Introducing: Healthcare Idea Email from Hammock | Like Hammock Inc.’s popular Idea Email, the new Healthcare Idea Email briefly explores one topic, every other week. Learn more about the new Healthcare Idea Email at the bottom of the page.
Click to to receive your Healthcare Idea Email from Hammock.
Idea: Why Do B2B Healthcare Companies Ignore Customer Needs?
By John Lavey | Hammock President and COO
If you were to see the contents of the neatly stacked piles of papers that cover my office credenza, you might wonder if I’m a collector of sales presentations aimed at healthcare providers. I’m not. As part of our work with several clients on sales presentation and product launch systems, a team of Hammock writers and artists have examined every presentation we could get our hands on. For the past two years, when we weren’t working with clients on perfecting their presentations, we’ve spent countless hours studying the pitches of their competitors.
What we’ve discovered isn’t pretty.
These presentations are packed full of impossible-to-decipher charts and graphs. More alarming, the pitches commit what we believe to be the two unpardonable sins of presenting:
- They ignore what keeps the potential buyer up at night; and
- They focus on features of their service, not on the solution needed by the buyer.
Ironically, the solutions these companies offer are the exact ones hospitals and healthcare systems need as they transform their business models to face the changing healthcare landscape.
So what should presenters focus on? Here are our suggestions.
- Articulate prospects’ problems. They are facing a crisis, and they don’t know what to do. Find a way to tell a story that accurately states the challenges they face.
- Solve their problems. Providers are asked to deliver outcomes. Show how you have helped others do the same. Avoid an overly detailed discussion about your product or service so you can focus on the only thing they care about: You can solve their problems.
- Sell with stories, not statistics. Chances are, over the course of a sales process, you’re going to be presenting to a group with various levels of understanding beyond their assigned roles of clinician, technologist or administrator. Detailed data isn’t going to resonate with all audiences, so find opportunities to tell stories that make your point. Be prepared to tailor stories to capture the attention of different audiences.
- Explain the new reality. End the presentation by painting a picture of how the provider’s problem is solved with your solution. Research shows that attention to integration and post-sale implementation is an important part of the story. Help them imagine how much sleep they’ll get when they can overcome their problem—with your solution.
Photo: Thinkstock
About the new Healthcare Idea Email | As our popular Idea Email has a large number of healthcare marketers who subscribe, it did not surprise us that the No. 1 request we’ve received is to “offer more ideas about healthcare.” So we have. In addition to Idea Email, on other weeks you can receive the Healthcare Idea Email that is focused exclusively on healthcare-related marketing, media and content trends and topics. You can visit the Healthcare Idea Email archive and subscribe for your own copy here.