Knowing how to sell a product or service is crucial for long-term success. Any business needs to have a solid strategy in place for marketing their product or service, getting in touch with their target audience, and building relationships that ensure repeat business.
Many medical and pharmaceutical companies struggle with meeting sales goals—and individual sales reps are often under extreme pressure to hit their numbers. This can make for a stressful environment that results in high sales team churn.
Following a few tips to close a sale and knowing what to sell and when to sell it can help increase success, reduce stress, and make for a better bottom line. With that in mind, here are some things to consider when trying to sell a product to medical/pharmaceutical industry customers:
While the medical industry is certainly more niche than the general consumer sales industry addressed by Amazon Shopping, Wal-Mart, and other retailers, there is still a need to identify your target audience within the industry.
Why? Because there is often a world of difference between trying to sell to a doctor at a private practice, the Director of a major hospital, or a supply chain manager at another corporation. Each of these individuals will have their own preferences which will influence how to sell products to them.
When identifying your target audience, it’s important to consider how to market your product or service to your target audience. Two major things to investigate when learning how to market a product to a specific type of customer include:
Having this information can also help with qualifying prospects that are acquired from your marketing efforts. For example, it can be useful to compare a prospect’s information to your target audience profile to see if they fit.
While having things for sale is important, it’s also important to have those things for sale at the right price. If a product’s price is too low, your company won’t turn much of a profit. However, if the cost is too high, then that can be off-putting for potential buyers—especially if there are competing products of a similar quality at a lower price point.
As noted in an Inc.com article on setting product prices: “there’s no one surefire, formula-based approach that suits all types of products, businesses, or markets.”
Some things to consider when calculating the selling price of a product or service include:
Having this information can help with selling medical and pharmaceutical products at a reasonable price that still allows for profit.
However, in some situations, it may be beneficial to accept selling a product at a loss. For example, you could do this to clear inventory of an item that is being phased out or to attract customers so they can be up-sold on other items with a stronger profit margin.
There are many different ways to sell a product these days. In medical and pharmaceutical sales, the preferred method has long been to use face-to-face meetings between sales representatives and decision-makers. However, in light of the COVID-19 pandemic, arranging in-person meetings with doctors and other decision makers has become difficult.
Here’s a quick breakdown of some of the different channels for selling pharmaceutical or medical goods:
Thanks to pioneering giants of commerce like Amazon Shopping, selling products online has gone from being an occasional business model to being the norm. In fact, online shopping spiked during the COVID-19 pandemic. According to data cited by Digital Commerce 360, “Consumers spent $861.12 billion online with U.S. merchants in 2020, up an incredible 44.0% year over year.”
While the market for pharmaceutical sales is more restricted (and heavily regulated) than general consumer sales, marketing and selling products on the company’s website could be a valuable revenue generating opportunity.
However, it can also carry a number of hurdles for pharmaceutical companies to clear. For example, companies interested in distributing prescription medications directly to consumers online will need to meet the U.S Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA’s) Drug Supply Chain Security Act (DSCSA), which is designed to “build an electronic, interoperable system to identify and trace certain prescription drugs as they are distributed in the United States.”
It also means creating a website that can attract your company’s target audience, guide them to the specific products or services they want, and allow them to close a deal (or at least arrange a meeting with a sales rep). This can be an expensive and time-consuming project.
Plus, online-based shopping models that rely on a decision-maker to fill a cart might not always be practical for medical sales industry companies that focus on delivering products or services to hospitals or businesses in bulk.
Take the convenience of online shopping and put it in the palm of your target audience’s hand with a mobile app. This carries many of the same benefits of having a website-based store, except even more convenient.
However, in addition to having to maintain a digital storefront, the company will have to build, update, and market the app that prospects will use. This can be a large ongoing expense, as smartphone apps will need to be updated regularly to keep up with new device and operating system releases.
Mobile applications may be a good fit for companies in the medical industry that sell a variety of over-the-counter medications for numerous conditions directly to the general public.
For years, face-to-face meetings were the preferred method for selling pharmaceutical products to key decision-makers in medical organizations and businesses. However, there have been a number of events that have many decision-makers reconsidering meeting pharma sales reps in person.
The COVID outbreak in 2020 was a major driving factor for limiting face-time between sales reps and their prospects. However, that isn’t the only factor. There have been lawsuits alleging fraud levied against pharma companies in the past for paying doctors to “unlawfully induce them to prescribe” their drugs. Avoiding the negative perception of a bribe has motivated some decision-makers to distance themselves from their pharma sales rep connections.
However, face-to-face meetings, if they can be arranged, remain a powerful tool for building relationships with customers that last and for closing deals.
As an alternative to in-person meetings, many sales reps opt to conduct sales via phone calls or videoconferences instead. Calling a prospect over the phone poses some challenges, such as getting by the prospect’s “gatekeepers” or not being able to read body language to gauge their responses more accurately.
Video calls help to simulate in-person meetings by letting sales reps and prospects converse with a camera. While not a complete replacement for in-person meetings, this can be incredibly useful for keeping in touch with contacts who are out of town or prefer the convenience of remote communications. It’s also useful for field sales teams who have to service a large geographic area and cannot meet every client in person in a timely manner.
Any sales channel has potential advantages and drawbacks. Knowing when to sell on one channel versus others can be incredibly useful for promoting long-term sales success.
So, how can your sales reps close deals consistently? While there is no one-size-fits-all “perfect” solution for medical sales, there are some tips to close a sale that reps can follow to help improve their results:
These are just a few tips for closing sales and building long term success. Do you need help building a successful sales team? Reach out to Axxelus today to get started with contract sales services!