We recently wrote an article about how you can sell effectively into the Healthcare sector. We outlined how you can prioritize and customize your outreach based on the type of organization, size, fiscal cycles, audience, channel, and content. In this article, we will talk about how you can gather these data points and dive deeper into the ways in which you can use them. We’ll tell you all the data you need to be looking at while prospecting that will save you a ton of time on research and help craft razor-sharp messages to your prospects. You’re welcome in advance!
Prospects don’t change jobs as often. You’ll find that people tend to stick to a particular organization for a long time in this space. While in other, more recent industries, company and title changes are common, in this industry it takes a while before a person moves from one company to another or his/her designation changes.
What implication does it have for you as a sales rep? Well, there are both pros and cons. The con is that your prospect is unlikely to change in the short term - meaning once you face a ‘no’ or if s/he is being unresponsive, you don’t have too many others to go after or hope that the next person may have better disposition towards what you have to offer. The pro is also that your prospect is unlikely to change in the short term - so you don’t need to keep track of prospects moving and finding new people to go after.
The industry and prospects are far less ‘online’ and ‘new age’ as some of the other industries. As a salesperson, you might be used to connecting with prospects on a multitude of social networks. In this industry, though, people are not as engaged on social networks and work mostly offline. So you would do better to consider in-person meetings or attending events in addition to email outreaches.
Since the industry is also far less amenable to rapid changes and embracing disruptive technologies. This means you need to connect with various stakeholders - decision makers as well as influencers - and be prepared for a longer sales cycles. The positive side to this is that once a hospital or a clinic does adopt your solution, it is unlikely to move away in a hurry and will become a loyal, long-term customer.
Company Type: Of the 1300+ hospitals/clinics we have on the platform, about 40% are hospital chains while 31% are stand alone hospitals. The rest of the spread includes clinics, clinic chains, home care organizations, and hospital conglomerates.
Financial Cycles: The 4 common fiscal cycles are Jan-Dec, Apr-Mar, Oct-Sep, and Jul-Jun. Interestingly, the spread between these four cycles is quite even. Jan-Dec seems to be the most popular fiscal cycle with 35% of the companies adopting it.
Most hospitals (>93%) seem to have a bed count of less than 1000. More than 50% of these companies have up to 50 physicians. About 98% of these are private companies.
Time your outreach better by targeting companies that are 3-6 months away from the end of their fiscal year. Budgeting for the forthcoming year happens during this period making it the right time make contact.
Most products/services for medical facilities are based on the physician count or the bed count. Having this data handy helps customize the plans as well as the messaging. Also, having a sense of what segment you are going after - be it hospital chains or stand alone clinics and how big each of these are - will help you come up with appropriate go to market strategy as well.
We’ve created a data sheet on the this space as well, in case you are interested in knowing details. We encourage you to consider all this intel to make your sales/marketing outreaches to the healthcare space much more informed, targeted, and successful.