How to Get Your Sales Team to Guide Physicians to the Right Marketing Services

When physicians successfully market themselves and their services, it can be a very helpful strategy for your company. It’s the concept of reaching the patient via the practice—patients are more likely to seek out and trust information from their physicians.

Reaching the patient via the practice is a win for both the physician and your company, because patients get the information they need to make important health decisions. This helps physicians get more of the right patients, which in turn helps your company sell more medications and devices.

You need to be able to be able to explain the concept to physicians to get them on board with the idea of marketing. That is where your sales force comes in. They are already in front of doctors to sell medical devices, and have developed a good relationship with physician clients over time.

However, it’s not enough to simply hand the sales managers a packet of information, send them on their way, and expect them salespeople to talk to physicians about marketing. Even if your sales force is on board with the idea, you haven’t empowered them with enough information to make the pitch effectively.

The sales force is already under a lot of pressure to meet sales quotas within specific periods of time. If you don’t make it easy for them to share information about marketing, many salespeople probably won’t bother. They aren’t making any money from it, so why should they take valuable time to pitch a concept they don’t even fully understand?

If you want to get your sales force on board with connecting physicians with a marketing partner and empower them to do so effectively, follow these steps.

1. Show them how it strengthens relationships with physicians.

You have to “sell” the sales force on the benefits of physician marketing if you want them to provide that information to physicians. Although the salespeople don’t directly profit from convincing physicians to market themselves, it can help them to build trust with their clients. It shows clients that you care about the success of the practice, not just about making sales.

When salespeople can show that they understand marketing and can point physicians to a trusted marketing partner, physicians are also more likely to see them as a valuable resource, rather than someone trying to sell them something. This is how salespeople can strengthen their relationships with physicians.

While this might not immediately help salespeople make more sales, it may make the physician more likely to stick with your company over time, which creates more sales opportunities in the long run.

However, getting salespeople on board is just the first step. Salespeople aren’t marketers, and they don’t have time to learn all there is to know about marketing. You have to distill the information down to make it easy for them to pitch.

2. Distill the information down to the key points.

When it comes to the details of marketing a medical practice, your marketing partners are the best people to make that pitch, anyhow. The sales team just needs enough information to be able to get the conversation started. Those key points might include basic services offered, a starting price range, a link to the marketing partner’s website and offerings, and contact information. You might also throw in a couple of statistics to point out how marketing can be beneficial practices, but keep it simple.

Once you’ve got the key points nailed down with your marketing partner, you need to streamline the process so that the sales team knows exactly what to say.

3. Streamline the information and handoff process to make it quick and easy.

Providing key points is very helpful in empowering the sales team to have these conversations, but you can take steps to streamline the process even further so that the sales reps know exactly what to say (and what not to say).

As you are probably well aware, there are certain legal and ethical boundaries that medtech companies need to stay within when discussing marketing with physicians. It is not appropriate for a sales rep to offer a discount or “deal” on marketing services—they are simply referring physicians to a marketing partner that can help.

The key is developing a spiel that is quick, easy, and makes the sales reps look good. If you make the information easy to deliver and it helps to build trust with physicians, sales reps will understand the benefit and have those discussions with clients. Then, everyone wins.