8 min reading time

As originally asked by Simon Sikorski, M.D.

How effectively do you prove to doctors that your medical device can improve clinical outcomes, make them more efficient… and get them more money?

Have you been in a meeting with a doctor and he tells you right away? … “Stop Talking… how do I make money with this piece of equipment?”

What do you do at that point?

Memorize the equation: More patients = More cases = More money for Doctor = Happier Doctor = More Sales for YOU

In order to demonstrate how your medical device (with your help) will generate more revenue for the doctor you need …

A marketing strategy for his medical practice to attract more patients & increase case volume. Since 2002, I’ve been helping device companies organize strategies to help their clients build their practices and increase their case volumes, especially to surgical centers!

Each case can be attributed to thousands of dollars in profits for the doctor. Never forget that.

You also need a follow-through-plan to make every patient into an evangelist of the doctor and his practice – it’s called Doctor Reputation Management. Think about whether you’d like the patients spreading awareness through social media about the doctor’s expertise (not just the technology).
You want your medical device company to be associated with the top doctors in the industry. Having THEIR patients exalt them raises the reputation of YOUR medical device company. More patients talking = more patients for cases = more money for doctor. It’s just a matter of ensuring patients are talking via social media channels.

And you also need a way to make the medical device the sexiest thing in that doctor’s office! How? Attribute the success of the practice to the clinical prowess of the doctor. From the moment the technology was acquired the doctor’s clinical outcomes improved, his patients started singing about him. Happy doctor = guarantee the word will spread to other doctors.

That’s how the doctors and YOU can make more money.

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Gary Welch
Big Picture Guy at Welch S&P LLC
This is good discussion and timely. Joe Hage has recently asked me to work on a couple of projects that members of this group have indicated were big issues for them. Leading the pack was “How can I create opportunities for my company?”. I have been sending emails out to some of the members asking them to contact me with ideas of how we can use the 175,000 members of this group to help. Thanks, Simon for providing a good discussion that helps address this issue.

Jerrold Shapiro
President and CEO, Fem-Medical LLC
Simon, I’ve had very talented and experienced sales representatives fail to sell this product. If the doc is entrepreneurial and willing to try something new, it’s possible to make one sale. Then the doc gets so excited by the great clinical results and new revenue that they tell other docs who are their friends. Word of mouth from a trusted source seems necessary to sell this product. If I had to pick one key, it would be to have enough money to pay key opinion leaders to use then promote this product, analogous to Seth Godin’s “spritzers” in his book, “Purple Cow” on marketing.

Simon Sikorski, M.D.
Digital Marketing Director for Competitive Business. Skyrocketing Sales via Digital Lead Gen, SEO, PPC & SoMe Strategy
Jerrold, well done! That’s a lot of income for the docs and savings for the payers. For the patients… that’s an intense savings.

What would you say is the most important key to market development in your case? (If you only had to pick one)

Just keep it focused on what the representative can do or what you can do as a company to empower that representative to be more effective at selling.

Jerrold Shapiro
President and CEO, Fem-Medical LLC
Simon, we’ve discussed many times that a doctor looks at a new medical product not just for the revenue and patients it can bring into their practice, but in comparison to what their existing products are generating. In the decade that I have transitioned from inventing medical devices to selling them, I have learned that doctors do a calculation I’ll call “return on time.” For example, a gynecologist in Manhattan can do one procedure in five minutes and get reimbursed $115, or do another procedure with our device in 15 minutes and get reimbursed $220. The physician will calculate that she can earn $1,380 per hour doing the first procedure, and $880 per hour doing our procedure, so at first blush she’ll choose the one with the higher hourly amount. But our procedure can be done by anyone medically trained, not just physicians, with supervision by the physician and maybe a minute for the doc to come into the exam room, review the data and talk to the patient; in that case the doc’s return on time for our procedure is $13,200 per hour of their time, making it much more attractive.

Visits to a doctor are confidential for a reason – to protect the patient’s privacy. Sometimes its just a matter of embarrassment, as for women who urinate involuntarily whenever they laugh, cough, sneeze or do anything to spike their intra-abdominal pressure, aka female stress urinary incontinence. Sometimes the patient doesn’t want their life insurance company to know that they have come down with a life-shortening condition. Sometimes an employee doesn’t want their employer to know that they are not as capable of doing their job as they once were. So not every patient is going to be blowing the doctor’s horn, as that would reveal the kind of doctor they saw and perhaps reveal the severity of their medical condition. For the self-pay cosmetic procedures that you have promoted, patients may be proud that they could afford a facelift, will want the accolades from their friends and may share the name of, or even boast about, their doctor. But I don’t think you can generalize that to all medical specialties.

Simon Sikorski, M.D.
Digital Marketing Director for Competitive Business. Skyrocketing Sales via Digital Lead Gen, SEO, PPC & SoMe Strategy
Not this time Joshua. I’ve always been going to the conferences to connect with 5-6 folks anyway. A few hundred is too much. A few thousand is overkill. I also already heard half the presentations from the representatives of the big companies.

For a few thousand bucks I can travel to at least 10 different local meetups and get more done.

I’m more interested in the startups, the ideas, the beginning of something. I go to local networking meetups to do business and collaborate.

If I want to learn, I’ll hire a consulting company.

In my opinion, and this is only my opinion, when startups go to the big conferences they get a whopping influx of ideas from companies that already made it… and instead of innovating … they follow the path of the large companies … or try to pitch their ideas in the hopes of being acquired.

There are few companies that want to truly innovate healthcare. My goal is to find more such companies.

Sorry for the late Friday rambling 🙂

Joshua Patton, MBA
E-Commerce and Digital Marketing Management
I like where Gerald is going though, it’s a complete system. Customer satisfaction is reliant on every aspect of the presentation and experience. The reps could always engage the staff with attempts to make them evangelists as well, or offer seminars like Gerald mentioned. Personally I always value the opinion of employees in regards to the quality of their work environment, happy employees creates happy customers. Also it’s just another channel of social media support but it leverages their own reputation. I think your idea of having an entire conference would be great especially in regards to developing social capital. MD&M east is coming up, will you be attending Simon?

Gerald Glascock
Sales Training – Events & Keynote Speaking – Handwriting Analysis Body Language – Professional Image Coach – Uforia
I do workshops for salesreps of all walks of life. Teaching the science of negotiations, non verbal communications and business etiquette increases the efficiency and productivity of sales teams. Knowing what it means when a client or potential client places their hand on their face is telling a story. Where the hand is and what it is doing is just part of the chapter. Knowing the 15 body language signals and actions that automatically turn people off can be instrumental in increasing sales. There is a science to seating in negotiations and presentations.

If you misinterpret or ignore important nonverbal signals from your clients, customers or potential clients they probably will feel dissatisfied with the relationship you have tried to establish. You walk away thinking it is wonderful and they are on the phone calling your competition. How do you improve on your professionalism when you don’t know what to change? Outclassing the competition and building those relationships can mean the difference in a bonus at the end of the quarter or year.

It takes more than memorizing and practicing what exactly to say to come across as credible and convincing. You have to know if you are not improving yourself you can bet the competition is.

Simon Sikorski, M.D.
Digital Marketing Director for Competitive Business. Skyrocketing Sales via Digital Lead Gen, SEO, PPC & SoMe Strategy
Very true Gerald, but let’s bring it back to the medical device reps… what can they do?

I doubt a rep would go up to the doctor and say “BTW, there’s a workshop you should send your staff to to learn proper etiquette” 🙂

The question is … what else can we do to empower the representatives?

You’re much better off putting together an entire conference day where docs can connect with consultants, other doctors, medical device reps, and learn from each other. Let me know if you have ideas and how you can contribute.

Gerald Glascock
Sales Training – Events & Keynote Speaking – Handwriting Analysis Body Language – Professional Image Coach – Uforia
With Medical Offices, most patients complain of lack of business etiquette and while they love the Doctor, they won’t give a referral because of the staff’s lack of professionalism. If they do post on social media they won’t say where they are going and often ask for referrals from others where to go. I do a workshop/seminar teaching body language and business etiquette to turn employees into Ambassadors for the Office. Simple things staff can change in their body language that will convey compassion and trust. But if they don’t know what to change they will continue to send prospective patients to the competition.

HILARIO CASTILLO
Registered Nurse/Entrepreneur
Simon, I will contact you to discuss a syringe needle device I’m looking to launch into the market..

Thierry De Catheu
President, CEO, Co-founder of BIOTECH AGORA
Thank you Simon,

Effectively, it’s too bad that I couldnt make it for NY.Looks very interesting. I would have enjoy to join this meeting and meet with you.

Simon Sikorski, M.D.
Digital Marketing Director for Competitive Business. Skyrocketing Sales via Digital Lead Gen, SEO, PPC & SoMe Strategy
Be careful when you’re generalizing Joshua 🙂 Great questions though! 🙂

The doctors that have good social media strategy in place do end up having people “brag” about their experience. It’s all about the quality of the social media though.

What kinds of medical devices? Again, it’s up to the sales/clinical folks to train the doctors to provide a better experience to the patients overall. Then the reps and the medical devices end up taking the credit for the overall improvement in patient experience. So in reality only the doctor can alter the experience (or his/her staff) and not the medical device itself.

Personality of the doctor is a great topic by itself. In many cases medical device companies can fail miserably if the first doctors they sell to are not liked in their community. It comes back to the question… are medical sales reps qualifying the doctors they are selling to… or do they just want to make the sale?

Negative patient experience drives patients to other doctors. If a negative experience takes place, patients are not afraid to tie their experience to the new technology if they’re aware of what it is.

Getting foot in the door is a different topic for a different day.

Joshua Patton
E-Commerce and Digital Marketing Management
I don’t know about you but from what I generally observe people don’t brag about going to the doctor via social media, it’s more typical to be a word of mouth type of thing as it’s kind of private haha. With the wide variety of medical devices and ailments I am curious what kinds of medical devices can dramatically alter the experience of going to the doctor? Do you take into account the personality and characteristics of the Doctor? When I say that I mean how do you gauge whether or not selling to a doctor is justifiable. I would think that either way you would want to make the sale however do you think negative patient experience in regards to the doctor would lower the potential value of the product or manufacturer?

MAINLY I am interested in how you get your foot into the door. In researching leads I have found that getting your product into the office can be particularly difficult without extreme differentiation or advantage and even then there is much resistance to change.

On a related note you might enjoy this article on medical device start-up advice!
[http://lightfab.com/news/2012/medical_device_start-up_advice/|leo://plh/http%3A*3*3lightfab%2Ecom*3news*32012*3medical_device_start-up_advice*3/T5_0?_t=tracking_disc]

Jasper Lin
Product Manager
I’m looking for the ophthalmic sticks, which used to absorb liquid while surgery. If you have, please contact jasperlin86@gmai.com. I’d like to introduce your product into China.

Jasper Lin
PR

Thierry De Catheu
President, CEO, Co-founder of BIOTECH AGORA
Hi Simon,
Good analysis. Thanks. I am fully sharing your point of you . I have 30 years experience in France and Europe with this philosophy to make a physician or a medical center more attractive. If you answer the Doctor question: what I earn ? The cost won’t be anymore the issue.
That works well not only in U.S.
Best regards,
Thierry