12 Engaging Content Ideas to Cover in the Initial Sales Meeting with a Hospital or Doctor

Planning great content for each sales meeting with hospital execs and physician leaders is equally, if not more, important than the actual meeting. Without a focused agenda, the right content, and a maniacal focus on progressing the relationship to the next step, you’ll be wasting everyone’s time.

In previous posts, we’ve talked about putting yourself in the shoes of your audience. This tactic helps orient the meeting around their needs instead of just yours. It creates the opportunity to transform how you are viewed, from just a vendor to a valued partner. It sets up a dynamic where you are listening and diagnosing rather than lecturing your prospect about your product or service.

We’ve also talked about the power in telling a story to keep your audience engaged and wanting more from you and your team.

Of course you’ll want to use time at your sales meeting to discuss your product, but try engaging your audience with other useful and interesting information.

​Healthcare marketing teams can empower their sales teams with data about the market, competition, and the prospect’s performance. Field based teams can use this content and data to create opportunities to learn and listen from your prospects throughout each meeting.

One of our favorite blogs on selling and marketing — ​Close.Io — compares your selling style to how you would approach a doctors’ appointment. The doctor (i.e. your prospect in this analogy) is the expert and you are seeking their advice. The more they listen, the better you feel!

Nobody’s walking into a doctor’s office and saying, “Okay, Doc. Here’s what I want you to do.”… Ultimately, prospects just want a salesperson they can trust. So if you want to succeed in sales, learn how to empower your prospects. Learn how to create value for the businesses. (Read the entire Close.Iopost)

Let’s dig deeper on how personalized data, focused on telling cohesive story, can help you deliver a successful kick-off meeting with your hospital or physician prospect.

​Here are 12 content ideas based on a provider’s actual business that you could incorporate into a first meeting that is guaranteed to generate lots of discussion, allow you to learn a ton more about your prospect and most likely to lead to many follow-up discussion on your path to closing the deal.

(1) The Basics

Start with a demographic overview of the provider to establish that you understand the basics of their practice. This is your first opportunity to confirm you did your research and you want to know more about their practice and business.

(2) Patient Demographics

Presenting a summary of key patient demographic data will create an opportunity to get the physician’s talking about their patient panel. After all, the patient is all the matters at the end of they.

​Ask what trends they notice, how their panel has evolved over time, and even what other types of patients they may be seeking to attract to their practice.

(3) Top Procedures

The financial health of a provider’s practice is paramount to their ability to continue to deliver care and serve their communities. Physician’s may be hesitant to talk about the finances so start by summarizing the top procedures performed to begin to understand the drivers of revenue and cost in their operation. Are their other procedures that aren’t in the top 5 that they enjoy doing or want to find ways to deliver more of certain types of care?

(4) Care Settings

Show a breakdown of where the provider delivers care — in the office, hospital or outpatient setting. This information will vary by the doctor’s specialty as primary care physicians obviously spend more time seeing patients the office and specialists likely perform more procedures. For specialists, the breakdown between inpatient and outpatient settings can impact practice revenue and create opportunities to discuss shifts in care delivery and other broader trends in their line of specialization.

(5) Their Team

You may be talking to the lead physician or practice owner but it’s helpful to acknowledge and get to know the rest of the team. Who else is part of the practice? What are their specializations? This creates an opportunity to get introductions to other influencers and stakeholders that should have a seat at the table or should be aware of your product or service.

(6) Hospital Affiliations

Your physician prospect may be employed by a local hospital or have an contractual affiliation or perhaps may simply choose to be privileged at a selection of hospitals in the community. It’s helpful to understand what their facility preferences are and where they chose to spend their time on procedures related to your product. Knowing this information will allow you to learn more information about the various hospitals where they practice and whether your product will be subject to centralized purchasing or value-based committees

(7) Shared Patients

Your physician prospect will be very interested to understand how their patients flow throughout their community of physicians and hospitals. The overlap with other specialities will shed light on how their patients’ are navigating their local healthcare system. It will also inform which types of relationships matter most as you discuss approaches to care coordination and the overall status of the doctor’s referral sources.

(8) Referral Relationships

After discussing which other specialities see the same patient as your provider prospect, next, dig in deeper to discuss which specific doctors are referring patients to their practice. Are these ordering doctor’s loyal or do they have other referral partners?

(9) Potential Referrals

Physicians are constantly looking for new sources of patient referrals. Who else in their community should know about their practice and their special abilities to treat certain types of patients?Knowing which doctors are sending patients to other specialists, similar to themselves, creates an opportunity for that practice to reach out and build new relationships and educate other doctors in the community.

(10) Industry Relationships

The Sunshine Act requires pharmaceutical companies and medical device manufacturers to disclose payments and gifts awarded to every physician. This information can inform discussions with healthcare providers about their attitudes towards these relationships. Not all payments are created equal. Some payments indicate deeper, more entrenched relationships.

(11) Their Competitors’ Industry Relationships

Your prospect will probably be curious to know about the industry relationships of other, similar specialists in their area. Highlight ways your product is different from the competition, and ways your product helps the physician during its use. Some of these companies may be your partners, in which case, try highlighting how your respective products work together.

(12) Quality Matters

As the US healthcare system transitions to value-based care, there is a wealth of quality metrics that are published about each provider. Cross-reference which facility your physician spends the most time at and bring to the table important metrics about quality and perhaps how you product contributes to maintaining or improving those scores.

Building in content to your sales meeting that helps get your prospects talking and ensures you get to listen and learn is a powerful sales strategy.

At Carevoyance we make it easy to access a plethora of data and intelligence on every healthcare provider.

​We also make it simple to automatically generate professional-looking content that can be incorporated into your sales decks, printed out in easy-to-read reports or even emailed to your prospects as a summary and follow-up to your discussion.

Bringing data to your first meeting will impress your contacts and establish your credibility as a value-add partner.

Originally published at www.carevoyance.com.