November 2017 - ProSellus

Medical physician doctor woman over blue clinic background.

How Does Thought Leadership Work in Medical Device Sales?

What Makes A Thought Leader in the Medical Device Sales Industry?

Becoming a thought leader — regardless of industry — can be a tricky path to walk. You can’t just say what works for your brand and your business or practice. You have to consider the grander industry at-large, too.

Specifically in medical device sales, there are a few ways in which you can incorporate thought leadership into your current processes and shift your focus from micro to macro.

Start With Your Motivations

Photo Credit: https://www.ted.com/topics/motivation

We all want to be the best medical sales rep out there. Putting up strong numbers. Closing the most deals (aka ALL of them). Building the most robust relationships over a large territory. But becoming a thought leader requires a complete shift in focus and motivation.

Instead of considering the best ways to increase YOUR numbers, you have to think about how all sales reps can improve. Similarly, if you want to establish your voice as a “North Star” of medical device sales, you have to remove a bit of yourself from the message you want to convey.

But not too much; Steve Jobs didn’t become Steve Jobs by watering down his ambition and vision. Of course, people don’t respond too well to unfiltered and unfettered greed. That’s where item number two on the list comes into play.

Think About the “Ripple Effect”

Every action has an equal and opposite reaction. That’s one of the laws of physics, but it also applies to thought leadership strategies. If you interact with a fellow sales rep in a negative way, they might carry that energy into their next sales meeting. It could cost them a client.

This might not affect you, but if you are looking to become a leading voice in medical device sales, you NEED to care about how your actions affect others. Ultimately, your attitude and tone mean just as much as the words you use or the overall message you impart to other people in the industry.

How to Get People On Board

The biggest challenges for someone transitioning into thought leadership in medical device sales are visibility and engagement. Though normal brands struggle with getting enough shares on LinkedIn, thought leaders need even bigger ROIs to make the kinds of impact necessary.

When we here at ProSellus started seriously positioning ourselves as thought leaders, we didn’t want to half-ass it. We pushed ourselves with a robust content schedule, researching topics and articles, interviewing our own customers and talking to other sales reps in the industry. We knew it would take time to build up clout, but we can now say that we are — definitively — one of the top healthcare startups with a distinct voice and message.

I always close every blog telling people that they can email me, Scottwalle@prosellus.com, at any time with their questions. I mean that. One of the most important factors in the ProSellus journey to thought leadership has been our connection with medical device sales reps and professionals. We live and breathe the message of our brand and the services we offer, too.

Thought Leadership isn’t quite the opposite of business success; it just takes into account the “human” factor that we so often forget in our numbers-driven industry.

Thought Leadership - 11/29/2017

The Top 5 Tools for Medical Device Salespeople

No sales rep – medical device or otherwise – can live without their gadgets and tools. From your Android or Apple smartphone to the LinkedIn app, we all have things we use on a daily basis for our life and for work. Of course some of you may still be working using spreadsheets or worse: pen and paper. It’s time to step up your game with these top 5 tools for medical device sales reps.

1. Expense Tracking Tools

Tracking your expenses is a time honored sales rep tradition that, if you let it, can get out of hand very quickly. Instead of stockpiling receipts or tracking it all in your head, consider apps like Expensify.

These not only allow for digital receipt storage, they let you keep track of all of your business expenditures or otherwise. Expensify is free, but it’s pretty bare bones unless you splurge for the $5 or $9/month versions. Zoho Expense also offers a free option that supports multi-currency and features the added safety net of two-factor authentication.

For sales reps working for a small company or large corporation, you might consider Abacus or Freshbooks. But….that’ll cost you anywhere from $9 to $50/month per user for their host of features.

Credit: https://www.iphonetricks.org/iphone-voice-dictation-commands-and-punctuation/

2. Voice Dictation Software

We’ve talked a great deal about the importance of maintaining and cultivating relationships with your clients. Communication is just as big a part of your job as knowing your product and selling techniques. That’s where voice dictation software comes in.

While you can use Apple, Windows, or Google dictation software, they can be limiting or frustrating in the long-term. For a simpler solution, consider Dragon Anywhere from Nuance. This isn’t your average dictation software and it can translate for as long as you can speak.

Not only will you be more hands-free, you will more accurately be able to communicate anywhere at any time.

3. Social Media – Of course!

It’s a fact that sales reps who use social media outperform those who don’t, so why wouldn’t you leverage these treasure troves of connections and information to gain momentum in your territory? LinkedIn is now the gold standard for connecting with prospects, peers and potential customers. Twitter is the way to put your company (or your brand’s) voice out there quickly and seamlessly, with little effort – but you have to be proactive and consistent in order to benefit. Get up to speed on these platforms and you’ll not only make your sales outreach more effective, you’ll be a champ in your organization.

4.Web Conferencing Tools

Giving presentations, product tours and tutorials remotely has gotten much easier over the years. GoToMeeting continues to rule here but upstarts like Join.Me have grabbed some attention.

Google Hangouts is sure to become a sales tool as it enables group video conferencing and robust online conversations that include photo and document sharing.

Assemble a panel of thought leaders and stream the discussion for the world to see or conduct sales presentations one on one and share content right in the stream of the conversation.

5. The ONE tool EVERY Medical Device Sales Rep Needs is…..

The 5th and final tool that all medical device sales reps need is ProSellus. It’s not some dry, mechanical thing designed by people who have never lived the life of a sales rep before. It’s designed by people like me, Scott Walle, and others with more than 50 years of combined sales experience. You want this tool, I promise.

All of us wanted a way to better and more easily monitor and expand our territory, maintain and cultivate relationships, and use the latest sales techniques. Data management and manipulation, sales acceleration, and relationship management are integral parts of the sales process in the 21st century.

Are you getting left behind? Email me at scottwalle@prosellus.com and let’s catch you up.

Sales / Strategy - 11/14/2017

8 Tips to Market Your Sales Business Better

If you’re a medical device sales rep who’s been around the block a time or two, you are always looking for ways to better yourself and your business. Even sales reps who are part of a big company can find small ways to tweak performance for the better.

Start with the basics:

1. Identify, Clarify, & Segment

No one likes a muddled sales pitch. If you can’t communicate your product or services to others, there’s very little chance of you closing any deal. A quick and easy way to streamline your sales process is to cut the fat with three simple steps:

Identify your objective and overall message
Clarify your message and objective
Compartmentalize the message for easy digestion and understanding

These simple steps help to trim any excess fat (words) from your pitch to reduce time wasted. They also facilitate better and more comprehensive understanding on behalf of the client. Time is money, after all, isn’t it?

2. Sell the Benefit Instead of the Comparison

One of the biggest faux pas any sales rep can make is also one of the most common. Newbies to the game will often focus on comparing an old product or service to their new product or service. Now, this can be useful, but it’s an amateurish move.

Instead, focus on the benefits of the new product or service. Forget about the old one; the only one that matters is what you’re selling. Full stop.

3. Content is King

You’ve probably heard this phrase before and thought nothing of it. But if you’re an individual operating your own personal sales business, creating SEO blog content is a fantastic way to boost your ranking and increase visibility.

It doesn’t need to be super in-depth or crazy specific articles. It can be something as simple as explaining a case study or listing your personal tips for closing a deal. Research other thought leaders in your industry. Do what they do. It’s worked for ProSellus and it can work for you.

4. Sell to Customer Needs

This one seems like a no-brainer, but we all need to be reminded of it sometimes. Regardless of the product or service you’re representing, you have to keep client needs in mind.

You can’t sell a new heartbeat monitor to a Podiatrist. But take this one step further: anticipate the needs of your potential or current clients. How could this client best utilize a new product you’ve got? What could it do for their quality of life, their profits, their patients?

Addressing all of these questions will not only make you a better salesperson, but it will help immensely with number 8 on this list.

5. Fail Quickly, But Not Often

Failure is not the end of the world. It’s a necessary tool in order to grow and learn to do better. That said, you can also plan for failure in order to mitigate fallout and decrease recovery time needed.

In terms of marketing, this philosophy goes double. You can’t afford to waste hundreds or thousands of dollars on frivolous marketing ventures that produce zero results. Start with small tests, targeted ads, and specific PPC campaigns. Run them for 2 – 3 months, then measure the results. Do your own A/B split testing using your blog content (since it’s king and all).

Failure is a good thing in small doses. Remember that.

6. Share the Spotlight

Nobody likes a know-it-all, but everyone loves to network. In doing so, you can make connections with manufacturers or other sales reps with more presence than yours. Then, all you have to do is share the spotlight.

Go a guest blog post on their website or vice versa. Go in on a joint project together and collaborate. These connections should NOT go un-leveraged. You can benefit from each other’s audiences and grow together and respectively.

7. Have a Mobile Presence

Everyone practically eats and sleeps with their phones now. Admit it — you do, too. It’s important to maintain some non-digital marketing channels, but your biggest audiences are in the palm of your hand.

Leverage your LinkedIn contacts by posting regular articles or blogs and interacting with other people’s posts. Update your Facebook page. Learn to love and how to smartly use hashtags. Even text messages are a huge tool for marketing. Think about it: 95% of Americans have cell phones. And 98% of their text messages get opened.

That’s a pretty good ROI wouldn’t you say?

8. Build Relationships & Develop a Referral Network

Having a gregarious nature and making friends easily should come natural for all sales reps. You need to develop relationships in order to close deals. The trick to growth is maintaining and further cultivating those relationships. But again: this network should NOT go un-leveraged.

Ask for client referrals or recommendations. Build a network of potential clients based on your current list.

If any of this seems like a foreign concept to you, email me at scottwalle@prosellus.com and let’s enlighten each other. Share the spotlight, remember?

Blog Classic / Sales - 11/07/2017