The Axxelus Medical Sales Process: How Process Makes Perfect

The most frequently-asked questions that our team at Axxelus gets is something like this: “What makes your sales process different?” or “How does your outsourced sales development and management process work?”

Well, to help answer these questions, here’s an explanation of what makes our contract sales program different from many of the other outsourced medical sales companies out there, and some of the specific phases of our outsourced sales development process.

What Makes the Axxelus Medical Sales Process Different?

Pretty much every contract sales organization (CSO) claims to be different (and thus better) than the competition. However, at Axxelus we really do things differently from the “average” CSO.

What’s different about Axxelus? Here are a few things we do different:

• We Actually Focus on Customer Relationships. Many contract sales reps focus on simply reciting the same script word-for-word on every customer encounter. This is boring for reps and annoying for customers who feel less like people and more like numbers in a system. At Axxelus, we focus on training reps to develop meaningful relationships with contacts so that they’re happy to hear from your sales department instead of dreading another scripted call.
• We Strive to Hire the Right People. A common mistake of many CSOs is assuming that bringing in more sales reps faster is always better. While a short hiring cycle can be good, if it doesn’t bring in the right people, then numbers won’t bring an advantage. In fact, it could cost you time, resources, and customers! That’s why we focus on hiring the right person for the job, and even have a “Hire-Right Guarantee” (more on this later).
• We Rigorously Train Our People. Some CSOs simply stop at recruitment—they find a person to fill a seat in your medical sales team roster and call it a day. At Axxelus, our healthcare sales career development process includes extensive and frequent medical sales training (more on this later, too).
• We Remain in Constant Contact. At Axxelus, we have developed a model for communicating with clients that is designed to ensure that they’re never “in the dark” about their sales activity and results. We provide consistent and thorough reports about weekly sales activities and every Axxelus account comes with a sales manager who will assemble reports and manage communications.
• We Offer Flexible Service Models. Do you need a full-time and fully-dedicated sales rep on your team, or a 1099 contractor who can make a set number of sales visits each week? Axxelus offers flexible outsourced sales management and development services that can fit the needs and budget of almost any company in the healthcare industry—from the biggest pharmaceutical giants to the single provider practice.

The Axxelus medical sales process can be broken down into three primary phases that each support the long-term success of our contract sales program:

Phase 1: Hiring the Right Person from the Start (+ Axxelus’ Hire-Right Guarantee)

One of the major problems in medical sales that we noticed after being in contract sales for over a decade was that too many sales reps rely on repeating a trite and tired script that doesn’t change. Instead of responding to customer needs and finding better approaches, they would simply go through the motions.

This is why we focus on hiring the right person from the beginning!

At Axxelus, we don’t hire until we’re certain that we have the right person to not only produce sales, but to blend in well with your company culture! We don’t skip steps in the hiring process to save time—every Axxelus applicant is interviewed by five separate people before sitting down for an interview with our CEO. Only after our CEO gives her stamp of approval are applicants introduced to our clients for their final approval.

We do this because, after over a decade of experience in recruiting medical sales reps, we’ve learned an important truth: Many people interview well and are likable, but are a nightmare to manage.

While this process is time-consuming, it can save time and resources in the long run for our clients. For example, let’s compare an example of two recruitment processes: one with a short lead time (about a week) and one with a longer vetting process (about a month).

In the one-week recruiting process, the company is able to quickly find a person to fill a slot in their sales team. However, because the onboarding process and the vetting of the new medical sales rep’s credentials was rushed, the company makes a bad hire. After trying for weeks, the sales rep is forced to leave and the company starts looking for a replacement again. This process repeats numerous times until, finally, the company finds a rep that's a good fit.

By the end of it all, this “one-week” process ends up taking two (or more) quarters to complete, and wasted a lot of time and onboarding efforts. Meanwhile, the month-long recruitment process gives much more time to vet each applicant before onboarding them—helping to identify top talents more reliably.

We’re so confident in our hiring process for medical sales reps that we offer a “Hire-Right Guarantee”:

About Axxelus’ Hire-Right Guarantee

At Axxelus, if you’re not happy with your full-time medical sales rep, we’ll make it right. If the person that we hire for you is gone in less than a year, you don’t pay the hiring fee again to replace them! No ifs, ands, or buts about it.

Normally, when a CSO brings you a new recruit, there’s roughly a $4,600 “hiring fee” assessed at the time of onboarding. If you don’t like the rep (because they don’t produce results, have a bad attitude, or some other reason), then you’d have to pay another $4,600 fee to find a replacement.

Say you had four “bad fit” sales reps added from a rushed recruitment process that you had to get rid of, that would be $18,400 of wasted money (not counting any onboarding costs or lost sales opportunities from underperforming medical sales reps).

Phase 2: Developing Great Medical Sales Reps

Our outsourced sales process doesn’t end at simply hiring new medical sales reps. We provide medical sales rep training on an ongoing basis to keep our contract sales teams up to date on their sales skills.

In fact, contrary to industry standards, our sales reps receive medical sales and marketing training on a weekly basis. This includes going through summaries of major industry webinars to learn key details and new strategies, a learning center packed with current medical sales industry information, and participating in question and answer sessions to test their knowledge—sessions that are often conducted by Kristin Parker (our CEO) and other members of the Axxelus leadership team!

Key parts of the Q&A sessions include answering questions like “What jumps out at you about this message?” and how to make the client the hero of the story. Then, we apply gamification strategies to encourage participation and knowledge retention — and of course, to strike up a little competition.

Phase 3: Outsourced Sales Management

If a medical sales rep is performing like a rock star, and nobody tells you about it, will you really be ready to take advantage of it? Also, if salespeople feel isolated from the people they’re selling for, will they remain motivated to keep doing their best to help? At Axxelus, we believe that communication and transparency are crucial elements of outsourced sales management.

We stay in constant communication to build transparency and keep the client in the loop. We accomplish this through weekly client sales reports and emergency updates whenever we discover a major issue that needs to be discussed. With Axxelus, you’re never in the dark about your outsourced sales results.

Additionally, we work to create a positive work culture that keeps our medical sales reps interested, engaged, and feeling valued so they can focus on driving results. This helps to keep turnover down and sales engagement up.

Are you ready to transform your medical sales process? Reach out to the Axxelus team today to get started!