2018 poses many challenges for the healthcare industry, but especially for Marketing and Sales. The new buying mix, and with the industry lacking in technological advancements, many healthcare organizations still struggle with how to best connect with their consumers.
When Sales teams aren’t performing optimally, the entire organization can feel it. Not only economically, but from a brand integrity and customer experience perspective as well. Multi-channel engagement models, compliance mandates, and legislative uncertainty has made the medical sales environment extremely complex. As a result, Sales teams need a significantly expanded skill set and accompanying tools to effectively engage and build trust with their buyers in 2018.
While advances in technology have produced new tools to improve sales results, Sales is still wasting a lot of time on activities that don’t lead directly to new deals. In fact, 57% of Sales spends up to one hour per day on manual data entry. With consumer buying habits quickly evolving, Sales can only succeed by having the right processes, technologies, and training in place to do their job correctly and efficiently.
The primary goal of sales enablement is to increase effectiveness and efficiency for Sales teams, but how exactly? Though the benefits are endless, here are three ways sales enablement improves Sales:
Promotes Painless Onboarding and Training
Getting new Sales members trained and onboarded to a quota-carrying capacity faster means more opportunities generated, prospects engaged, and deals closed faster. But beyond training, Sales should also be continuously coached on new products, services, and industry data to ensure that they’re able to communicate the value proposition and effectively grasp customer pain points.
Sales enablement encompasses the activities, assessments, and requirements involved in acclimating, training, and engaging each new Sales person. It also allows for a more streamlined process and one central location for internal communications relative to industry or product news, the latest marketing content, or other organizational updates.
Elevates Sales Productivity
In this industry, sellers are lucky if they’re able to capture ten minutes of a physician’s attention. With an enablement solution, however, Sales can present content at both a regional and business unit level with version control in place to keep them compliant and on-message. This allows for effective, personalized content to engage more intelligently, and more efficiently.
Sales typically spends about 30 hours per month searching for and preparing sales materials. But, when Sales is spending their time selling and supporting their customers with an enablement platform rather than searching for content, the sales cycle becomes less strenuous.
Improves Close Rates and Focuses on Winning Bigger Deals
When properly enabled, Sales can focus on a prospect’s needs rather than searching for general sales content. With a stronger focus on true relationship building, greater trust is established with the prospective customer—and it’s well known that trust drives revenue, thus increasing win rates.
Enterprises are increasingly realizing that properly managing content accelerates the sales cycle, so much so, their enabled sales reps are experiencing: 34% reduced search time for content, 20% more time spent in front of prospects, and 28% increase in win rates.
Since Sales teams are the primary revenue generators for any organization, sales enablement ensures that the strategy, resources, and support are in place to optimize both the Sales force and, subsequently, revenue and ROI.
It’s a real challenge when life sciences organizations believe that technology may not be affecting their industry, or that their industry is immune from it. Yes, the healthcare industry is usually five years behind technological advancements, but to remain truly innovative in an ever-evolving landscape, life sciences companies need to equip their go-to-market teams with the best solutions possible.
Having the necessary infrastructure in place will allow life sciences companies to hit the ground running and provide Sales with a strong chance for success in 2018. Effectively implementing and refining different programs requires dedication and planning, but when done right, it produces results that make it all worthwhile. It inevitably takes precision medicine, or rather precision selling, to a whole new level.
