A Day in the Life of the Healthcare Sales Rep part 2: The Quarter End Close

It’s 4:45 am…

DING. DING. DING.

The alarm hits you like a freight train.

After all, it’s Quarter End and you were up late last night entertaining a customer.

You rub your eyes feeling as if you had just 5 seconds ago put your head down to go to sleep, only to stare at your phone and remind yourself, “It’s the last day of the quarter…”.

The last day of the fiscal quarter for Healthcare sales reps is beyond hectic. To put it to you point blank, it’s freaking stressful.

You will be forced to answer calls and reply to several messages from your manager asking,

  • “What kind of deal can we get done today?”
  • “Can you collect this PO and that one?”
  • “Can you get that clinic to finally place an order?”

And on and on and on.

On top of replying to the entendre of messages, you manage your docs, hospitals, ASC’s, etc. After all, your Quarter End doesn’t matter to them nor does it mean that relationships get put on the backburner.

You stare at the Keurig as it makes a rushed cup of coffee, while you look back and forth at the emails that came through overnight on your phone and out the door, you go. To your dismal surprise, it’s raining and a bitter 40 degrees outside.

Awesome.
You are forced to sit in traffic and at the red light you continue to stare at the email your manager sent you yesterday, the same one you’ve looked at twice already this morning. The email shows your QTD sales numbers. You compare the numbers to the scribbled notes you’ve been keeping since the 1st of the month.

There are 3 things you are possibly thinking while looking at your numbers:

Personally, I’ve been in all three of these positions. If you stick around this business long enough, it’s inevitable to spend time in positions #2 and #3. If you are lucky enough, you will experience position #1 over and over.

This is the reality of 100% of salespeople in Healthcare sales today.

It’s a career that means constant pressure such as hearing, “It’s the most important close, of the most important month, of the most important quarter, of the most important year…. EVER”. Constantly.

Your reps dread this time of the quarter/year.

Can you blame them?

  • By this point, it’s too late to make a major impact, unless there is a move in the making that has been worked on for weeks or even months prior.
  • Their normally calm, cool and collected manager, manages to completely lose their cool.
  • Reps’ phones are bombarded and blown up by their manager wanting updates, as they sit through a 7:00 am case.

No one likes to talk about this part of being a healthcare rep.

The part that’s stressful, and can make you lose your hair and gain a few extra pounds.

When your family asks about your work, you tell them about surgeries and the docs, nurses, and admins you love to work with. You tell them about the rush, the money and being part of an important team.  You almost always omit about what the stress is like.

THE BOTTOM LINE: This business can take you to places you never thought imaginable, but you can’t escape the Quarter End/Year end close.

You need to be consistently finding new revenue streams from new, up and coming physicians or accounts.  Better yet, what if you found the patients before they found their specialist and you could direct where they went?  A constant source of new patients to fill your pipeline!

Now THAT ensures constant growth and constant growth ensures stress-free Quarter End closes… all the time.

So, how do you, whether you’re a rep for one of the biggest Healthcare companies in the world, or an independent rep selling an entire smorgasbord of products from different manufacturers manage this part of the job?  But not manage it AT the Quarter End, manage it throughout the Quarter to where you never have to deal with the stress of the Quarter End?

That’s why you need something more than a CRM. You need a tool that tracks revenue, leverages the right data for you and can show trends for the entire quarter on your phone.

A tool that will never leave you in the dark and that will always let you know where you stand. One that can propel you to meet each Quarter End in position #1.  Let’s talk about how ProSellus can help you and your team never stress the Quarter End close again!

Check us out at blog.prosellus.com

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