How to Increase Demand for Your MedTech Products
You have a steady stream of business flowing, but in the dynamic world of MedTech products, you know that business can change at a moment’s notice. Knowing how to increase demand for one’s product and earn new business is extremely important.
Do Your Research
Healthcare data analytics, Internet searches, and B2B cold-calling can give you a lot of information about a physician and a territory. Before investing time and money into increasing demand for your product or service, look at the facts and figures about the current market.
Is the marketplace saturated? How do feature and value propositions compare across the competitive landscape? What does the product development funnel look like for your own product as well as your competitors?
Answers to these questions and more will help inform not only the level of investment you should consider for increasing demand but will also help manage expectations of the type of return you can expect to deliver.
Acces Sales Conversation Starters
Deliver Value
Every commercial team should be focused on the value their products are services are delivering. It’s what makes you stand above the competition and what increases your demand for add-on or repeat business.
Delivering value is especially topical and relevant given recent trends in the healthcare industry to shift from paying for units to paying for clinical outcomes. In a recent Forbes article spotlighting healthcare predictions for 2019, Reenita Das, Senior Vice President of Healthcare and Life Sciences at Frost & Sullivan, writes:
Globally, 2019 will be a year of value-based care as we expect the ‘outcomes-based care’ focus to globalize. This will trigger maturation of risk-sharing in solution contracting between providers and drug/device original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), driving business value for providers.
The final agreed-upon price of a product is just one component relied upon to determine if a healthcare product or service is delivering value. Other contributors to the value equations include the patient experience, clinical outcomes, physician or staff feedback.
Listen to your customer and address any concerns associated with the product, service experience or clinical outcomes. Follow-up to ensure that the product is being used correctly and that the results of use are in line with the original value proposition.
Rethink Your Marketing
Marketing plays a huge role in selling a product and in increasing demand for a product. Think of ways to reinvent or reinterpret how you describe your product with visually appealing print and electronic images, creative by-slogans, decorative packaging, and refreshing value-driven apps, websites, and videos.
If you have a story to tell, share it. Even better if your customers, advocates, and evangelists can help you tell that story. Your future prospects are more likely to convert if they can learn about your product or service, along with its benefits, directly from current customers who can attest to that value proposition and describe the impact it’s had on their patients or their organization.
Creatively Expand Your Team’s Perspective
Hiring an expert, that is versed in a specific phase of product development or brings to the table a unique perspective on ancillary target markets can lead to additional demand. It is important to obtain outside perspective from physicians, hospitals, and patients.
If you don’t have the time or budget to run research in-house, or if you’re looking for a fresh perspective, look to consultants or contractors. Contractors can run discreet, well-defined programs to determine if a new marketing campaign will be successful or to figure out if the expense of new product development strategy will increase demand or improve your service’s competitive standing.
Target New Markets
Keeping in mind the №1 rule in sales — always ask for the sale — don’t be shy in asking your own organization for the ability to call on more physicians and hospitals or to increase the size of your territory. As your business grows, keep an eye out for new opportunities and markets to justify why you should be granted a bigger territory.
As a distributor, seek out neglected markets that parent companies are willing to flip. As a manager of a distributor team, consider expanding out-of-state. There are always opportunities in untapped markets. Increasing your business in underpenetrated or previously underinvested in markets is a great way to raise awareness about your medical technology.
Connect & Collaborate
Utilize every single one of your connections. Reach out to industry-acquaintances, friends, and professionals that you feel may have an interest in your product or service The wave of the future is collaboration. As technology evolves, medical device manufacturers and pharmaceutical companies are seeing a greater need to work together. Similarly, as customers demand great interoperability and connectivity, life sciences companies will also need to work with digital health and healthcare IT vendors.
Carevoyance can give your team even greater insight into the ever-changing healthcare market. Our sales tools put the power of data science and analytics in the hands of every Sales Rep and Marketing team member. Click the button below to access the definitive source of data on every physician, ASC, hospital, and health system in the United States.
About the Author
Carevoyance contributor Sarah Pike, M.B.A., is a freelance marketing copywriter based in San Diego. She enjoys writing about business, fashion, food, healthcare, leadership, motivation and technology.
Originally published at Carevoyance.com.
