October 2017 - ProSellus

Dear Physicians, We Can Do Better

Are You Letting Down Your Clients or Costing Yourself Business?

As sales reps, we have to be 10,000% confident, but that can sometimes work against our favor. When we focus so much on being the top seller, we lose focus of our own clients — the people we are supposed to serve. In doing that, we might be eating away at our own customer relationships.

This means that we could cost ourselves business. Or maybe….we already are. But the best way to avoid this is to know what kind of sales rep NOT to be.

Don’t Be Just a Pretty Face

Sales reps often take pride in how we present ourselves: sharp clothes, a great smile — you know the life. While it’s great to stay in shape and take care of yourself, this isn’t enough for your clients.

Healthy teeth don’t explain what the benefits of this new device are to the small practice of a local physician. And designer clothes certainly can’t establish a value proposition for switching from one product to another. You have to know your products AND look the part. Sorry, not sorry; that’s the gig you signed up for when you became a sales rep.

Read the Room

Sometimes, a physician just isn’t interested in what you’re selling. It’s a sad truth (and one that shouldn’t occur often), but it happens, and it always happens more than any of us would like. Many of them will be nice and let you do your whole pitch, just to reject you at the end. That wastes your time AND theirs.

Save both of you the trouble and perform an expert cost/benefit analysis before you commit to pitching something to a new or current client.

Don’t Be a One-Trick Pony

Nobody likes a magician with only one trick. Similarly, while doctors and physicians might like a free lunch or dinner, they generally don’t have the time…oh and did I mention that they are getting entertainment offers from 15 other reps that week as well. Think of it from their perspective: why are they taking time out of their day to listen to your talk if they are only going to walk away with a full belly?

Don’t get me wrong, they take up those offers quite a bit – but is it establishing true connection and loyalty to your business? Did you really show them something over that dinner that changed the way they saw your company or product? In fact, what differentiated you from those other 15 reps?

Free food and drinks doesn’t establish value; it’s only a severely overused tactic to get a foot in the door with a potential client. Establishing true value for a new or potential client requires knowledge, meaningful connection (not just a meal convo), and actionable data. That’s where ProSellus comes in.

Ditch the “I Just Happened to Stop By” Bit

You want to establish a rapport with your clients because it increases the chance of closing a deal, right? Duh. But what you want to avoid is becoming too “buddy buddy”. You are there for business, after all. Trust me, the buddy thing will fizzle once that next rep comes in with that meaningful data and actually shares something that impacts the physician’s’ business.

Beyond that, you really need to avoid things like the “casual” visit. You know the sales rep I’m talking about. “I was just in the neighborhood and…” “I happened to find something just for you….” Any number of phrases to establish context for this random visit to a physician. It can come off as a selfish act that devalues the time of the physician.

Do NOT be that rep.

Got any other medical device sales rep types to avoid? Send them to me Scottwalle@prosellus.com and we will expand our list just for you.

Sales / Thought Leadership - 10/31/2017

Is There a Sales Acceleration Formula?

Is There REALLY a Holy Grail for Sales Techniques?

As early as 2014, sales acceleration generated buzz in the sales world. Many people thought it was yet another scam and fly-by-night concept. But others saw the potential in the fledgling sales strategy.

We have discussed sales acceleration here at ProSellus a few times. It’s a must-have all-in-one technique for any and every sales rep. But it requires the right tools and attitude (doesn’t everything?). It could be your “Holy Grail”, but only if you know which cup to look for — just like Indiana Jones.

One Size Fits Most….Right?

Mark Roberge penned the book “The Sales Acceleration Formula”. Fun fact: he also got his very own Google Talk thanks to this little book.

Roberge details how to go from $0 dollars to $100-million USD by using sales acceleration, data interpretation, and technology leverage. The former Hubspot Chief Revenue Officer elaborated on a few key facets of sales acceleration including the following:

Value of role-playing
Buyer experience
Effectiveness of competitive contests
New-hire onboarding

Along with a few other concepts, these lessons from Roberge’s philosophy translated very well into corporate and large company settings. And, truly, the profits of sales acceleration technology and software are in the billions now.

But does Hubspot’s Holy Grail work for your individual or small medical device sales business? Would it work better if there was a holy grail built specifically for your industry?

No Code Necessary: How to Hack Sales

A “One Size Fits All” approach is the antithesis of sales acceleration. What are some of the keys to developing value for customers? Connection, relatability, accessibility, and usability. So those facets of sales acceleration that work for Hubspot won’t necessarily work for your everyday medical device sales representative.

How do you translate these lucrative sales techniques into something tangible that works for YOU? Simple: you hack it with sales acceleration that works for your business specifically.

If you want faster sales cycles, bigger deals, increased revenue, and higher close rates, you need sales acceleration. But you can’t spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on software and data interpretation tools in order to do that.

That’s where ProSellus comes in. Our all-in-one data management and sales acceleration tool works right from your tablet or desktop when you need it. Connect with physicians, build networks based on specific healthcare data (aka knowledge!), manage your territory, explore new information and review old information; the works.

While we’ll be revealing more of the sales acceleration formula in November, you can always email me Scottwalle@Prosellus.com with any questions. I can teach you how to hack without a computer.

ProSellus / Sales Acceleration Tools - 10/24/2017

5 Benefits of the “Agile Marketing” Approach for Sales Reps

What is this “agile marketing” thing?

If you’re a marketing professional who is part of a team, you’ve no doubt heard of the phrase “agile marketing” – however if you are in sales, you probably have not. So, what exactly is this buzzword? At its core, agile marketing is a tactical marketing approach in which teams identify and focus their collective efforts on high value projects, complete those projects cooperatively, measure their impact, and then continuously and incrementally improve the results over time. This buzzword took root in the tech startups of Silicon Valley and has gripped almost every industry with its jargon, efficiency, and sticky notes.

Confused? Keep reading.

Photo credit: https://thecyphersagency.com/blog/2016/05/02/learn-to-benefit-from-agile-marketing/

Benefits 1 & 2: Optimization & Improved Targeting

Two of the biggest tenets of the agile marketing philosophy are responding to change and valuing “testing and data” over “opinion and conventions.” That one word “DATA” – is where this approach should make sense to a sales rep. Why? Both marketing and sales have one goal: increased revenue. Revenues are optimized when data is used to make smarter decisions, either with marketing tactics or with sales strategies. Just like a marketer would leverage data to optimize their work, a sales rep would benefit greatly if they were to take their own data and actually USE it to their advantage. When I was in medtech sales, I did this manually – it was long and arduous but it helped shine the light on where my focus should be and always kept me on top of my game.

Pro tip for the sales rep: get your data, form your strategy, test out the strategy, evaluate, pivot, rinse and repeat.

Benefits 3 & 4: Performance & Scaling

Consider a company trying to push a medical device to market. It’s a tough process involving the FDA, premarket requirements, classification…the list goes on. In order to tackle something like this, medtech companies can adopt agile marketing for improved performance and scalability. In addition, a medtech sales rep can adopt the practice of utilizing the data to further hone in on the hottest opportunities for growth and market penetration/retention.

Benefit 5: Efficiency

So let’s recap: agile marketing offers optimization, improved targeting, scalability, and increased performance. The final benefit to agile marketing over old school approaches: efficiency. There are only so many hours in the day, so improvements (even milliseconds) add up. As a result of this, it is in your best interest — as a medtech sales rep (or any sales rep) — to understand this new marketing style and leverage pieces of it to improve your own strategy. You don’t want to fall behind do you?

If you already feel like you are, email me Scottwalle@prosellus.com. Let’s catch you up.

Sales - 10/17/2017

Handshake-business-deal-agreement-working-together-sales-rep-challenger-large

Relationship Management Basics for Sales Reps

As a sales rep, you know that your reputation revolves around your relationships with your clients, your industry contacts, your peers, and pretty much everyone you meet….ever. As a result, relationship management is one of the five keys to success as a medical device sales rep. So what are the basics?

ProSellus is on the case.

Keeping Up With the Ka-Social Platforms

No Kardashians this time around, but there’s plenty of Facebook, LinkedIn, and other social media platforms. While some contacts are best left in your phonebook on your smart phone or in your Gmail account, others belong on the web, too.

You can work wonders on LinkedIn regarding networking and territory scouting/expansion. You can test out different pitch techniques with Facebook ads. Some of your clients might even be into Snapchat.

Use at your own risk kids.

Temperature Checks & Small Gestures

We’ve previously covered how establishing relationships can establish value. We even put together a handy list of the top 4 ways to establish value for clients. All of these revolve around relationship management.

Learning to pick up on nonverbal communication or incorporating small gestures into your routine with clients can instantly perk up any lackluster contact. Does one doctor really love Star Wars? Make a reference at your next meeting. See if you can parlay that into a discussion about that new medical device you just learned about. Even doctors are starting to do it with trust and transparency, changing ROI into IOR: “impact of relationships”.

Checking the temperature of your relationships seems like a pain, but it’s like tending a garden or doing the dishes. In order to set yourself up for success (i.e. a good harvest or a clean sink), you have to put in the work.

Some of you might have noticed that I said this is just one of five keys to success. Want to know more? Email me Scottwalle@prosellus.com.

Otherwise you’ll have to wait until we publish the second key next month.

Thought Leadership - 10/10/2017

6 Medtech Blogs ALL Sales Reps Should Read

As a seasoned medical device sales rep, you know your general routine. You KNOW that if you don’t keep up every single day, you’ll fall behind even your farthest competitor. You also know, as a badass sales rep, that you always need to be looking for better, faster, more efficient ways to do things. ProSellus shares this philosophy, so we thought we’d save you some time.

Here are the top 6 blogs for medical device sales reps:

Hardware, Medtech, & Gadgets — Oh My!

One of the biggest aspects of being a sales rep is knowing your product. You also need to scout all of the latest advancements in medical technology to find potential new avenues for yourself and your customers. Then, you can leverage these advancements to produce profits and grow your business. But that’s another blog (coming soon…) For now, let’s focus on Medgadget. It’s a key source for all things medtech such as this new device that increases the number of minimally invasive surgery offerings.

Medcity News also offers fantastic coverage of all the latest news in the medical device world. Don’t forget Fierce MedTech with honorable mention to Fierce Pharma (for the pharma folks out there…) either. These discuss bigger implications of innovations and events from data encryption to finances.

Pro-Tip: if you haven’t set up Reader or RSS feed to manage your interests and article sources – do it.

Familiar Faces & Total Newbies

Mass Device shouldn’t be an unfamiliar site for any sales rep who’s been around the block a time or two. If it’s new to you — don’t worry. The world of sales might be a safe space, but the ProSellus blog is designed for pros and newbies alike. Speaking of intersectionality, Informa PLC’s Knect365 is another unique blog site for sales reps. It focuses on a plethora of subjects including the intersection of tech and all things medical (even mental health).

MD+DI from QMed continues this trend with articles like How Artificial Intelligence Could Save Healthcare. They also raise global questions of technological advancement and economic implications. Remember the terms “micro” and “macro” all the way back from high school economics class? Boy do those terms matter even more when you’re an adult.

See a blog you love that’s missing? Leave it in a comment below. Don’t forget to visit our LinkedIn page for more info and thought leadership articles. Another pro-tip: you can always email Scottwalle@prosellus.com if you want to talk shop about medical device sales.

Happy hunting sales reps!

Sales - 10/03/2017