2021 Healthcare Sales Challenges Research Study

Across all questions, our respondents were never more clear than when they were asked about the biggest challenge buyers face when making a purchasing decision. Overwhelmingly, sales professionals and sales leaders believe that “dealing with uncertainty brought on by the pandemic” is the single greatest challenge stakeholders face when considering a purchase. Just over 41% of our total participants, and 52.9% of our healthcare sales professionals, cited this as the buyer’s largest burden.

At 16%, the second most cited challenge sales professionals believe buyers face is “managing constantly shifting priorities.” These top two challenges are connected because heightened uncertainty often leads to inconsistent priorities. Simply, as the road becomes more winding, the wheel must turn more dramatically. 

Sales professionals can address this setting in three ways:

Deliver an Evidence-Based Selling Solution

Sales professionals must develop clinical selling skills to establish their credibility and deliver patient-oriented solutions based on the needs and goals of the healthcare provider. Doing so means leveraging the principles of evidence-based medicine to interpret and communicate the clinical studies and statistical terms underpinning the value of the solution.

Investigate the Customer’s Decision Process

The more a sales professional knows about how the customer’s decision process works, the better prepared they are to be alert to discrepancies and cues revealing who the influencers are in the process. With this information, the sales professional is equipped to redirect the process when necessary.

Become a Better Listener

Good listeners regularly make an effort to do three things well. First, they encourage the speaker to provide more detail. Second, they engage in mirroring by mimicking the speech, cadence, gestures, and even attitude of the person speaking. Third, they use questions to confirm the speaker’s key points.

6. The Virtual Setting Has Reduced Customer Engagement

Since the earliest months of the pandemic, most people have made great strides in adapting to the virtual medium. Despite this, challenges remain. Overwhelmingly, our total respondents and our healthcare respondents indicated that the predominant challenge of selling virtually is that it is “more difficult to connect personally.” Of note is the difference in intensity of the second-highest challenge when selling virtually. 27% of healthcare respondents said that the second greatest challenge was that “people behave differently virtually-not as engaged” - eight points higher than the overall respondent pool.

Customers can more easily hide the fact that they are distracted. Email notifications and the on-screen environment are invisible to the sales professional. Therefore, it is difficult for them to know when they have the customer’s attention and when they do not.

The good news is that flexible sales professionals can adjust to this new setting by making a few changes:

Think Beyond the Solution

Sparking the HCP’s interest requires exploring the customer’s core needs and challenges. It is easy to see why this more effective approach is ignored; the sales professional has a deep knowledge of the solution and therefore can easily represent themselves as a wealth of information by leveraging readily available detail. Rather than assign the solution’s capabilities to the customer’s challenges, sales professionals should start with the nuance of the customer’s challenges and determine what aspects of the solution are salient.

Seek Out What the HCP Seeks Out

Sales professionals must explore the data and research that is most likely to be of interest to the HCP. To find relevant information, sales professionals must seek the journals, websites, information, and research with which the customer engages. With this current, salient, and granular information, the sales professional can more effectively create a hinge that prompts further conversation.

Build a Rapport with Professionals in the HCP’s Orbit

Much of the sales professional’s success resides in the activities that unfold before their first call with the customer. This is the phase of the pursuit in which the sales professional can begin to build a rapport with the people in the HCP’s orbit. This approach is not only helpful, but also imperative. In nearly all cases, the sales professional will need to convince others of their value before they are granted access to the HCP.

2020 introduced a new era in the healthcare sales industry. The responses in our survey demonstrate the depth and breadth of these changes. Succeeding in this new setting means developing a sharper prospecting strategy and fully adapting to the virtual environment. There is no aspect of selling that is free of influence from the virtual arena. Everything from negotiations to competitive threats tie to virtual engagement. Sales professionals who redefine their approach accordingly will succeed.