Medical sales can be an intensely competitive field. There are all too many companies competing for attention in a limited, but highly lucrative, market. So, any competitive advantage your sales team can earn could prove vital.
One method for gaining a competitive advantage in medical sales is to use sales automation software. How can sales automation solutions help to improve sales team performance?
How many times have you closed a major medical sale on the first interaction? Odds are that it’s a rare experience—especially for larger deals. In fact, an article by Small Business Trends states that “only 2% of sales are made during the first point of contact.” In other words, only 1 out of every 50 interactions will yield a sale on the first try.
However, these numbers improve significantly on repeated interactions. As noted in the Small Business Trends article, “only 3% of prospects will sign up on the second contact and 5% will say yes on the third try. Surprisingly enough, 80% will buy-in into the sales pitch after the fifth or twelfth contact.”
In short, follow-up is key for ensuring sales success. This is one way that automated sales software solutions can help.
Some sales software can send automated follow-up emails and messages to contacts after a first interaction. This prompts the contact to take an action (or at least keeps the company top of mind after the interaction). They can also generate reminders for sales reps to reach out to prospects and make another attempt to close a deal.
Such reminders can be invaluable for increasing close rates—especially with solid prospects who may just need a bit of time to prepare to close.
Accountability is an important factor for any business process. Without clear goals and a means for tracking progress, even the best sales reps might start to slip over time. There are sales automation systems that can help with this.
Automated sales activity tracking software can record specific sales activities (such as phone calls, email sends, and when reps log into the software). This helps medical sales team leads track which reps are meeting activity-based goals and which ones aren’t.
Additionally, by tracking actual results (such as the rep's number of closed deals) and comparing that to activity data (such as the number of calls made or how long a rep’s calls last on average), it’s possible to correlate sales best practices to results.
By examining what your top performers are doing, you could modify your sales team training to emphasize the best practices that they follow. This can, over time, help lead to better close rates as you discover what does or doesn’t work.
Medical sales reps have to keep an enormous amount of regulations in mind when promoting their products to prospects. From specific things they can or cannot promise, to how they can interact with prospects, perks and gifts they can provide, and more—if it’s part of an interaction, there’s probably a government regulation that affects it.
For example, the Telephone Consumer Protection Act of 1991 places strict controls on the use of robo-dialers and prerecorded messages in marketing calls. Meanwhile, individual states have varying rules regarding whether or not a call can be recorded by either party.
Keeping track of all these regulations can be an overwhelming task—especially for medical sales reps operating across multiple state jurisdictions. This is where sales automation software can help. Having software that can track key contact data (such as where that contact resides) and relay key regulatory reminders (like “ask the contact for permission to record the call” or “don’t market X product to this contact”) can help simplify things for sales reps.
This can help to greatly reduce the risk of regulatory compliance violations in a medical sales process.
Medical sales reps can spend a surprising amount of time on non-sales activities—such as checking their email inboxes for reminders, filing paperwork for orders, and managing communications with other business units.
Using sales automation systems to streamline paperwork and communications can help to free up valuable sales rep time so they can focus on other, more important tasks—like reaching out to prospects and closing deals.
Removing obstacles to meeting productivity goals can be a huge benefit for any business unit. By helping sales reps save time, you can increase their job satisfaction, which can have a direct impact on their job performance.
In medical sales, business relationships don’t end with the close of the deal. It’s often up to a service or product team to deliver on any agreements made by the sales team to keep customers satisfied (and coming back for more).
However, a clumsy hand-off process can hurt the customer relationship. So, optimizing that sales process to ensure that the product/service team has all the information about the customer and their expectations is crucial.
Here, a sales automation system can help by automatically forwarding the data on a prospect to the service or product team once a deal is marked as “Closed – Won” in sales software. This way, the service team can know what service level agreements (SLAs) they have to meet.
Automated reminders to contact the service/product team can also help sales reps further improve the handoff portion of the sales process. In any organization, communication is key. Automation tools can help improve that communication so everyone can achieve success.
As useful as sales automation tools can be, they can’t replace having highly skilled and motivated sales reps who can build lasting relationships with clients. Skilled sales team members who know how to succeed at medical sales are the cornerstone of sales efforts.
However, recruiting, training, and retaining such people internally can be an enormous challenge. This is where a contract sales organization (CSO) can help. Outsourced medical sales services like Axxelus can provide a quick boost to your sales team by leveraging an extensive network of contacts to find top-quality sales talent.
Are you ready to improve your medical sales process with top talent? Reach out to Axxelus today!
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