If there were only a few numbers you could use to gauge your sales performance, what would they be? In thisvideo, Laura Livesey tells us which key performance indicator non-sales professionals should be looking at to judge their effectiveness.
ESCRS 2014: Cost-effective Ways To Attract New Patients [slideshare id=39230832&doc=escrs2014-cost-effectivemethodsofattractingnewpatients-140918033041-phpapp01] As part of a panel discussion with Mike Malley of the Centre for Refractive Marketing, based of Houston, Texas, the organisers of the Practice Development Days asked me to present on cost-effective ways to [...]
Why it's critical for team member to show leadership from the beginning of every sales interaction The sales process can be compared in many ways to a guided hiking trip. In this analogy, the salesperson is the guide and therefore must show leadership from the [...]
I often get the opportunity to meet with my training clients after training, and I often ask what challenges they had experienced in implementing the sales process I had taught their staff in the Consultations Skills and Teamwork Training course. A few years ago, I started to see a pattern that troubled me: Manager after manager was telling me that the most challenging part of the consultation was the information confirmation. Strangely, I've witnessed countless health care sales people drop the information confirmation as easily as they might brush dust off their suit jacket lapels. As I heard this, I began to think about how much better their results could have been, if they had only mandatorily enforced the inclusion of this critical component of the sales process.
The information confirmation statement represents the pivotal point in the sales presentation. It is that transitional step between listening and selling. It marks the shift between being attentive to our prospect’s feelings and confirming them. It gains us the right of passage from uncovering a problem to earning the right to solve it. In short, if a confirmation statement is done correctly, the sale is almost made before we even begin selling. It’s just that simple.
What are the four conditions that always must be satisfied to make a sale? Some people call these conditions the 4 whys. Low investment or straight re-buy products and services (like a bottle of water on a hot day or going for an annual dental exam) require only a perfunctory approach to answering these conditions. High-investment products and services (such as elective health care) may require a considerably more thorough approach to answering the four whys. This an illuminating part of our consultation skills and teamwork training course so pay close attention to what is revealed here, because it can really help you understand what your patients are thinking during a medical consultation.
The choice of target market, probably the most important decision facing a healthcare marketer, is based on recognising the differences among consumers and organisations within a heterogenous market. That choice, will also need to considered in the context of who you are competing against. However, selecting a target market must follow an understanding of not only the competitive context. You must first understand the environment for marketing decisions.
Very few customers, in a health care marketing environments, want to get right down to business. Usually, a customer wants to "buy" the person first, the company second, and the product third. Hence, there's very little advantage to launching straight into a discussion of either the company or the product/service you offer before the prospective patient is ready to buy you, personally. If they don't buy you, then whatever you say about the company or the product/service will likely fall on deaf ears.
Are they excited, bubbling with anticipation, positive and open-minded? Wherever they come from, they probably have a little apprehension. Could they be anxious, concerned, guilty, or even hostile? Maybe they’re afraid – of the situation, commitment, salespeople, the unknown. In this state, are they ready to make a buying decision?
First, you have to ask yourself, is my healthcare marketing sales process valid? In other words, does it provide an organised method towards achieving the consultation's objective (usually, a conversion from an initial appointment to a treatment booking)? Second, is it reliable? Is the process repeatable, consistently applied, and operable in the majority of situations?
