Salesforce is the ideal medical device CRM because it can help you manage the leads that will bring you success; it can help connect your entire team as well as patients, physicians, and suppliers; and it’s fully scalable as you grow and your needs change.
Still not convinced? Here are five great reasons why you should boost your medical device marketing efforts now by implementing a Salesforce instance.
1. Better Lead Management
Whether you’re a startup or an established medical device manufacturer or distributor, lead generation is essential to your marketing efforts. In fact, over 55% of B2B marketers spend more than half of their marketing budget on lead generation. Salesforce helps ensure those leads get into the right hands instead of falling through the cracks.
For example, a potential client reaches out to you via a “Contact Us” form on your website. This submission may be routed to a group of people as an email, but how do you know the request has been responded to? How do you track which employee responded? Sure, the request may have been forwarded to the right account manager or salesperson, but that internal routing may take days…and in that time, the lead may have decided to focus on other options.
You can also streamline lead management efforts with Salesforce for medical devices. When a form submission comes in and is listed as a sales inquiry, it can be routed to the correct sales team member instantly. The salesperson can also classify the lead (for example, disqualified, working, or converted). With this capability, teams can know which leads are being managed, who is managing the response, and where they are in the sales funnel.
2. Robust Email Automation and Reporting
Email is a perennial favorite way of reaching prospects and customers. An incredible 91% of B2B marketers in a Content Marketing Institute study rated email as “important” or “extremely important” to their content marketing distribution efforts.
Email is especially important in medical device marketing because of the long sales cycle. Selling to large healthcare organizations or even smaller practices can take many months and may require conversations with different stakeholders along the way, including clinicians, purchasing agents, and executives. Salesforce Pardot offers robust email automation capabilities that can help you easily manage complex sales cycles. You can tailor messages for different audiences at each stage of their journey. And Salesforce’s reporting capabilities and user-friendly dashboards can help you see which messages are resonating.
You can easily see which emails have been sent, which ones have been opened, and even how many times the recipient has opened or clicked through the email. These insights are a great springboard for starting conversations with prospective clients, as well as a way to ensure current client’s needs are being met. For example, "You saw the email about our new offering? Great! What interested you most? What questions do you have that I can help answer?"
3. Customer Support Enabled
As a medical device company, your customers have a variety of needs, from training to shipping logistics to resolving a device issue using remote diagnostics. Salesforce can help you not only address these customer support issues, but do so and more quickly and efficiently.
As an added level of support, Einstein Bots (chatbots) are a great enhancement that sets Salesforce apart. The Bots can help automate routine tasks or field frequently asked questions quickly. They can also direct customers to resources online or put them in touch with a client service rep to speak with directly. If a client is logged in, the chatbots can personalize the interaction for an added touch.
4. Pivot on Customer Feedback
After the support case has been closed, it’s always nice to get feedback. Not only does this demonstrate to customers that their satisfaction is a top priority and their input is important, it provides medical device companies insights into their processes and how to improve. Using Salesforce, surveys can be sent out immediately after a support case is closed. The responses can be attached to the account for future reference.
This feedback is also helpful for training and performance review purposes. It can help you measure employee effectiveness and success, and reward great customer service efforts.
5. Scalable CRM Functionality
Salesforce is the ideal CRM for managing customer and product data, leads, and email automation. In one place, it houses the information you need to work seamlessly across different teams and processes. It’s:
- Flexible: Salesforce for medical device companies can easily adapt to new types of devices, business models and information that you want to track.
- Scalable: Your organization wants to grow, and Salesforce can scale with you every step of the way.
- Extendable: As a full development platform, Salesforce can be customized to fit nearly any business process.
After all, new features are being introduced on a regular basis. Features like account-based forecasting, which helps you create a baseline forecast using market and account growth factors relative to the previous years’ figures, and new sales agreements capabilities, which can help you manage device sales, volume, price, and revenue commitments.
Penrod’s Final Take
As a medical device manufacturer or distributor, you need a robust CRM. Salesforce is unique in the medical device industry because it offers extended CRM functionality, to meet your needs for today and prepare you for a successful future of growth. With continued innovation and enhancements, Salesforce is one of the strongest medical device CRMs.