The other day I was thinking about how much healthcare has
changed in a few brief years and how to, if one can say best way, engage the
healthcare consumer and patients?
It dawned on me that healthcare consumer and patient
engagement is really a lot like sales. And in all that is being written and
experimented with across the healthcare channel regarding engagement, I haven’t
seen anyone make a sales model connection.
In the ideal sales model, marketing is more than a group of
people “who make things look pretty” and is highly integrated into the sales
process. In turn, marketing doesn’t see
sales as “feet on the street” and having nothing of value to bring to the
table.
Marketing’s role is to
integrate and work closely with sales to understand from a
ground level perspective what is going on in the marketplace and respond with
campaigns, tactics, events, collateral
etc., that support sales in
order to generate high value Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs) which become
Sales Accepted Leads (SALs).
Now I am shortchanging the discussion here because a lot of
work in relationship building, collaboration, sharing, listening, etc., goes on
to get to the above point. That is a topic for another time.
Sales is a complex process in healthcare for the most part
that requires significant time to build senor level relationships that engage, educate, and provides solutions
not features and benefits etc. Sales has moved from cold calls, sales demos and
qualifying leads to social networks, education and engagement. The sales
approach requires a plan of action for each organization and internal contacts
that is individually designed and acted upon, that in many ways is consultative
in the Miller-Heiman methodology for example.
The end result is a sale of a product or service that meets
the customer’s need and solves a problem.
It creates a win-win situation. Sales generates revenue and commission.
The client solves a problem which can generate revenue, improve efficiency and
effectiveness or even change the competitive landscape.
What does this mean for healthcare providers?
I am sure by now all wondering what the point here is? The point simply is that the healthcare
consumer and patient need to be sold too. That’s right sold too. Many of the
current engagement efforts are cookie cutter and rely on past mechanisms like
generic informational newsletters, robo-calls etc., that have little understanding
of the individual they are aimed at. In essence it’s a lot like the old sales
model of cold calling and selling features and benefits not solutions to
medical issues, concerns or problems
Throw enough stuff against the wall and sooner or later some
of it will stick.
The only way to successful engage a healthcare consumer or
patient, is to understand what their needs are, how you can help them with
solutions and answers, communicate with them they way they want and how they
want the information. Engagement is about building a consultative relationship
that is win-win in nature. Its’ about
selling what the healthcare provider has to offer on an individual basis to the
healthcare consumer and patient.
But what is really lacking in many healthcare providers is
the integration of marketing as a collaborative partner in engagement and
selling to the healthcare consumer and patient. Marketing needs to be involved
from more than “make it look pretty“in healthcare providers to a trusted
partner who understands the needs of and responds accordingly to the healthcare
consumer or patient.
So back to answering the question, yes healthcare consumer
or patent engagement is the new sales. The parallels are many between a consultative
sales approach and engaging the healthcare consumer or patient. Its
healthcare consumer or patient focused which is what many healthcare
providers claim.
Easy right? Wrong.
Get outside help for this. The
healthcare provider doesn’t really know how to sell in this way. They never
have.\
Tags: #sales, #hcmkt, #hcsm, #engagement, #providers,
#marketing, #consulting
