Being in a business that does not sell directly to the end-user is quite a different playing field than working in consumer sales. For me, the biggest challenge has always been the lack of control in regard to selling to the end-user (the patient).
When I was the marketing director at an orthotics lab several years ago, I faced this obstacle every day when working on plans for the sales team. Our boss would consistently want to secure more orders from existing clients. This is a reasonable demand when just looking at it on a surface level, right?
The problem – we have no control over the marketing and sales success of the physician practices who order from us. If they’re not successfully bringing in new patients and/or running a healthy dispensing program, we wouldn’t see more orders. It didn’t matter if we secured another client; if they weren’t prescribing, we weren’t growing.
This is exactly why we have witnessed strategies utilized by Big Pharma and others; to send sales reps into practices and incentivize docs to prescribe more of products, “x, y, z.” As a B2B company, there are several elements out of our control, but what we can control are the strategies in which we supply our clients with the tools and resources to help them market to their patients.
Ask yourself: once we land a new account, how much are we investing in their success? Think of all the time and energy you are putting into marketing and sales to acquire more clients. Consider reallocating some of that time and those marketing dollars to investing in programs that elevate the success of your clients.
There are different levels to which you get involved, and the types of materials you would provide your practices totally depends on the nature of your product; but here is a short list of communication tools that should be or could be be in your practice marketing tool kit:
Standard collateral (brochures, flyers, posters, rack cards, etc.)
Educational videos for practice waiting rooms; you can also place these videos online and provide practices an embed code so they can showcase the video(s) on their website
Website Verbiage
Suggested verbiage and images for social media posts / ads
Post Cards
Email Templates
A list of keywords they can use for Adwords and SEO
You could take this to even higher levels by reworking the job description of your account managers. If you have people who crush it in sales, you don’t want to take them away from selling, but most of the time, the sales rep is the account manager.
Consider creating a cooperative team of sales reps and account managers who are, really, B2C marketing professionals. These experts can be assigned to certain accounts and work as a constant marketing resource for their assigned practices. They would help to ensure new and current clients are growing and sales reps can continue to do what they do best – close.
Getting a new account doesn’t mean jack if those practices aren’t dispensing. Invest in the success of your clients.
Thoughts? Questions? Email Me!
Sarah Breymeier: beheard@podiatrymeetings.com
-Sarah Breymeier