Selling
To Hospitals©
Best Practices
The Sales and Marketing Challenge
by Jim Dickie and Barry Trailer
In the course of interviewing sales and marketing executives and reviewing marketing initiatives, several key trends emerged that must be addressed for organizations to thrive in the coming years.
Understanding the changes in the ‘Buy Cycle”
- Customers are initiating
the buy cycle and educating themselves through technology themselves
without engaging the vendors.
- Customers are becoming
more concerned with total cost of ownership
- Organizations are
requiring that their vendors work together as “partners”.
- Companies are developing
long-term partnerships with vendors.
- They are changing their procurement process to take advantage of the buying power of the whole organization and drive down cost.
Changing the way that
companies sell
In response to these trends, successful sales organizations will:
- Formalize their sales
processes and define the way that they engage with the customer.
- Better understand
customer needs and how they can impact their customers’ profitability and
their customer’s customer.
- Develop processes to
have meaningful dialogues with customers to understand their goals,
objectives and challenges.
- Sell solutions vs.
product—consult with clients based on industry knowledge to solve their
problems.
- Ensure that all cross-functional resources are aligned with the goals and objectives of the client.
Service and account
management will become the primary criteria for making purchasing decisions.
Ultimately, our people and our processes will become the only sustainable,
long-term edge that we have.
To purchase a pre-release copy of “The Sales and Marketing Excellence
Challenge” please call Shannon at 519-455-4320.