By Steve Sullivan, National Sales Director

One of the many business casualties of the pandemic is healthcare sales—its process, its people and its results.

Since March, the world has changed for people calling on providers, payers, life sciences or healthcare service, and technology companies. Their process has been upended. Sales teams have lost their normal way to encounter and engage buyers and decision-makers—conferences, seminars, lunches and in-person meetings are all but gone. Add to that, calling on those who are now forced out of their natural office habitat is all new territory.

This means we all have to adapt and change to a new relationship building and selling environment. This requires embracing new (or at least different) tools to get our message across and connect.

In some cases it’s using the ubiquitous video chat, which is great because it allows quick access without a formal meeting and gives both parties easy access to visuals and presentations. But many healthcare professionals are often in back-to-back-to-back Zoom meetings, which means we also need to work around Zoom fatigue.

This makes the highly customized content you create and deploy more critical than ever. Engaging customers with media that grabs their attention, is relevant to their challenges and is easily consumed is vital to getting your message across.

But this content must focus on the challenges your company solves and articulate the expertise you bring to the table. If you’re using content that only sells, it will be easily discarded. Customers will spend time with it if you make it worth their while.

We’re seeing customers use creative approaches such as attending a webinar and creating multiple assets (infographic, e-book, blog posts, interviews). Or creating hybrid presentations/proposals when you don’t know if you’ll have their attention again. And even creating proprietary information from research and surveys that are packaged around key, relevant results.

Pivot to a relevant, customer-first content strategy that matches the urgency of the moment. | With Q4 bearing down and 2020 needing its revenue goals met more than ever, business development and sales professionals need new marketing tools to help them pivot and adapt their process to this new normal.

(Image: Getty Images)

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