Medical Device Sales Techniques to Keep Your Prospects Engaged

I’m sure that you’ve heard the expression “The truth hurts.” How about we start with a truth that discourages every venture B2B sales representative: Leads will not make a buying decision after the very first contact. You will have to remain in contact with them for a period before you can convert them into clients. This is no different from dating. Nobody gets married after the first date. So how do you stay in contact with prospects throughout the buyer’s journey to improve close rates? We’ve collected a number of different medical device sales techniques to do so.

Here are some medical device sales techniques for keeping in touch with your medical device potential customers:

Learn more about your potential customer

It’s hard to sell your medical device service or products if you do not have a clear understanding of who you are selling to. For that reason, it is vital that you take the time to determine precisely who your Buyer Personas are. Exactly what are their duties in the firm? What are their goals, obstacles, and responsibilities? Research the company that they work for. How many years have they been in this industry? Where are they located? What do they value? How many workers do they have? To start gathering this information, you can look at their company website or on their LinkedIn. Buyer personas help you understand your customers and potential customers better.

Develop and share useful content

Producing and sharing helpful content is one of the most effective ways of keeping your leads involved. Collaborating with your marketing team to create instructional content consistently will make it much easier for individuals that fit your Buyer Persona to find you and become qualified leads. Additionally, this will help your medical device marketing partner become an authority inyour business and help you build a connection with your target market. There are numerous types of content that your team can craft including articles, webinars, industry reports, case studies, books, and white papers. Each piece of content will fall under an awareness, consideration, or decision-making stage. Awareness, the potential buyer becomes aware they have a problem through educational content that speaks to them. The consideration stage helps them define their problem and encurages them to seek more information on how to solve their exact problem. Decision stage: the buyer is strongly evaluating the right provider/company to eliminate their problem with the best solution for them.

Know when to call or email

As a salesperson, you will have to choose whether to make the very first call to a prospect through phone or email. Both methods have their pros and cons. 66% of online marketers say that email provides a superior ROI. (Econsultancy)  Because an email is visual, it gives your leads time to ponder your deals. Your leads may also decide to bookmark your email or even print it for future reference. An email could also be forwarded to various other decision makers within the company. However, a drawback to sending out e-mails is that many people’s inboxes are swamped with numerous daily e-mails. If the recipient does not recognize your name, your email may wind up being neglected, removed, or even marked as spam. A phone call allows you to get to the prospect much faster, establish that you are human, and include a sense of individuality to your message. However, there is a chance that your phone call will not be picked up or the customer gets sidetracked. For that reason, there is no definitive way to make the first contact. You could try rotating between sending out e-mails and making telephone calls to see what best fits your target audience.

Determine the prospect’s interests and hobbies

One of the best methods of getting in touch with your potential customers is to speak about their passions, pastimes, roles, and personalities. You can learn more about the prospect’s hobbies by taking a look at their social media accounts. For example, if you are both followers of ‘Designated Survivor,’ you can mention the series at some point in your discussion. Aside from hobbies and interests, you might also want to have a look at their work background. Ask relevant questions like, “How has it been transitioning from Finance to Admin?” Referring to your lead’s interests throughout your discussions will make it easier to develop a connection and subsequently make sales. Sales is all about relationship building. Building trust, adding value and spending time developing a connection before asking for the sale.

Cut the formality

As you learn more about your potential customers, you can “let your hair down” and embrace a much more laid-back approach to your interaction. This will make it less complicated to create person-to-person connections with your prospects. Make sure not to take this laid-back approach too far, as it can have the adverse effect on your prospects not taking you seriously. Use appropriate capitalization, punctuation, and spelling at all times. Here are some examples: Too Formal: “I’ve just noticed your interest in medical device CRM software. I thought you might want to read this report.” Too casual: “Yo Percy. Take a look at this dope report on medical device CRM software application.” Balanced: “Hey Percy, hope you’re doing well! Check out this awesome report on medical device CRM software.” A fantastic publication that covers this subject is called Getting Naked by Pat Lencioni. In this guide, the author presents a cutting-edge method to customer service that produces uncommon levels of trust and loyalty from customers. Lencioni tests service providers to be entirely transparent and vulnerable with leads to circumvent the three anxieties that undermine customer loyalty. Produced for internal or external experts, consultants or any individual long term-customers, Getting Naked offers practical, actionable tools in order to help visitors eliminate the three fears and gain a long-lasting competitive advantage.

Don’t be scared of voicemail

80% of phone calls go to voicemail, and 90% of first time voicemails are never returned. (Martech)   If you call your leads and they do not answer, you may be tempted to hang up and move on to the next call. Don’t do that! Voicemails can be a deceptively effective component of your sales process. Introduce yourself and tell the prospect that you are following up on a previous call or email. You could then mention you are sharing a valuable resource to their email. When your prospects recognize your name, they are more likely to listen to your voicemail. When leaving a voicemail, reiterate the business value you are offering or add quick insights on how you can help improve their business.

Nurture them with emails.

If your leads do not make a purchasing decision immediately, keep following up with them through email, phone, or social media at least once or twice a week. Make sure all your e-mails provide content that deals with challenges your leads or their business might be experiencing. You could include content such as white papers, case studies, reports, or blog posts that your potential customers may find informative in the e-mails you send to them. Email is still relevant today. 64% of B2B marketers say their email marketing strategy was effective for meeting business goals…” (HubSpot Research) 

The Bottom Line

All of the lead nurturing ideas provided above belong to a more substantial body of marketing and sales strategies known as the Inbound Methodology. Your medical device business can implement Inbound right into your existing sales and marketing efforts to generate even more leads, qualify them, and close more sales. Doing this alone can be daunting. At Responsify, we team up with medical device experts to offer strategy, support, and assistance in implementing the methods discussed above. By collaborating, we help companies bring in brand-new website visitors and convert them into qualified leads and pleased customers. If you would like to shorten your prospects’ sales cycle, do not hesitate to request your free strategy session now. In that session, we can help you to review your assets and provide you free insights to determine what the best plan of action is for you and your company.