In Healthcare, failure is a dirty word. How do you sell a product that is associated with failure?
It can be difficult to sell a technology, procedure, or product that is similar to one with past failures. Salespeople hate this scenario, especially in healthcare where failure is a dirty word. But what if you have a product or service that you know works and the customer believes otherwise. How do you change the […]
Don’t have time to make medical sales calls? That’s Bull!
When medical sales reps hurl excuses at their managers and others (including me) as to why their sales numbers are flat, I tell them N-O-R-C. I like these four letters because they are easily text-able (today’s medical reps like to communicate with their thumbs, and that’s a separate issue I will address at another time) […]
Fun in The Waiting Room, or How I’m Tired of Watching Medical Reps Misuse Their Tools
I have all of my wellness checkups done in June. It’s not fun being a patient, but it is fun to observe sales reps who come into the doctor’s office while I’m in the waiting room. Pharmaceutical reps all seem to sound alike. Their short conversations sound like this… “Hi. Barbara with [name of company] […]
Don’t Blow It When Selling a New Technology in Medical Device Sales
Have you ever approached a healthcare customer to present a new technology? You feel a strong level of confidence; after all, your competition doesn’t have anything like it. You are excited and you expect your customer to be excited too. You tell the customer, “I’ve got something new to show you that will knock your […]
Tell your medical sales competition that selling in the summer is a waste of time…
…and then work your tail off to sell as much as you can while your competition coasts for a few months! There is some accepted wisdom that healthcare customers, especially physicians, are difficult to call on and sell to during the summer months. I’ve heard the excuses and so have you: “The doctor is more […]
How not to succeed in medical sales: Spend Your Time Performing Low-Wage Tasks
Most medical sales professionals can answer the following question with little problem: What do you get paid to do? The answer of course is: To sell! Why is it then that I often find medical sales representatives performing low-wage activities instead of what they were hired to do? What concerns me more is that they […]
Mistakes in medical sales: How to fix them and earn the customer’s respect
If you sell medical devices, there are times when mistakes, oversights, and failures will have fingers pointing in your direction. Your company ships the wrong product or a defective product. You relay information to a customer that’s incorrect. You forget to bring something that a customer or patient needs. You fail to show for a […]
Selling to Physicians—A problem or an opportunity: You’ve got 15 seconds.
If you sell to doctors in the U.S., it’s probably no surprise to you that many are not happy with their jobs and who can blame them. They are losing control of how they treat their patients, the government and insurance companies are telling them what they can charge for what they do, and the […]
A key determining factor for your level of success or failure in medical sales is in your pocket
After penning the title for this article, it occurred to me that some medical sales representatives probably have no idea what I’m referring to. You might be thinking that the key to success that spends time in your pocket is: Your car keys: Wrong by a long shot. What you drive has nothing to do […]
Medical sales: Don’t be a commodity
More and more products in healthcare are being viewed by decision-makers as commodities. In an era of accountable care, products that are good enough are displacing those regarded as the “gold standard.” Selling commodity-type products can be a challenge, but the bigger problem is when you, the sales professional, are a commodity yourself. Hopefully, your […]
The Influence of Medical Device Sales Reps is Underrated…and That’s Good!
by Mace Horoff • Blog, Future of Medical Sales, Medical Sales Performance Tags: medical sales influence •
In a recent blog about the increasing power of group purchasing organizations, blogger Brian Johnson http://bit.ly/MMEeIV refers to a poll of endovascular specialists who were asked how much their product decisions are influenced by medical device sales reps. Only 14% said that medical device sales representatives had a strong influence on their product decisions. It […]