Building an Effective Physician Sales Effort

Physician sales is more than sending a person out to be “an ear” for the doctors. Yet how many hospitals are still taking that approach?

While the ear is important serving as link, there has to be value in the dialogue between the rep and the physician. And though some serve as the ear, others unfortunately have become the lunch delivery team.

Taking a cue from the pharmaceutical industry, hospitals have also utilized the philosophy of delivering lunch and trinkets as a way to build relationships with physicians.

But it’s a strategy doomed to fail. Why? Consider who usually eats the lunch and gets the trinkets. The office staff! What’s more, your sales representative may never get to see the physician. 

So, how do you build a sales effort based upon a strategy and philosophy that will produce results for your organization? It all begins with defining measurable outcomes and building a process that will help you to deliver upon them. 

Determine your key physician market. It’s imperative to know and understand the physicians that send you the most business, those that split their business and those who you would like to have send you business. You, in essence, create a strategy that addresses retention of physicians who are strong allies, as well as attracting physicians with whom you would like to do more business. 

Define your top admitters by volume and revenue, as well as those who are of strategic importance to the hospital. Once you’ve identified them, create categories that will drive which salesperson visits, the frequency of visit, and the content of the visit. 

The content of these visits is initially driven by what you would like to know more about from the physician. But, if it’s done right, it becomes content driven by the physician—because they see a result that makes it easier for them to do business with the hospital. 

In this instance, your sales representative becomes a welcome addition to the physician’s day, instead of an intrusion. A key aspect of the sales representative interaction is to use these meetings to “listen and learn” instead of “tell and sell.”

Make sure the representative is well versed about the service lines of interest to the physician, and is prepared to position what they believe is of interest. Rather than simply telling, they should focus their efforts on listening to and learning the area of physician need and then helping them to see how a hospital service or product might meet that need. 

When the rep has find out how to meet the need, they need to close the loop. The steps here are to share the requested follow-up information, make needed follow-up connections and/or develop a mutually agreed-upon plan of action is key so that the physician will know what to expect between now and the next meeting. With this approach, the sales rep has added value for the physician instead of just taking the physician’s time.

Use the visit to uncover issues of concern to the physician. These issues may range from not being able to find a parking place to a patient complaint, therefore in order to be effective, the sales rep must be knowledgeable and well prepared for an immediate response to expressed concerns, as well as for the process to follow in the organization for resolution.

Read more about how to create a sales strategy that makes your physician audience take notice.

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