Representing Your Sales Territory: Part Two, Analysis
The bases are loaded. The batter steps up to the plate. Does he just wildly swing at every pitch? Of course not! He has been in the dugout, discussing the pitching stats with his coach — running the numbers to determine the type of pitch that will send all his teammates home. He eyes the ball approaching him. It abruptly curves toward the center of the plate. He swings and …
We evaluated the organic approach to territory alignment in Representing Your Sales Territory: Part One, Alignment. In this article, we will discuss the fundamentals of healthcare data analytics, why it matters, and how it applies to a sales and marketing process.
Establishing the best representation for your given territory should be viewed as a two-part approach — combining an organic overview with healthcare data analytics. Organic factors include taking a deeper look at the size of the territory, the number of reps and physicians in the territory, current established relationships, the value of products in a bag, and the dynamic of change.
Healthcare data analytics and territory alignment software run the numbers to ensure that a sales team is covering a territory in the most efficient way. It literally connects the batter with the ball to hit that grand slam — taking the guesswork out of the equation.
The biggest single investment of most medical product companies is the sales force. It is not unusual for a company to spend 10–15 percent or more of revenue on the sales force to communicate the value of a company’s offering, negotiate and support transactions, and train clinicians on the proper use of its products and services.
Carevoyance is a data analytics company that empowers healthcare sales teams via strategic targeting and customized data. Our team-based workflows, analysis, and reporting capabilities empower your commercialization team to uncover new insights supported by actionable, measurable processes that help you grow your market.
Understanding Healthcare Data Analytics
Before discussing the value of using healthcare data analytics, it is important to define the term. Healthcare data analytics interprets data collected from healthcare activities to optimize patient outcomes. It looks for trends and patterns that will save patients, physicians, and healthcare organizations time and money while attracting better patient experiences and wellness.
Using existing large-scale health data to determine trends matters to everyone’s bottom line. Patients, providers, health organizations, MedTech companies, and insurance companies all have an interest in helping patients receive the best care in the marketplace, in the most efficient manner. And the stakes are high for everyone in this competitive environment.
Healthcare data analytics can be focused on specific populations — Carevoyance services MedTech teams working with physicians and hospitals — but it can also be used to gather much needed information on any general patient or health population.
Big Potential in Big Data
In a dynamic environment, big data analytics uses large databases of records that are attained through regulatory compliance and record-keeping to find similarities, create efficiencies, and promote the general well-being of large populations. Wullianallur Raghupathi and Viju Raghupathi published a paper in 2014 analyzing the promise and potential of big data analytics in healthcare. They found that by discovering associations and understanding patterns and trends within the data, big data analytics has the potential to improve care, save lives, and lower costs.
The goals of any MedTech rep company should include maintaining client relationships, strategic prospecting, and developing market and referral plans for new physicians and hospitals. Territory alignment software benefits a sales and marketing team by addressing these three goals, plus many more.
Carevoyance employs health-centric searches and generates target lists based on procedures, diagnoses, prescriptions, and relationships. It produces a series of charts and graphs that visually shows specific medical practices, referral patterns, habits, and physician types that all prioritize a customer-oriented approach. Carevoyance creates solutions by giving a healthcare sales force the datasets that link physicians, facilities, and other healthcare entities with data from demographics, transactions, and relationships to show referral relationships and affiliations between physicians and facilities, as well as between healthcare systems and hospitals. It finds the correlations that cannot be found through cold-calling and territory management alone.
Eliminating the Guesswork
Territory alignment management is no longer just a best guesstimate of rep placement and coverage for a given physician population and hospital list. Healthcare data analytics provides the necessary tools to efficiently call on the doctors and hospitals specific to your product and company needs.
Insights from sales and marketing consulting leader, ZS Associates suggests a company with a strong targeting program should be able to cover 80 percent of the market by targeting only 40–50 percent of accounts.
By using organic approaches and healthcare data analytics for territory alignment management, valuable accounts and positive company sales goals can be attained. And workplace efficiency could ultimately lead to more leisure time — where you could catch an evening ballgame, or two.
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.
