Two ideas for planning your next sales meeting with hospital execs

We have all been there ... you finally landed a meeting with a hospital executive after months of trying. Success!!!

But then reality sets in and you are literally pulling our hair out trying to come up with engaging content, while staying on point with focused messaging relevant to your product and service.  

The stakes are high to make every meeting count, given you likely  get limited time and exposure to your C-level customers. All too often, this is typically the case for medical sales teams selling to hospital executives and other physician leaders.

We worked with lots of Sales Execs in your shoes and learned there are 2 things to consider when strategizing your approach to these types of meetings.

First you need to consider the needs of your audience members.

​Second you need to be prepare to tell a story rather than simply regurgitate facts and benefits about your product.

Booking a meeting:

Planning content:

Source: Giphy

Majority of healthcare providers believe sales reps are wasting their time showing them the information they already know or have found themselves.

- Manhattan Research / DRG, August 2017

WIIFM: what's in it for me? 

​First of all, keep in mind that many business customers take advantage of info on the web to research your product or offering.

• Don't risk boring your audience with facts and figures they already know or that are readily available to them through a quick Google search or visit to your website.​
  
• Keep track of the content you share with them so you aren't regurgitating  the same info you previously reviewed.

Reviewing the important information about your product or device should remain the focus of your sales visit but make sure to enrich your presentation with information that could further educate and engage hospital administrators and physicians. This can be accomplished, all the while staying on topic to the overarching messages about your product or disease state.

Translate features, advantages, benefits of your product or solution into economic value. You can do this, first and foremost, by understanding needs of the different constituencies within the buying organization (think hospital CEO vs supply chain manager vs physician leader) . Doing a better job of showing broad economic value for each of these constituencies will increase the likelihood of capturing a larger selling footprint AND higher retention.  Remember it's easier to keep a customer happy than find a new one!

Communicating the overall economic value of your medical product or service will lead to higher customer retention, market share, and revenues.

-Value-based selling from ZS Associates / Aberdeen Research

​As you map out the needs and align to a value-add for each constituency then make sure you customize your messages and content during the meetings for their particular use cases. There are a couple of ways to pull this off:

(1) Use their own data. Work with a data-partner like Carevoyance to pull performance, utilization, competitive ranking about your customer and their market. Either it will confirm what they already know, building confidence in you OR they will be blown away by new inssights.

(2) Personalize it for their situation. Pull out interesting insights like whether they are market leaders in a service line or are falling behind their competitors.  Uncover new opportunities in their region by covering a range of topics relevant to their busines and their market.

(3) Anticipate their learning styles.  In addition to the slides you intend to review during the meeting, be prepared with print-outs or send PDFs around after the meeting. Mix in useful charts or graphics to summarize and make your takeaways easy to remember.

Tell a story

Today B2B marketers are also focused on storytelling as a way to gain prospects’ attention and hold it. Finding the right content and message can't necessarily be scripted but general themes can be outlined and part of your plan for managing the account.

For example, medical device, equipment and diagnostic industry sale team members could weave stories about their devices around market- specific realities such as how often the procedure is performed in the area hospitals versus alternative procedures.

Consider creating an arc to your story across several meetings. Perhaps the first meeting brings data on market share within the product category - affording interesting insights into the competitive landscape. The second meeting may focus on patient leakage with an analysis of where patients in the local community are receiving care. The third meeting would build on the theme of patient leakage and explore referral patterns. 

Create a storyline across sales meetings with value-add content

Meeting #1: Utilization

Meeting #2: Leakage

Meeting #3: Referrals

​At each meeting tie these broader business themes about utilization, leakage and referrals back to your product. This tactic is not so dissimilar to binging on your favorite television series - create compelling stories that keep your audience coming back for more.

Next time we'll dig into actual content ideas for each meeting!

Effective selling to hospital executive audiences, requires the ability and tools to customize the offering at every meeting while communicating value for individual customers. 

This effort will be more successful by first and foremost, understanding the needs, motivations and challenges of today’s doctors and executives.

Second, you 'll need access to data on markets, hospitals and physicians as well as tools to generate reports full of interesting charts, graphs and content to wow your audiences. 

In the coming weeks, we will focus on the actual content to enrich the agenda of your next  sales meeting with hospital executives. Stay tuned!