It’s 5 AM. Your alarm goes off and you hop into the shower, groggily rubbing the sleep out of your eyes. As you stand in the shower and let the hot water wake you, your mind begins racing thinking about your day.  You think about all the things you need to get accomplished today and how in the world you’re going to make your quota by the end of the month, which gets closer day by day.

You dress to impress (which if you’re like a lot of medical device reps means you throw on a pair of scrubs), quickly check email on your phone to make sure nothing has changed in the middle of the night for your surgery schedule, grab a bar or some sort of quick breakfast and you’re out the door racing to your first case.  Unfortunately, your mind hasn’t slowed since the  alarm went off, it’s only sped up.

You might know it well: the daily life of a medical sales rep. But, what if your well-oiled, constantly changing  daily routine is missing something that could drastically improve the most important aspect of your business (making or exceeding quota)?  Hint: if you are reading this wondering, “Am I missing something? Could I make this easier?”  You more than likely are missing something if those thoughts even remotely crossed your mind. You should definitely keep reading.

Just an Ordinary Day

Whether you’re a coffee, tea, energy drink, or sans caffeine person, no day is complete without creating goals on a to-do list and deciding what to DO. This can be daunting sometimes, especially when you factor in the ever-changing line-up of your cases at the Hospital or ASC – hence the added courage of caffeine – but every successful sales rep knows that organization is one of the keys to success.

PharmaWeb lays out not only a definition of what a medical sales rep is, but also what they should do.

A medical representative is employed by a pharmaceutical (or… medical device, bio-tech or distributor of products) company to maximise the prescribing of that pharmaceutical company’s products in a geographical area. There are no strict formula for how to maximise product prescribing – hard work is only part of the story and often working smarter is the key to success. This is why pharmaceutical companies are constantly looking for candidates who have the ability to think (and then put into practice) new ways of approaching sales opportunities. As an experienced representative you will know your territory, know your customers and have a clear idea which part of your territory offers the highest potential for sales. You set yourself clear objectives for every day that you work and will know exactly what you want to achieve from each customer visit.
– PharmaWeb

Sound familiar? If only it were that straight-forward in the real world…

The daily task of meeting with physicians, hospitals and administrators  while maintaining all of these customer relationships is more than half the battle. Sometimes, it’s probably the majority of your day, and at the end of a day like that you have to ask yourself, “Did I do what I needed to do today to really move the needle and get closer to achieving my ever-growing quota?” Did I really do anything to help “Dr. Jones” put more patients in the pipeline for my “product, therapy, prescription, etc?”  How in the world can I do that when I have 15 balls in the air trying to juggle them all and I’m caught up not doing the things I need to be doing to move the needle forward?

Often, you might feel like you have too many things to do in one business day. That’s why planning is an essential part of every sales rep’s daily routine.

Can ProSellus Revolutionize Your Life?

Product demos and sales meetings can be stressful and  time consuming, but they need to take place. Some customers require more care than others just as some clients require a firmer hand than others when it comes to recommending equipment or markets to potentially expand to. The reality is that if you’re an “A” player in this industry, your customers look at you much more like a consultant than “John” or “Mary” the medical/pharma rep. They ask you questions that are far beyond the scope of the products you represent it seems quite ludicrous.  For example:  “I love your product and it really helps my patients, but what about all the patients I don’t see?  What about all the patients who could benefit from this product or therapy?  How can we educate them or their managing physicians about the wonderful therapy available today?”

The above question seems to be the #1 thing that came up during my time as a device rep.  Where are all the patients and how can we let them know about “XYZ” product or therapy?  Initially it seemed pretty daunting.  How in the world was I, a device rep running around like a chicken with its head cut off, going to possibly take on this task? Many device and pharma company’s marketing departments provide information to hospitals or physicians for “outreach” programs where mailer’s are sent out letting the community know that “Dr. X” will be speaking Tuesday night at “The Steak House” about advancements in treating “XYZ”.  After a month of planning, securing “The Steak House’s” private room, putting down a sizeable deposit, inviting as many physicians in the area as we can, we wait to see who shows up…

And we wait…

And we wait…

After 3 physicians of the 64 we invited have a seat we decide to start.  No one really knows who these 3 physicians are or what kind of patients they actually see.  They just got a blast fax or an invite and thought, “Sounds interesting maybe, I’ll go…”  The physician who presents the material is very happy you and your company went through the effort to arrange the opportunity, however, no one leaves very impressed. It was a flop.

Unfortunately, this is the result more times than not.  Sometimes a good amount of docs appear, sometimes not, but was it really worth the time, money and effort to set all of this up? If you’ve been in this business for any length of time I bet you’re laughing to yourself saying, “Yep, complete waste of time…”

So, in today’s ever-evolving, fast-paced workday how are you supposed to help your customers grow and gain the single thing they want more than anything else? Patients. How do you do that in a timely, efficient, effective manner?

What if you knew exactly who the most valuable customer targets were each day? What if you could easily view data on your customers, potential customers, potential referral sources etc. from the front seat of your car all in a matter of seconds?

You might have heard the buzzword “actionable intelligence” thrown around some PowerPoints, but it’s a real thing and you are doing it totally wrong. ProSellus is your first step into making the big world of Big Data work FOR you instead of creating extra work for you.

You can find plenty of articles about habits of highly effective sales reps, but none of them will mention the medical sales rep’s best tool. ProSellus is the best of social media and customer management, seamlessly integrating data and strategy to make your business leaner, more effective, and more profitable. How could ProSellus revolutionize your daily routines? Check us out at blog.prosellus.com and see how we can revolutionize your medical sales business!

You already know how ProSellus can augment and streamline your healthcare sales business. Whether you’re new to the game or a grizzled veteran (like me), you know there are certain key strategies even big data can’t replace. We touched on a few things in our Beginner’s Guide to Marketing, so consider this the next chapter in that same direction. Of course, for some of us, it might just be a much needed refresher course!

Three Core Traits All Sales Reps Should Have (to be successful!)

Psst: we are going to let you in on a few secrets – all successful reps seem to have 3 key traits when running their business. The first one is effective listening. If you don’t actually hear what your potential client is telling you, you could miss a very important opportunity and ultimately lose a sale. As a sales person, I was told a million times, “You were given two ears and one mouth for a reason; use them proportionately.”

The second key trait is the ability to create meaningful relationships and challenge the customer to think differently. Some people might tell you that formal sales training matters more than interpersonal skills, but they’d be wrong. Beyond the ability to be well-liked or hold a conversation, you have to learn how to forge lasting bonds of trust with your clients. If they trust your business acumen, integrity, and ability to be a significant resource, you can build anything with them.

The third key trait is one you’ve probably heard a million times: organization and goal setting. The old saying “If you fail to plan, you plan to fail” goes triple for the work of sales reps. With the amount of accounts, information, and numbers you have to maintain and monitor, strong planning abilities and an affinity for color coding are pivotal for any sales rep.

I can’t stress the last key trait enough, Planning & Goal Setting, because this may be one of the most important habits you can create in order to be a dominating force in the Healthcare Sales Industry.

As I mentioned before one of the significant challenges associated with planning is there are SO MANY MOVING PARTS to running a successful healthcare sales territory!  Just take a snapshot for a quick second and think about how many accounts you have to manage, both physicians and facilities (hospitals, surgery centers, etc), coupled with all the tasks for each!  Now, if you’re really successful you know how to connect the dots of customers to potential referring customers and after a quick few weeks it’s a tangled web you can’t control… But what if you could? What if you could literally control the market? What would that possibly look like to your territory then?

The Second Ultimate Secret Weapon

ProSellus is your ultimate secret weapon when it comes to selling strategies. But you can’t reap the full benefits of this amazing product without pairing it with the second ultimate secret weapon: realistic expectations and goals. We touched briefly on the importance of goal setting, but you have to run before you can teleport. Realistic goal setting applies in two ways: with yourself and with your clients. You need to be honest with yourself about how many things you can accomplish in a day. Once you’ve identified what you CAN accomplish, add two or three more things to that list. You know the saying, “Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you’ll be among the stars” – that’s the idea here. Then, you need to be realistic about your clients. A physician with a small, family-focused practice won’t be interested in the same opportunities as a large scale business.

There are more tips and tricks to identify, of course, but this is merely chapter two in our ever evolving Beginner’s Guide to Everything. If you’d love to learn more about how ProSellus can upgrade your healthcare sales arsenal, email me at scottwalle@prosellus.com. Let’s discuss your present, but, more importantly, your future using actionable intelligence to improve profits and efficiency.