March 25, 2024 | Sales Process

Connecting vs Contacting in Medical and Pharmaceutical Sales

In pharmaceutical sales, forming relationships with clients can have a major impact on long-term sales success. While medical sales reps might close the odd deal just by contacting the right person at the right time, it’s the deeper connections that drive decision-makers to repeatedly purchase from a given pharmaceutical or medical sales team.

What’s the difference between connecting with a decision-maker in a healthcare-oriented business and simply contacting them? Why is this difference important? How can pharmaceutical sales rep training help medical field sales teams build connections rather than merely making contact with prospects?

An Overview of the Medical/Pharmaceutical Sales Process

Before diving into an explanation of contacting vs connecting in medical sales, it’s important to know what the process for medical/pharmaceutical sales is. While the exact process may vary from one company to the next depending on sales team expertise and tools, the basic process goes something like:

  1. Sales reps reach out to decision-makers in a healthcare business to try to schedule a meeting.
  2. If decision-makers can’t be reached directly because of their gatekeepers (secretaries, assistants, direct reports, etc.), sales teams try to arrange meetings through those gatekeepers.
  3. Field sales team members use meeting time to try to convince the decision-maker to use their products/services—often supplying free samples or trying to demonstrate how their product or service answers the prospect’s specific needs or challenges.
  4. Repeat the above steps as needed to close a sale.

This is an exceedingly oversimplified outline that only covers the most basic type of sales process. It also focuses almost solely on contacting a prospect instead of connecting with them. Different companies may use specific tools for their medical sales outreach—everything from personalized emails introducing their sales team to robo-dialers that simply spam every company in the right vertical until someone answers the phone.

Connecting vs Contacting in Medical and Pharmaceutical Sales

So, what is the difference between connecting with prospects and just contacting them in pharma sales?

The basic difference in the context of pharmaceutical sales is:

  • Contacting a prospect simply means that a sales rep has gotten through to the target and opened a dialogue—nothing more. There is no real relationship as of yet, and the prospect isn’t motivated to really listen to the sales rep. Connecting with prospects isn’t a bad thing. After all, it’s impossible to build a relationship with a prospect without contacting them first!
  • Connecting with a prospect means building up a relationship with them over time. The sales rep acts as a resource and possibly even a friend to the prospect—not every conversation will necessarily be about the products or services the rep’s company offers, but about how they’re both doing, what challenges the prospect is facing, and even potential changes that might hit the industry in the near future. To the prospect, the sales rep is no longer “some guy from XYZ Pharmaceuticals” on the phone, but “Bob” or “Jane,” the person who kept helping them out with advice and is willing to do more than just push their employer’s products at them.

Why do some field sales teams settle for merely contacting a prospect instead of connecting with them? Part of the reason may be the level of effort required. Earning a prospect’s trust can be a long an arduous process.

Not only do medical sales reps have to try to get past gatekeepers to get a conversation with prospects in the first place, it can take a long time to create the kind of positive impression it takes to form a trust-based relationship. Sales reps need to listen to the client’s problems with the goal of understanding them, do research on the target company to learn who to reach out to in the first place, and repeatedly meet with the prospect (either in person or virtually) to build up a relationship over time.

This is something that pharmaceutical sales rep training can help with. The right type of training gives field sales teams the skills they need to start building relationships and identify the challenges prospects face. Knowing a prospect's challenges and helping them out can go a long way to building a positive relationship and earning trust.

Meanwhile, simply settling for contacting a prospect allows sales reps to jump from prospect to prospect more quickly—going through their list of contacts until they are able to find an easy sale from someone who has an immediate need that their product/service fits.

There are times where focusing on making more contacts may make sense compared to building a relationship with prospects. For example, if a company relies on volume and has a product with a low barrier to entry for prospects, then reaching as many people as possible could be a valid strategy. However, building relationships with prospects tends to provide more positive long-term results.

Do You Need to Build Sales Team Expertise in Relationship-Based Selling?

Axxelus is here to help! Our outsourced sales team provides our partners with sales staff who focus on building relationships with their customers—fostering long-term sales success that makes it easy to retain quality customers and upsell to a consistent, high-quality customer base.

We train our medical field sales teams to build relationships, motivate them to meet aggressive sales goals, and guarantee that they will be a good match for your company culture. Reach out to the Axxelus team today to get started!

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