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Objective: Launch Diagnostic Product into the Hospital Lab Market
Challenge:
A multinational global healthcare company and leader in the diagnostic market operated a sales model that functioned with an account manager as the primary contact point with its customers. These representatives had sales responsibility for more than two dozen complex products, both seasonal and non-seasonal. If a lab was interested in learning more about a specific product, the account manager would bring in a product specialist. Because the account manager was responsible for so many products, sales time and focus on the seasonal product were diluted, causing the product to lose market share and the company to lose its market dominance in this product category. In an effort to regain share in this growing market, the company launched an improved version of the product and sought a strategy that included a focused, specialty sales team to sell this product and a system to measure the results.
Solution:
SalesForce4Hire® worked with the client to implement a Sales Prototype®. This prototype determined: 1) would the product fail fast if pulled out of the account manager’s bag, 2) would it be a marginal product, or 3) would it be worth pursuing and scaling up. Employing our patented Sales Accelerator System® to analyze the market and sales cycle, it was determined that a dedicated, direct sales team should be responsible for the seasonal product, and that the market required consistent time and focus throughout the year, not just during the product’s peak season.
Numerous individuals and departments were targeted as key touch points in the sales cycle. Originating with two “beta” sales reps, the new sales team, managed by SalesForce4Hire, was required to sell not only to clinical laboratories, but also to purchasing departments and distributors. The SalesForce4Hire LLC team focused on pricing, reimbursement and value propositioning to gain acceptance from the hospital to convert to our client’s products.
Once the customer agreed to convert their products based on clinical performance, the sales specialist was then charged with gaining agreement from the hospital purchasing department. In some instances, the hospital may have had a preexisting GPO or IDN contract in place that prevented or limited the lab’s ability to convert to the product. At this point, the sales specialist would then work with the client company’s corporate account manager to overcome the contractual hindrance.
Meanwhile, the project manager – who was also one of the original two sales specialists – tracked and communicated field activity reports, customer and competitive information and sales metrics reports via weekly conference calls and email. This focused, real-time customer and project status feedback provided crucial information that allowed the client to proactively develop sales and marketing strategies that further contributed to sales growth and customer satisfaction.
Result:
Our client benefitted from rapid sales growth in territories that had implemented a SalesForce4Hire, LLC sales specialist. The l account managers who were not assigned a sales specialist during the initial prototyping launch began realizing the benefits of co-promotion and requested a SalesForce4Hire sales specialist be added to their territory.
Encouraged by the return on investment of the Sales Prototype, the client company has expanded the sales specialist team three times, with a fourth expansion on the horizon. Each territory reached profitable status within approximately six to eight weeks, and expansion occurred only after the existing territories were self-funding. Based upon the proven success of our model, they are planning to more than double the size of the current team within the next fiscal year.
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