Sales strategies of the healthcare industry follow a dynamic approach. However, the healthcare sales process remains more or less the same.
Businesses in the healthcare industry generally have a well-defined sales process. Statistics also show companies with a set sales process achieve 18% more growth on average compared to those who don’t.
Today, we will explore the healthcare sales process so that you can implement the steps in your business.
1. Identifying and Prioritizing
Before you can sell, you need to identify your target customer profile and potential buyers. Who is going to buy from you? Will it be doctors or patients? Or, are you selling to hospitals and clinics?
Healthcare businesses spend considerable time developing buyer personas. It helps them understand the customer and their potential pain points. Profiling is really necessary, as you might end up trying to sell to the wrong people.
A look at your past clients can give you an idea about the type of customers you need to sell. You can also check out the customer profiles of your competitors to develop insight.
2. Tracking Decision-Makers
Finding the decision-maker is easy when you are selling to a doctor or small clinic. But hospitals and large medical institutions have multiple decision-makers involved in the process.
According to Harvard Business Review, B2B sales at least has 6 stakeholders. The number of decision-makers is generally more in case of healthcare sales.
Medical businesses often visit a prospective organization several times to land up appointments with actual decision-makers. For this reason, you should know the decision-making hierarchy of the organization you are targeting.
Only then can you convince the right people and make a sale.
3. Discovery
Healthcare businesses start the process of discovery once they get a meeting with the decision-maker. During the meeting, the sales rep will try to assess the specific and unique pain points of the prospect and problems he is facing.
Identifying the pain points helps the rep make out if his product or service is suitable for the client. He can also use his reasoning and logical capabilities to align the benefits of his product with the needs of the client.
The deal can push through once the product or solution matches customer needs.
4. Raising Awareness
Customers today have all the information on their fingertips. However, they are not so sure when it comes to buying complex products like medical equipment. Here, the rep needs to create client awareness and push for his solution using a specific rationale.
According to Harvard Business Review, this technique of selling is known as prescriptive selling and increases the buying ease by 86%.
A healthcare sales rep may use various resources from healthcare marketing strategies like infographics, videos, and data to sell prescriptively.
5. Nurturing
Healthcare sales generally take a lot of meetings. Customers need time to make their decisions and may need extra convincing from the sales rep. Healthcare businesses should put an effort to establish credibility with the prospective client on every opportunity. They should work to gain the personal trust of the client through constant nurturing.
You may need to give more presentations or send over more material to encourage your prospective customer to make the purchasing decision. If the client has unique problems, you might need t to create custom presentations to win him over.
6. Follow-Up
Each meeting with the client generally ends with an agreement on the next steps. Sales reps need to follow-up on every client and do the needful so the next meeting can proceed effectively. Follow-ups may not always mean physical visits but also phone calls, emails, or texts.
It’s really crucial for healthcare businesses to follow-up on prospects. Otherwise, a potential deal may go down the drain for the lack of communication. Healthcare businesses often use healthcare CRM to segment their clients and keep updated on follow-ups. CRMs also send auto-reminders to reps when the date and time of follow-up draw near, so that you can capitalize on every opportunity.
7. Closing the Deal
If everything goes according to plans, the last stage of the healthcare sales process is closing the deal. Here, the customer finally agrees to buy your product or solution. The sales rep should promptly place an order with the sales department and set up the client for success.
The above seven steps make up the healthcare sales process. However, there is one important task that all medical and healthcare businesses do.
Mapping the Customer Journey
The customer journey covers all the touchpoints a customer accesses during the buying process. For instance, the patient flow in your clinics or hospital might be through your Google ad, call, chat on your website, and finally send an email to set up a meeting.
A healthcare business should map the whole customer journey to grow and improve its sales cycle. Documenting the customer journey also enables companies to discover customer pain points and find out what works best. The process also helps businesses streamline the healthcare sales strategy and make sales cycle shorter.
You can create an accurate customer journey by gathering customer feedback. It’s also beneficial to discuss things with your sales reps, other employees, and customer service. The more insights you have, the more accurate will be your mapping.
Ultimately, consider using a CRM to map and track your patient journey through every stage of the sales funnel. CRM also cuts down manual labor and automates repetitive processes to help you save time and money.
Final Thoughts
Not all healthcare businesses will have the exact same sales process we discussed. The best sales process is what works for you and your customers and brings more business. However, the steps we discussed still form the foundation of a healthcare sales process and can help you define your own sales process for growth and more revenues. Also, choose a reliable HIPAA compliant healthcare CRM like LeadSquared to make the most of your sales process.
