs sets you up for the type of success that can be multiplied consistently with your sales team. Make an impact now to make a difference.
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Jennifer Imerini has over 20 years of experience working in the healthcare industry. She has expertise in understanding and developing teams, processes, and infrastructure for marketing, sales training and physician education departments within major pharmaceutical, biotech and medical device companies.
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