5 min reading time

I found an interesting paper from group member Tony Signorelli which illustrated the difference between medical device selling into physician practices and into hospitals and Integrated Delivery Networks (IDNs).

When selling to physician practices, the problems you’re solving are:

• Not enough money — budgets are tight, costs are high, insurance cuts their payments, and cash flow is always a challenge.
• Not enough time — the house is on fire, they are working way too much, and patient requirements are never ending.
• Exhausted and overwhelmed — beyond practicing medicine, physician owners are frequently exhausted and overwhelmed with administration, HR, facilities management, and all the other vagaries of busyness that afflict all small business owners.
• Healing people — they want to do well by their patients.

Tony writes,

“If reps are positioning to these customers like they do to an independent physician-owned practice, the positioning will fail because in the new environment, your product can’t deliver those things to the IDN employee.

• Save time? No matter how successful, you will not reduce the physician’s time at work because now they are a full-time employee.
• Make more money? No matter how successful, you will not create more income for them because as an employee, they are on a compensation package, the core of which is a salary.
• Reduce the overwhelm? Unlikely — the patients keep coming, there is more need than they can meet, and in all honesty, most of the overwhelm probably left when they sold the practice in the first place.”

The point of Tony’s paper (available at http://medgroup.biz/signorelli) is how to build the sales force of tomorrow.

But I want to take today’s conversation in a different direction.

You might say training clinicians on product use is a kind of sales interaction. Beyond this, and unless the physician is part of a value analysis committee, how much time should sales reps spend with physicians who work in the hospital if their influence on purchasing decisions is minimized?

What is your organization doing?

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Two Job Opportunities: Quality Assurance Engineer and a Manufacturing Engineer

It’s for a medical device startup based out of Scottsdale, Arizona for my friends at https://theneolight.com.

If you apply, tell them Joe Hage sent you.

Good luck!

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Make it a great week.

Joe Hage
Medical Devices Group Leader

P.S. Ken Grant guessed a Patriots Super Bowl victory with 34 points over the Falcons and will be my guest at the fifth annual 10x Medical Device Conference. Join us in May (San Diego). See http://medgroup.biz/10x for details.

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Mike Strange
Medical Device Marketing Expert | Creator of Strategies & Processes that Align Sales and Marketing Organizations
The dynamics of selling/presenting into healthcare institutions-whether hospitals or general practice is changing rapidly. The traditional field based model of reps driving door to door with no plan other than hoping to get 90 seconds with a physician has failed because its incredibly inefficient. Companies have to do more with fewer reps. The winners are moving that “prospecting” function to an inside model to drive massive activity and leveraging the information gathered so field reps are placed in highly leveraged conversations at the right time when they are ready to buy. I’d love to hear thoughts on this-if there is a better way, I want to know about it. Thanks.

Mark Maloney
CEO, Venops l Experts in Exclusion List Monitoring l Patient Privacy Protection l Open Payments Monitoring
Would be interesting to see a study of personality differences of young hospital employed physicians vs those that choose private practice.

Deborah Dellavechia
President of Minerva Custom Products, LLC
Presentation to surgeons with an organized method of displaying and carrying your products helps! Our company makes demo cases for medical device companies…minervacustomproducts.com

G M Butcher
CEO Emeritus, IRQS
The group title should include the phrase ‘Sales and Marketing’ as it does little to promote exchange of info about devices.

Shaun Pasdon
Helping people & healthcare organizations achieve their desired outcomes | Sales Professional | Millennial Sales Mentor
Very insightful article. Thanks for sharing!

Chloe Lu
Owner – Sanwell Medical. Medical disposables global supplier.
Totally understandable how busy physicians are, here sometimes we make an appointment with one physician a few months before. But disease can’t wait that long. More physicians are needed.

David K. Hart
Medical Products Sales Representative
Good point about “if the physician is part of a value analysis committee”.

Ruben del Amo
Country sales executive at Orthokine Spain
It may depend on the simplicity of the treatment or the device that we want to sell and the benefit that can bring to them.

Larry Brewton
AXON-II HELPS DOCTORS SOLVE CHRONIC PAIN PROBLEMS
Excellent article..I loved it!

Martin Berka
IoT systems: putting it all together
It’s definitely more difficult convincing physicians to themselves use a product that they have to back and learn to use, versus inclining them to prescribe something. That aside, the less influence they have, the better the rep will do pursuing other avenues. For the good of patients, reps should never stop talking completely – but I know a few physicians who are sick of sales reps and would not mind being left alone. That perspective may vary – certain specialists might welcome exposure to new things in their field. Either way, I would ask the doctors.

Alessandro Borroni
COO at Aucta Technologies
every physician has the potential to be an advocate. It’s just the time you spend with him should be spent learning who his/her contacts are within the decision-making committess in the facility, and ask for introductions to this people. that carries much more weight than if you seek them out yourself.

Neda Al-Saadi
Medical Devices Professional
How many physicians are developing premium patient care within a shared practice? Does this allow optimization of equipment and patient care?

Sherri Sabino
Patient Education Specialist at Health Monitor Network
Lunch and learns allow you to have one on one time with the Physicians. They are more receptive when they are on a break and can eat while you talk.

Bill Harwood (LION)
Director at Berlage, LLC.
An important factor in my approach is the strength of my aura or the electrical field which surrounds my body. I have brought two people and countless animals back from death simply by use of my energy. This is beyond anything most physicians understand at any level.

Bill Harwood (LION)
Director at Berlage, LLC.
I have a very highly developed alleopath who is a friend and often my appointment is scheduled at the end of his day so that we can discuss things that are going on in the world. I supply a wide range of books to both my physician (including all of the homeopathic classics, many by Maisimond Panos, who was my teacher), a 3rd generation homeopath. I also have a Chinese Traditional Medicine physician who came here at age 4 and grew up with an herbalist CTM family. He then went thru the standard practice here so is both a licenced Alleopath and many other things. Acupuncture is a basic part of his approach, along with herbs, etc. If you do not know a great deal about your own health, it is not possible to have a really productive relationship with today’s AMA crew since they average about 15 minutes per patient and have 2-3,000 patients so they have no chance of really learning about their family histories, diet, etc, which are crucial. I also am very careful about what I eat/drink

Bill Harwood (LION)
Director at Berlage, LLC.
I was born and have spent most of my life on farms where we took care of all our own health problems. I delivered all my daughters, suture up wounds, straighten backs, put arms and legs back in their sockets, etc on a regular basis. I also have studied with a very talented homeopath who taught the Post-graduate course for Alleopaths who have finished their internships and wish to learn from real healers. I have known many real healers and have very elevated discussions with them. That is the way it is for anyone in this world. You can seek out intelligent, experienced people and have rich relationships/conversations with them. Now that all of the good medical schools have well-developed websites I use them, Johns Hopkins, Harvard, Duke are among my favorites but since I use a search engine that uses a dozen other search engines, simultaneously and delivers their results by relevance, identifying their sources and removing all “adult content” (porn) these are often helpful.