Powerful Strategies To Get More Sales Appointments In The Healthcare Sector

You have built a healthcare product with evidence-based outcomes, opted for medical regulatory compliances and are fully ready for the big launch. But, if you don't know whom to approach and where to market your product, then we have some of the best tips to boost healthcare sales for you. 

By applying these medical sales lead generation tips, you will be able to bring your product in front of the right prospects. As a healthcare marketer, you must know that healthcare organizations focus on delivering quality patient care. Thus, the first and most challenging step you will face is fixing an appointment with healthcare industry prospects. So, let's begin with how you can do it effectively. 

Let's Explore Typical Buyer Personas For B2B Healthcare

Your first step to achieving marketing success is understanding your target audience. The better you know your audience, the better you can target organizations and individuals to become paying customers. 

Remember, buyer personas may vary in different organizations Decision-makers, executives, and stakeholders co-exist under one umbrella in the healthcare industry. However, they have different as well as shared needs, wants, and preferred communication methods. So let us explore them in a little more detail: 

• Decision-Makers At Health Systems & Hospitals

While you market your service, product, or your organization to the healthcare space, you must consider their specific needs. It is necessary to show them that your product/service can be the solution they are looking for. This category of the healthcare buyer persona contains decision-makers and departments that approve or reject changes in the sector on behalf of often-busy doctors and physicians. 

Targeting specified individuals in the decision-maker roles help in building more touchpoints and gaining more individual contacts. Once you know who to market to, you can use a medical lead generation strategy and leverage opportunities to generate and nurture leads. Below is the list of key decision-makers in the hospitals and health systems: 

• Chief Executive Officer (CEO)
• Chief Medical Officer (CMO)
• Director of Operations
• Medical and Nursing Directors 
• Policymakers 
• Advisory Board Members 

• Executives At CROs & Sponsor Organizations

B2B healthcare marketing target prospects include clinical research organizations and sponsors who provide funding and oversee clinical trials. If your product can fulfill the service requirements of these institutions, such as patient recruitment, then they are your target buyer personas. Therefore, your marketing approach towards them must highlight how your product can aid them in executing quality research and multiple hospital operations. 

Know that a CRO physician's needs differ from those of doctors in an emergency room. The B2B sales approach for CROs needs to target entities that control funding, as they are usually the decision-makers or are highly influential in the decision-making process. These entities are concerned about increasing patient enrollment and minimizing expenses. So, identify and work on the crucial marketing elements needed to convert them.

• Chief Physicians And Clinicians

They can either run their own practice or be leaders in healthcare organizations. These buyer personas are usually the busiest; thus, reaching them is the most challenging task for any marketer. Therefore, you need to take targeted and more specified marketing approaches. 

Moreover, these people are involved directly in patient care, and their opinions are highly influential on how top decision-makers utilize their purchasing power. Word-of-mouth, referrals, and networking between healthcare professionals are impactful among these buyer personas. Thus, introducing highly effective products with proven outcomes will go a long way in marketing efforts. 

How to Get Sales Appointments With Healthcare Decision Makers Today?

1. Combined Efforts Of Traditional, Inbound, And Outbound Marketing Strategies

Most HCPs value in-person meetings with sales representatives; they have also adapted to educating themselves online. In addition, stats say that there's been a 133% increase in the usage of mobile devices to research new drugs and healthcare technologies. Thus, you must use the hybrid approach to create personal connections with the target entities. 

For example, start with the traditional approach: send your sales reps to trade shows and facilities or visit the physician's office. Then, once you have a productive conversation, apply the outbound marketing elements, such as directing them to your website to check out the product's demo video, clinical data, and case studies. 

Study where your target prospects spend most of their time and run inbound marketing campaigns to gain their attention. You can leverage social media, content marketing, and search page SEO. You can infuse cold calling and emailing to effectively boost hospital sales lead management.

Each of your healthcare marketing strategies must support the other. It will result in consistent and compelling message delivery. Physicians will also be able to review your offers in their own time. 

2. Trust And Engagement Through High-Quality Clinical Content

If you are wondering, how to prospect medical sales lead, then this is the start point of it. Building trust is very important to sustain a fruitful and long-term relationship with your target healthcare entities. You must assure them of the legitimacy of your product.

Share the existing high-quality content materials with your prospects. For example, demo videos, case studies, podcasts etc. You'll have to put extra effort into the way you present your content. Simply follow these steps:

• Step 1. Showcase your high-quality content from the clinical perspective. Use relevant infographics and images to cut short the texts in your copy. 
• Step 2. Maximize the limited sales representative to convert the interested prospects into paying customers. 
• Step 3. Use interactive graphic elements along to create a personalized marketing experience. Depending on the elements visitors type, direct them to specific high-value content pages. 

3. Results Analysis Quantitatively And Qualitatively

How you make sales in healthcare and how it performs depends on how you manage quantitative and qualitative data. 

Where quantitative data refers to collecting large amounts of customer data through questionnaires, surveys, and polling methods, qualitative data involves close observation of customers –– typically done via face-to-face encounters.  

For example, in-person visits where your sales representatives can easily sense whether their pitch is working or need to change their approach. 

Digital ways to generate qualitative data include asking open-ended questions and offering surveys. Make the surveys easier to complete by including only important questions. Then, pair the information with the quantitative data and get in-depth feedback that will help you refine your healthcare marketing.

4. Multiple Touch Points To Put Up Non-Linear Buying Journeys 

You might successfully intrigue your target prospects about your healthcare product or service during the in-person pitch. But they may forget about your product as the communication dries up.

Therefore, you must establish various interactions or touchpoints to keep the prospects engaged in future conversations.

You can create these touchpoints with digital solutions like you can use social media to prospect for healthcare leads and email marketing. In addition, ensure your sales representatives perform strategic follow-up calls with the target prospects. 

Research suggests that 95% of all leads are reported to convert by the 6th call attempt by sales representatives. That is why regular follow-up via multiple touchpoints is crucial.

5. Building A Strong Network

A. Networking with healthcare professionals through events and online groups
Being a healthcare marketer, you must be aware of important events in the health and wellness industry throughout the year. Make sure to attend events like virtual professional meetings and wellness conferences to network with your target HCPs. These events are the best place to showcase your knowledge on the relevant clinical topic. Research the topic and prepare to present it in front of your targeted groups.  

Additionally, keep an eye on the online groups on platforms like Google forums, Facebook, etc. You can find professional groups of your interest on your national organization web page. You'll have to interact, post, and be active in the group. Engage in important discussions to build a relationship with your potential prospects. 

B. Building relationships with key influencers and decision-makers
Influencers are the entities decision-makers invite to give their opinions on new changes, purchases, etc. They may not make the final call, but they can definitely negatively impact it by saying no to your proposal. 

• Physician
• Director of IT
• Radiology director
• CEO
• CFO
• Director of materials management
• Director of perioperative
• OR Director
• Administration
• Medical director
• Director of surgical services
• Director of Imaging

• Online product/service resources 
• Direct contact with vendors and sales team
• Professional society or conference
• Referrals by colleagues
• Internal resources
• Group Purchasing Organization (GPO)

C. Utilizing existing connections for referrals and introductions
You can build a network of new prospects with the help of your existing connections. Here's what you'll have to do: 

Engage: Ensure your existing connection or prospect has a great onboarding experience. Give them the attention they need and communicate your company's values to become more referable to them.  

Promote referrals: This includes reminding your prospects to share their experience with your company. You'll have to walk your prospects through how they can refer you. You can ask them the following questions:

• "How would you prefer to introduce us to new potential prospects."
• "Who do you believe to be a suitable match for us to do business with?"
• "How can we create our company's introduction that feels comfortable for all relevant parties?"

6. Understanding their pain points and what they are looking for in a solution

Always ask your prospects about their concerns and the challenges they face. It will help you discover what exactly you need to include in your solution and what pain points you have to focus on. This practice also makes them feel valued by you, which boosts the chances of them opening up to you. If your product can offer a better solution to their pain points, ensure to present a strong pitch about it. 

Best Practices To Book More Healthcare Sales Appointments

1. Invest Time In Discovery 

Below are the three effective ways to discover important information about your target entity: 

• Google them: Learn about their interests, values, motivation, influences, and most importantly, their personality by googling them on public social media pages. 
• Check out their LinkedIn profile: Seek details about their job descriptions, recent awards, endorsements, promotions, etc. make sure to use the information to lead a personalized conversation with them. 
• Explore their company website: Get the basic context of their organization by exploring their vision statements, news stories, About Us information, product releases, and other such sections. 

2. Be An Information Partner 

Medical professionals are often drawn toward marketers that can act as their information partners. Develop strong clinical content to provide relevant, useful, and educative information and share them strategically to gain prospects' attention. Feature your content on published studies, research papers, etc., to establish your thought leadership in the specific area. It is essential for reputation building and referrals, increasing your credibility.

3. Lead With A Conversation

• Listens to prospects' needs. 
• Offers relevant and valuable information.
• It is not pushy. 

If you ask them the right question and give the right information, you can successfully engage them. It will help you reach a position where you can ask them questions. Make sure to build each interaction based on the previous one to get another response. 

Two factors to make your interaction powerful: 

• Spark the curiosity in leads to keep them engaged. 
• Research about them before the discovery call

Once they are engaged, curious, and qualified, they share insights and examples of how your other clients benefited from your product by easing out their pain points. 

4. Use Confident Phrases 

Another one of the important best practices and tips to boost healthcare sales include showcasing confidence while interacting with target entities. Your call and email approach must reflect that you value your time and have confidence in your product. When you interact with prospects with the right attitude, you increase your chances of securing future appointments. 

To sound confident and not needy or desperate, avoid using these phrases while you interact: 

• "I am sure you are very busy."
• "My schedule is wide open. What time works for you?"
• "I would be grateful, if you could give me your just 5 minutes."
• "Thank you so much for your time."

5. Opt-In Is The Goal

You must set a goal to make your target physicians opt-in for future communications with you, leading to scheduling an official appointment. To do so, emails are the best channels. It is one of the cost-effective ways to communicate with prospects in an ongoing manner. It can be done by providing them with valuable content through cold emailing. You can also partner with a trusted and relevant distribution source and leverage their subscriber lists. 

6. Ask For The Appointment

Here's how to schedule healthcare sales appointments effectively: 

• During the initial call, be precise about the purpose of the appointment. 
• Once you communicate the purpose, check their interest level. If they are skeptical, continue with the conversation without being pushy. You can ask if they would be interested in having a quick conversation about the solution/benefit of your product. 
• Focus on sharing your product's value in your prospects' lives instead of trying to close a sale. 
• Provide them with different choices of appointment times to keep them engaged. You can ask: "We can meet this Thursday at 3:00 PM. Or does next Tuesday at 4:00 PM work better with your schedule?"

In an email: 

• Start with a normal conversation about their day or any personalized comment before discussing the appointment's purpose. 
• Keep the email short, don't use over 3-4 paragraphs. 
• Always include a close to guide them on what to do next. You can say: I'd like to take 20 minutes of your time to learn more about your pain points and challenges. If you are interested, kindly book a meeting time on my calendar (provide a meeting link). 

7. Setting And Attaining Sales Appointment Goals

A. Defining your sales appointment goals and metrics
Some of the essential sales appointment goals you can set up are as follows: 

• Make it your key responsibility to be a disciplined listener during appointments. It helps in learning about your interests, likes, passion, etc., about your prospects. 
• Customize business appointments based on your leads' stage in the sales cycle.
• Let them know what it takes for your company to achieve your vision. During the appointment, ensure to tell them how they can participate in your mission. 

Here are some key sales appointment metrics you must track: 

• Percentage of Appointments That Are No-Shows: Track the number of no-shows in a period. It will let you know how big the problem is and when to take action. 
• Percentage of Appointments That Run Long: Use performance metrics to check the average time spend on appointments. Long appointments can disrupt your daily schedule. As required, you should categorize your appointments into short visits, check-ins, etc. 

B. Tracking progress towards your goals
How do you make sales in the healthcare sector is influenced by how well you maintain progress reports of your efforts. In terms of appointment sales, here's how you can do it: 

• Identify what you aim to achieve
  Measure the current status of selected aspects of your appointment sales you want to improve. Next, set a specific goal (Long-term and Short term) relevant to that information and track the progress regularly. 
• Create deadlines
  Write each step of the long-term and short-term process and what you expect after completing each step. Review the steps regularly to anticipate potential issues and define solutions for them. It helps in improving time management and makes meeting deadlines easier.
• Set milestones
  Use minor achievements to measure the progress towards your overall goal. Milestones boost your focus by enabling you to envision every step in your plan and give a sense of achievement once completed.

C. Continuously refining your approach to improve results

Consider following the PDCA (Plan-Do-Check-Act) cycle to ensure quality and continuous improvements. 

• Plan: Identify an opportunity, i.e., find potential methods to grow your ideas and make the plan for the change. For example, new ways to reach your targeted healthcare groups. 
• Do: Conduct the changes initially on a small scale. 
• Check: Analyze the results after implementation of the change using available data. Check what differences it made. 
• Act: If you managed to get positive results from the change, conduct it on a wider scale and assess the results consistently. If you don't get the required results, restart the PDCA cycle again.

Conclusion

The healthcare industry is one of the richest sectors, with tremendous opportunities for anyone willing to learn and grow in their businesses. Thus, hear what your prospects really have to say. Get in front of the people that need your products or services and enter the sales appointment stage of a sale. Persuade them, listen to their problems, and provide a solution. 

Whether you sell to doctors, nurses, or other healthcare providers, Revnew can help you to fill your pipelines with qualified medical leads maintaining a steady flow of prospects. Connect with the company's representatives to learn more about the services.