Breaking down the medical device sales cycle – Stage One: Support

The sales cycle starts by gaining product support. The “decision-maker” is a group of people who must align to bring your product into the hospital.

In most situations, you will begin by earning the support of at least one physician. However, the more physicians interested in your product, the better. Identifying and targeting high-volume doctors to advocate for your product is beneficial. Gaining support from the physician head of the department is also incredibly helpful.

Furthermore, it would help to incorporate the department manager into the cycle. Usually, this individual submits the necessary paperwork to value analysis, which is where your product will seek approval.

In other situations, you may initiate the sales cycle with the supply chain department if you sell based on cost. The job of the supply chain department is to streamline the hospital’s ordering processes while showing cost savings. If your product can reduce catalog numbers the hospital needs to purchase, they will be interested. If you can eliminate other vendors from their system, that’ll make them want to work with you. Understanding that their motivation isn’t as clinically aligned as others in the decision-making process is important.

The key takeaway is that you must gain stakeholders’ support to succeed in value analysis.

What is value analysis specifically? Find out here: http://bit.ly/BITIP, or wait for our next post.