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In our last article we discussed the changing healthcare sales and marketing landscape, and how many in the industry are in need of an adaptive sales enablement solution. 

This type of solution will help to solve 5 common internal and external challenges experienced by pharma sales and marketing teams. When used effectively adaptive sales enablement can optimize costs, enhance your multi-channel capability, and enable an inbound digital sales strategy.

So, what is adaptive sales enablement, and why do healthcare industry sales reps need adaptive discussions? Our new infographic explains!

There is no doubt that things are changing in healthcare sales and marketing, and many in the industry are in dire need of an adaptive sales enablement approach that can optimize costs, enhance multi-channel capability, and enable an inbound digital sales and marketing strategy.

So, what is adaptive sales enablement, and why do healthcare industry sales reps need adaptive discussions? Today’s article explores these questions and provides an answer to many sales and marketing challenges in the healthcare industry.

Digital content marketing has grown exponentially, and created vast swaths of valuable content for Sales teams to use at every conceivable point of the sales process… but they aren’t. Sales and Marketing alignment is part of the problem, but many buyers and Sales Reps share similar feelings on the matter. A 4-step method may hold the answers to unlocking digital sales enablement solutions.

So you’ve secured a business. You’ve gotten that client to finally say "Yes, I am ready to buy". How exhilarated must you feel? All your hard work paid off. But before you close-off the sales process and spend your commission, remember that the sale only consummates the relationship, and the buyer’s relationship hasn't come close to ending. Are you stuck thinking; what now? Your CRM system holds the answer.

If you’re reading this and thinking “My CRM system won’t tell me that”, then not only is your CRM system being underutilized, your company is at risk of being a laggard of CRM integration.

“Can’t you just show me on my iPhone?”

We all know what buyers want, they want solutions that help them achieve their strategic objectives, and no nonsense. If you can come to a buyer, deliver a solution which provides measurable ROI or achieves objectives, and earn trust, you’ve got a winning proposition for closure.

The issue is that the sales process, one oriented in earning trust and developing relationships, is losing ground to technology that empowers the buyer and fragments the communications market. The art of being conversational and understanding the buyer is lost in the fog of unknown buyer preferences and difficult to reach buyer mediums.

The walking-brochure sales rep is seeing a dramatic, and highly undesirable, reestablishment, not by choice, but by virtue of a tipping balance of buyer-seller power in the conversational relationship.

The concept of the trust based relationship sales orientation is well established in sales. Old time strategies like pressure selling or canned selling have absolutely no relevancy. The trust based seller is consultative, and wants to help the buyer achieve their strategic priorities through the sales process.

Technology has exploded and given way to sales acceleration through various types of sales rep software, CRM systems, and etc. but something isn’t clicking. The state of the sales rep is in a continued trend of decline, and even with more time spent on sales preparation activities, the buyer is less satisfied than ever.

This begs the question; is the issue somewhere in the process? Or is there just a lack in real sales enablement software.

Behind the times,

Marketing and Sales have changed, in fact, they’ve evolved over the last generation. A lens of production volume and high quantity product movement is now marketing customer centricity and relationship selling. Yet, even with the huge shift from product/ion-centric to customer-centric, the flow of traffic has continued to be unidirectional.  

That is to say, Marketing is primarily focused on continually understanding the marketplace, refining a value proposition, and integrating communications to deliver that value. Sales receives MQLs generated from those communications, guides the leads through the sales process, and captures the final sale. End.

Now you see the problem… the two are operating like 18^th century firefighters, passing along buckets of water and showering it into the fire, hoping that more buckets will lead to more success. At no point does the information flow come full circle to let Marketing know about what is and isn’t working, leaving Sales to make do with what they receive. We call this a lack of sales and marketing alignment. 

Does your sales process feels buried in marketing content?

We understand the confusion, you have more digital sales aids, more technology, more sales process, more sales content, etc. and everyone is telling you that it’s going to make everything easier and more streamlined when it comes to selling to your client.

But in reality, you’re spending less time actually doing your job -selling to clients- and more time sifting through what seems like endless reams of files for something valuable to use in your next sales call.

Who or what is to blame?

Blog #5 of #5 in our Peter Ostrow Guest Blog Series

Here, There, and Everywhere: 21^st Century Selling Comes of Age

Answer this question:  is your sales team inside or outside?  If you hesitate before mentally responding, you’re in good company.  

Over the years, my Sales Effectiveness research has seen a steady blurring of these traditional job roles, as work/life balance employment trends, ever-cooler handheld devices, and lightning-fast connectivity have dramatically changed the landscape of B2B selling.  Traditionally, enterprises employed low-cost or entry-level staff to smile-and-dial their way toward qualifying leads for the field, and showered their high-flying outside reps with all the goodies that accrued to coffee-drinking closers.  The line between the personas was clear, although proactive sales leaders were wise enough to build a dues-paying, promotional path between them for the strongest inside sellers to graduate to the field. 

Blog #4 of 5 in our Peter Ostrow guest blog series

Which Half of YOUR Marketing Budget is Working?

It's time to retire the classic mantra of ROI-hungry CMOs: “I know that half of my marketing dollars are effective, just not which half." 

Today's savvy B2B marketers have plenty of tools at their disposal to overcome this traditional lack of visibility, which legitimately plagued their communications and business development efforts for generations. While the next Super Bowl will undoubtedly set new records for mass media advertising costs, few CMO budgets are spent nowadays on anything but laser-focused, personalized marketing content that approaches one-to-one messaging as closely as possible.