The team behind a successful sales operations function is responsible for ensuring every other department – such as marketing and sales – runs smoothly. The success of the entire sales processes of B2C and B2B transactions relies on the sales operations running like a finely-tuned, well conducted orchestra.
If you are looking to streamline sales and marketing as your medical device company scales, develops new devices, seek a PMA, or obtain 510k notification, efficient sales operations is vital.
In this guide, we’ll discuss the fundamental principles every medical device company needs to consider. Here are five critical steps for creating a strong sales operations function.
Step 1
Structure Strategy for Success
The medical device industry is incredibly dynamic, high-speed, and competitive. New technologies and fluid market demands have rendered rigid sales teams obsolete. Sales leadership needs to empower teams with technology that allows them to succeed in a market dominated by high-performing giants.
Here are the most important operations that successful medical device sales teams must be able to optimize:
- Quoting and Forecasting
- Contract Management
- Sales Insights
- Price Rules and Discount Planning
- SaaS Management
- Medical Device Distributor Management
- Sales Enablement
- Automated Inventory Resupply
- Territory Management
- Commission Management
- Medical Device Virtual Selling
Regardless of how good a sales team is, these operations may be hard to achieve without strategy. The first step towards successful sales operations is to develop foundational sales strategies. At its core, the strategy should involve building a strong network, finding quality leads, and making the most of email and social media marketing.
Adopt a ‘story-telling method’ of demonstrating why patients need the devices you sell. Empower the sales agents and referrals to use available data to pitch your products to physicians and patients. A strategy that leverages verifiable data dramatically increases the chances of success…a few of the most credible databases include:
- ZoomInfo
Although it requires a subscription, ZoomInfo is one of the most comprehensive and accurate databases of business information and contact data, including providers.
- Definitive Healthcare
Definitive Healthcare is a robust database that contains commercial intelligence on physicians, payers, and patients.
- Crunchbase
Crunchbase is a prospecting database containing comprehensive information about businesses in all sorts of industries, including hospital systems.
- NPPES
A public database of all active providers with National Provider Identifier (NPI) records. All information is filterable by taxonomy, location, and more, so it’s easy to drill down into healthcare specialties. Penrod has a Salesforce NPI Search component, making it easy to add new provider prospects into your campaigns, sales queues, and journeys.
- In-depth sales insights with advanced filters and variations
- Data to forecast market demand and estimate sales more accurately
- Improved territory management
- Automated inventory resupply, contract management, and commission management
- Customizable price rules, discount planning, and product quotes
- Frequency of HCP Meetings
- Frequency of HCP Workshops
- HCP Follow-Up Velocity
- Conversions
- New Customer Accounts
- Existing Customer Sales
- Sales Team Knowledge Quotient
- Contracting Time
- Sales per Product
Step 2
Enable Your Medical Device Sales Team For Success
When the sales team finishes strategizing and charting strategies, the next step is more practical. A medical device sales team or agents need to know the products they are selling well. There is no room for vagueness or ‘not knowing’ when a potential customer asks a question about the product.
Sales enablement is the process of training or educating the sales reps and sales team to understand the product, how you sell, and who you sell to. Salespeople will interact with medical device subject matter experts, so competence is paramount.
The key to building trust between the customer and the sales rep is presenting accurate and consistent information. In addition, staff should commit to updating their knowledge about the products as frequently as possible. With the up-to-date knowledge, marketers can approach potential customers with greater confidence and success.
Step 3
Find the Right medical device CRM Software
Today, medical device sales team require customer relationship management (CRM) software to collect, manage, and maintain customer data. The right CRM software can help the sales team to analyze, maintain, organize, and index opportunities, prospects, contracts, pricing, inventory, and more.
A medical device CRM is critical to ensuring efficient operations. As technology advances, the CRM is the standard for improving consistency and developing winning sales strategies.
There are many more platforms that offer the basic features a medical device sales team needs for efficient operations. Salesforce Sales Cloud and Health Cloud are two of the most flexible customer data management platforms for medical device companies. Features include:
Step 4
Set Up Analytics
A significant amount of raw data is required to make business decisions that grow revenue, increase efficiency, and develop automation. The marketplace is evolving. Physicians have multiple ways to quickly discover – locally or abroad – devices that meet their patient’s goals. Configuring an analytics engine that make data actionable is vital.
Setting up the correct analytics for your business requires research into the things that are important to your sales and leadership teams. A few of the most important metrics to consider are:
Setting up the right analytics will help the sales operations team accurately forecast revenue and sales goals. The data insights will help them identify potential opportunities and threats, and compare different market approach techniques to discover the ones that work best.
Step 5
Optimize the Sales Process
The success of a sales operations team is ultimately measured by how much the sales team can close. Therefore, at the core of their operations is the actual step-by-step process of making a sale. Documenting (and even implementing) a standardized sales process can be challenging for sales operations teams.
Unless the team sits down and spends time to streamline the sales process, success may be out of reach. Sales processes differ by territory, customer personas, sub-industry, and sales model. However, the sales and marketing teams must use sales processes tailored to different customer personas.
Sales processes are often fluid. However, for a growing medical device company to succeed, it must have a consistent sales closing process. This makes the sales process quicker, both for the sales agent and the customer.
The sales team can improve sales processes with data collected by the marketing, customer service, and sales teams. Today, medical device companies fine-tune their sales operations processes over many years to eliminate bottlenecks and hurdles in different situations.
Conclusion
Technology is an integral part of the sales operations process at successful medical device companies. Today’s sales ops professionals need tools that automate manual processes, unify data, and deliver new insights. The power of AI, data analytics, and personalization have made it easier for medical device manufacturers, distributors, and retailers to connect with and understand their customers – as long as they implement the right platform for their business.