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How to sell effectively to healthcare facilities and executives using the right data

Healthcare is arguably the largest B2B segment, but the task of selling to healthcare organizations and medical professionals can be really challenging. It can be a struggle to navigate the complex tangle of decision makers, gatekeepers, and influencers in pursuit of a sale. And with how rapidly the healthcare landscape (and the economy) changes, your organization can’t afford to take action blindly. 

The secret? Healthcare commercial intelligence that is relevant, accurate, and up-to-date, that your teams can use to identify high-growth opportunities, connect with the right decision makers, and get your products into the hands of those who need them.

In this guide, we’ll explore the key marketing and sales activities that your organization should consider to sell effectively in the healthcare industry. Armed with the knowledge from this guide, you should have a stronger idea of how to leverage data to create better marketing and sales campaigns, optimize your outreach, expand your market share, generate revenue, and more.

Know your market

If you’re in healthcare marketing or sales, you already know how important it is to do your research on prospects, the competition, and the forces at play that can change the market.

The problem—this can take a lot of time, and googling can only take you so far. That’s why you should consider sourcing comprehensive and accurate data from multiple avenues.

For example, you can leverage medical and prescription claims data to get a granular level of detail of your market by segment, so you can precisely target your ideal prospects. Pharmaceutical and medical devices companies might, for instance, use diagnosis and procedure volumes to gain vital insights into the needs of individual hospitals and care facilities.

Staffing and recruiting agencies, on the other hand, might rely on information from the Medicare Cost Report. HCAHPS scores are a good indicator of the patient experience, quality of care, readmission rates, and more.

Lastly, your organization can dig into core-based statistical areas (CBSAs). You can use the information found within a CBSA to gain valuable insights into population density and population growth in a given region.

Altogether, a combination of claims data, market research, insights from the CMS, and a good old-fashioned web search can help your marketing and sales teams more effectively and accurately segment the market and create meaningful sales territories.

Craft a clear value proposition

Your product’s value proposition is the core of your competitive advantage. It should clearly articulate what your product is, what its tangible benefits are, and why your product (or organization) is the best choice on the market.

To develop a solid value proposition, you want to answer these four questions:

  1. Who is your most receptive audience?
  2. What pain point do you solve for them?
  3. What does your product do to solve it?
  4. How do you do it differently from the competition?

Finding the answers to these questions can help you:

  • Outline your product’s features—the clinical, technical, or descriptive elements that explain what your product does.
  • Connect the dots with benefits—these are the compelling reasons that help your customers understand why your features matter and why they should purchase your product.
  • Determine differentiators—your features and benefits should give you a strong idea of what makes your product unique, and what your competitors can’t deliver on.

Healthcare commercial intelligence can help you build a better value proposition. For example, let’s say you’re selling a remote patient monitoring (RPM) solution and you’ve identified your audience using the tips above. To gain a better understanding of the pain points your technology solves, you can explore market data and claims to uncover clinical inefficiencies, readmission rates, and technology use. With this intelligence, you can formulate a value proposition that speaks to how your RPM solution improves patient outcomes, reduces readmissions, or optimizes clinical workflows.

When all is said and done, you should come out of this stage with a firm grasp on the organizations you should be targeting and why they should choose your product over a competitor. The following two steps can help you get even more precise with who you should engage with, and then translate the features, benefits, and differentiators of your product into compelling messaging that closes more deals.

Target the right people with the right messaging

After you’ve defined your market and sales territories and have a bulletproof understanding of how your product helps your customers, it’s time to move onto prospect outreach. Knowing who the key decision makers and executives are in the facilities you’re targeting means you can maximize potential response rate and drive high-value conversions. 

Your market research should pay off in spades at this stage, as you should know which healthcare organizations are your prime opportunities for success. Now, you need to go one level deeper, and determine who specifically you need to reach out to.

If you’re selling to a hospital, for example, then consider looking into the hierarchy of their organization. This can give you insight not only into hospital leadership but also into the physicians, nurses, and healthcare workers administering care. Targeting the people lower in the organization with the right messaging can transform them into product champions who can help you persuade the people with decision-making authority.

And then personalize your messaging

Pinpointing who to speak with is only the first part. Once you’ve found the who, you need to figure out the what you’re going to say.

This is where the value proposition you’ve crafted and the answers you’ve reached from the questions in section one come into play. One of the most effective ways to create product champions and win over prospects is to personalize your messaging to your prospect’s unique needs and challenges.

After all, you’re targeting them because your product can help!

Healthcare commercial intelligence is essential here. The intelligence you’ve gathered during your research can give your sales and marketing teams valuable insights into the needs, wants, and pain points of patients and healthcare providers. By analyzing medical and prescription claims data, patient demographics, medical histories, treatment outcomes, and more, you can serve up relevant statistics and examples that demonstrate the effectiveness of your product. You can also use data to help your prospects make more informed decisions or see how your product compares to competitors in the market.

Streamline the process

In a weird way, marketing and sales campaigns are a lot like plants. They’re living, breathing creatures who need to be nurtured to grow. This means constantly feeding your marketing and sales teams accurate, timely, and relevant data, so they have the insights they need to react to changes in the healthcare landscape quickly and appropriately.

And part of nurturing your marketing and sales campaigns is evaluating the performance of your efforts. You can’t make smart, informed decisions without knowing what worked and what didn’t.

Don’t worry about creating an exhaustive document that accounts for every action from every person on the team. Instead, focus on the pitfalls and roadblocks you encountered along the way. What processes can be automated or simplified to free up your team’s time to focus on more mission-critical tasks? Are your teams collaborating as closely as possible? Were the marketing channels you used the most effective ways to engage with prospects?

During your self-audit, be sure to focus on the wins, opportunities, and low-hanging fruit that can make the marketing and sales journey faster and more efficient. Ultimately, taking the time to evaluate the performance of your efforts can help save time and money, boost productivity, improve customer experience, and increase ROI.

What it all means

In summary, healthcare commercial intelligence can be a powerful tool for businesses looking to sell effectively to healthcare facilities and executives. By using data to understand the market and identify opportunities, create compelling messaging that targets the right decision-makers, improve the customer experience, and streamline operations, your organization can gain a competitive advantage and drive growth in the healthcare market.

For more information on how to sell effectively in the healthcare industry, check out these resources: