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Medtech Business Review | Thursday, March 10, 2022
Remote sales and support models can benefit the Medtech industry.
The top-performing medical technology companies are augmenting their field sales forces with remote sales groups to disrupt their traditional go-to-market strategies. The switch to a hybrid sales approach can unlock growth opportunities, reduce costs across care settings, and better meet the needs and preferences of physicians, hospital procurement departments, health system administrators, technicians, and other customers.
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Several factors are driving Medtech companies to build remote sales teams.
Remote interactions with medtech companies: In medtech companies, hybrid sales are increasing due mainly to an increase in the willingness of customers to interact remotely with sales representatives. Customers want options on how to engage with medtech companies. According to a survey, medical technology companies use more than one channel to engage physicians. This finding is in line with other B2B industries. In recent research, physicians prefer to communicate remotely for various reasons, including coordinating demos and scheduling deliveries or service appointments, learning about product updates, and accessing support through remote communication.
Technology: Although remote selling requires sales reps to make and receive phone and video calls, the technology required to do this well goes far beyond simply using a phone. Sales representatives should have a noise-canceling headset, a large external monitor for checking up on customer information and showing product brochures and videos to customers, a professional background display, and a dedicated phone number. It is possible to manage outbound dialing and route inbound calls with several computer telephony integrations (CTI) tools, such as those commonly used by contact centers, as well as gather call activity information for assessing the performance of individuals and groups. Dashboards can provide information on the number of inbound and outbound calls, connection rates, call lengths, and other important performance metrics and coaching tools.
Customer relationship management (CRM) tools can also work with these CTI systems to streamline call workflow. When a sales representative calls, the customer's information can be displayed automatically. A sales rep can automatically record the interaction history in the CRM after the call ends, so they do not have to manually enter the information.
Implementation considerations: It may benefit companies to develop and hire world-class commercial talent using a data-driven process. Remote sales require many of the same skills and attributes as field sales, but the specific talent requirements must meet the specific model requirements. The lead generators demonstrate a strong drive for new business and can place many more calls than are likely to yield results. As remote sales representatives work with field sales representatives, they excel at collaboration and teamwork. Maintaining longer-term account relationships and possessing an entrepreneurial spirit may make end-to-end remote sales reps successful. Hiring sales representatives in cohorts when possible is beneficial to foster camaraderie. The idea is to place the remote team in one office where members can share tips and tricks, participate in daily in-person huddles, and engage in regular roleplaying. The company must provide proper training to its sales representatives who work remotely all or part of the time if the company must look further afield for qualified talent. For key events such as training sessions and national sales meetings, teams must get together in person and by using online tools to build community and promote knowledge sharing, such as chat tools, file-sharing apps, and regular video-supported team meetings.
A company can create an end-to-end learning journey tailored to the emerging sales organization's goals and structure and embed it into general onboarding to develop new team members, including sales representatives and supervisors, and set them up for success. As part of this journey, learning modules must address the specific types of interactions that remote representatives will encounter daily.
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