Key Things to Keep in Mind When Selling to Doctors

Doctors constitute about 0.3% of the total US population. Is selling to this minuscule audience, less than one percent, a cakewalk for healthcare businesses and marketers? The answer is NO.

Physicians and doctors are the most sought-after targets for healthcare businesses as they are the gatekeepers between healthcare products and users.

As medical professionals entirely focused on treating the unwell, doctors seldom have the bandwidth to pay attention to marketing materials. To get through these busy professionals and grab their attention, healthcare businesses and marketers must do more than blend in with the pack or follow age-old strategies. They must be willing to shake things up, connect with doctors, and pitch their services in a way that intrigues them and fosters everlasting relationships with them.

Here is a toolkit for businesses to move doctors from the “we are considering your product” phase to the “we are prescribing it to our patients” phase.

Compelling Turnkey Tactics to Follow While Selling to Doctors

In the competitive healthcare turf, mastering the skill of selling to doctors is an essential trait that businesses should cultivate. Sales tactics or strategies that align with the professional needs of doctors or physicians who constantly juggle demanding schedules will help companies stay ahead of their competitors. Besides emerging victorious from the neck-to-neck competition, a good sales strategy helps businesses overshoot their sales targets.

1.   Get the hang of the doctor’s mindset and needs

Businesses should be mindful of the fact that delivering top-notch care, most of the time under time constraints, is a priority for doctors to shape winning sales pitches. Hence, to make such busy bees receptive, sales pitches that are concise and relevant will work best.

With comprehensive data that allows businesses to assess doctors’ practice areas, specializations, and professional interests, they can coin pitches that align with their prospect’s specific field and current needs and increase the likelihood of engagement. By formulating such informed strategies backed by the correct data, businesses can ensure their pitches or messages resonate with the audience, addressing unique challenges doctors face while delivering duties in the professional landscape.

2.  Appease with informative content

Did you know 70% of doctors think sales representatives do not comprehend their needs or expectations? 62% of doctors suggest that they would be willing to make a purchase if businesses shared relevant information and marketing material about their offerings with them.

The game changer for healthcare marketers is making doctors receptive to hearing more from them. Businesses can achieve this by steering clear of hard sell and giving doctors an opportunity to consume informational content at their convenience. By sharing content backed by sufficient data, businesses can show that they respect doctors’ time and intelligence, wielding good influence on their audience to purchase from them.

Healthcare marketers should be aware that doctors are gatekeepers, translating and breaking down new complex technology and products to users in a way they understand. Businesses must not shy away from sharing marketing materials or content that conveys to doctors how the product works and the supporting data that establishes facts. Hence, by sharing information that allows doctors to tell their users why a particular product is the best, businesses can win them over as loyal customers.

3.  Refine targeting with laser-focused selling endeavors

 

Every day, doctors receive stacks of sales and marketing materials. The real catch for businesses to seize the deals while selling to doctors is to stand out from this stack with unique messaging and laser-focused targeting. Businesses must refine their target prospects for the best outcomes. It can be done by considering geographic region, years of experience, size of the practice or associated organization, type of practice, and area of specialization, and more healthcare marketers can refine their targets. For instance, refining targeting from merely “Oncologists” to “Neuro-oncologists with small practices in high income communities of New York” shrinks the prospects list. It allows businesses to formulate specific sales pitches to persuade this niche audience to purchase.

Laser-focused targeting helps businesses craft compelling sales tactics. Through customized messages, they can make the doctors feel that they are speaking specifically to them and gain profit from every marketing dollar they spend. Additionally, such focused targeting allows sales teams to streamline their approach and invest more time and attention in persuading a specific doctor.

4.  Create distinct strategies for a different audience

Healthcare businesses that are vying to add doctors as their clients must develop distinct strategies to sell to doctors and physician groups. While marketing to doctors, an enterprise’s sales pitch must focus on their unique needs. Businesses can showcase how their products will directly benefit them by considering doctors’ practice specialties. By emphasizing how their offerings will positively impact day-to-day operations, companies will have a greater scope to nudge doctors to purchase their products.

When healthcare businesses sell to Physician Groups, the approach must be pretty different from that of the doctors. At this point, the sales pitch should discuss how the products businesses offer can promote efficiency and facilitate collaboration among multiple doctors. Businesses can persuade them to buy their products by stressing that their offerings enable physician teams to scale their operations and meet their group’s diverse needs.

5.  Consider cultural and regional nuances

Businesses that comprehend the cultural dynamics and a region’s healthcare landscape can sell their products efficiently to doctors. Besides this, by building trust through cultural awareness, businesses can create meaningful and long-lasting professional relationships with doctors. By developing communication and sales strategies that align with the region’s cultural norms, companies can demonstrate that they respect doctors’ practice approach and positively influence their purchase decisions. With a good understanding of the regional healthcare trends and challenges, businesses will not just sell a product to the doctor but offer them the right solution that resonates with their environment.

6.  Keep a blend of direct and indirect methods

Healthcare businesses must embrace a blend of direct and indirect methods when pitching their offerings to doctors to reach sales targets. Networking with doctors at medical conferences gives businesses an opportunity to directly engage with them and build worthwhile associations. By interacting with doctors at medical conferences and other such events, sales teams can get firsthand information about the doctors’ needs and come up with more personalized and informed sales tactics for quick lead wins.

Additionally, businesses and marketers should not disregard online platforms while selling to doctors. Companies can grab the doctor’s attention by leveraging digital mediums and methods, including SEO-optimized content marketing, social media targeting, and virtual events. Digital techniques let businesses place their products precisely in front of doctors. It also helps them showcase their product’s best features, educate the doctors on how it will benefit them, and sell their offerings faster.

Targeted email campaigns that address doctor’s professional challenges are impactful when selling to doctors. However, when businesses focus on providing value and solutions to doctors and not just promoting their products through emails, they gain positive outcomes. As the average open rate for healthcare-related email campaigns are 41.23%, businesses can witness good sales by including email campaigns in their outreach strategy.

While creating sales tactics, businesses must meet the doctors where they are. Doctors are medical professionals who rely on their phones and tablets more than desktop computer setups. By considering this aspect, healthcare B2B businesses must create mobile-friendly digital campaigns that are responsive across devices to sell their products. To overshoot their sales targets, marketers should expand their horizons and take their selling efforts beyond hospitals and exam rooms. A few spaces healthcare businesses must advertise or pitch their services to doctors to boost sales are LinkedIn networks, professional associations, and medical publications.

7.  Take an empathetic, patient-centered approach

Whenever doctors review various products, they consider the benefits they can provide to their patients. Hence, doctors prefer to purchase from empathetic marketers who care about the interests of the patients. The critical approach that will let marketers and sales teams achieve a breakthrough is to combine rational appeals to reach well-educated doctors with emotional appeals to make a highly effective tactic.

By creating sales pitches that focus closely on how their products will impact the patient’s recovery or decrease the symptoms, healthcare businesses can effectively strike a chord with doctors. Such an empathetic approach goes a long way in helping businesses win the doctor’s trust and seize the sales deal.

8.   Emphasize the economic benefits

Competitive pricing models are vital in sales strategies, empowering healthcare marketers and businesses to win deals swiftly. By leveraging contact databases with several data filters, companies can assess the financial standing of the doctors they sell their products to. Based on their prospects’ revenue worth and transactions, businesses can offer them their products on a yearly subscription or a monthly subscription model. Offering their products to doctors at the best prices allows enterprises to accelerate sales and gain users. 

Wrapping Up

Selling to doctors requires a dynamic approach. As doctors constitute a niche balancing demanding schedules and having specific needs, a sales approach that aligns with their professional commitments is imperative. Healthcare businesses can effectively display their products to the physicians’ fraternity and secure sales deals by being open to the latest and innovative trends like medical imaging, virtual reality, and video marketing. By leveraging a mix of offline and online endeavors, businesses can pitch their offerings to doctors to bolster their sales productivity.