Healthcare Sales Cycles

7 Effective Marketing Strategies To Shorten Your Healthcare Sales Cycles

When it comes to B2B healthcare sales cycles, the process between first engaging with a warm lead and finally making a sale can be painstakingly long. Unlike those for B2C companies, B2B sales cycles often require satisfying a myriad of decision-makers—not just one. In fact, “the typically buying group for a complex B2B solution involves six to 10 decision-makers.” [I].

The good news is that there are ways to speed up this sales process. We will go over seven key marketing strategies your organization can use to shorten its healthcare sales cycle and convert more leads faster.

  1. Identify Your Buyer Personas

One of the top things your healthcare organization should do to shorten its sales cycle is to identify its specific buyer personas. According to HubSpot, a buyer persona is “a semi-fictional representation of your ideal customer based on market research and real data about your existing customers.” [ii]

Your healthcare organization’s buyer personas should embody the characteristics, frustrations, and desires of the decision-makers you are hoping to sell to. Without carefully considering your ideal target audience or buyer, your sales teams will waste time positioning the wrong messaging in front of the wrong ears.[ii]

Some questions to help you start developing your buyer personas might be:

  •   What is their background and job title?
  •   What pain points are they experiencing that your service/product can solve?
  •  Who else is a part of their decision-making team?

Download our Buyer Persona template to establish your ideal audience, target your message, and grow your brand.

 

  1. Align Your Marketing and Sales Teams

Many companies struggle with establishing marketing and sales teams that are unified and collaborative. However, fragmented marketing and sales strategies can cause customer acquisition costs to skyrocket and progress to slow. [iii]

To help shorten your sales cycle, your healthcare organization should be working toward total alignment between its marketing and sales processes.

If you need help establishing this cohesion, check out our guide on how to achieve better sales and marketing team alignment in 6 simple steps.

  1. Utilize a CRM Platform

If your healthcare organization isn’t utilizing a CRM platform, it’s probably time to ditch the spreadsheets and invest in a system that can deliver data-driven results. CRM stands for customer relationship management and is a tool that can help you organize and interpret information related to your customers and your interactions with them.

There are dozens of CRM platforms, each offering various capabilities at various price points. For example, Salesforce offers a CRM system that can “store customer and prospect contact information, identify sales opportunities, record service issues, and manage marketing campaigns, all in one central location.” [iv]. Similarly, ArchKATect’s HubSpot Solutions Partner Program makes it easy for your organization to integrate its sales, customer service, marketing, and content management within one of the leading CRM platforms.

Understanding your customer’s journey via a CRM system can help you better optimize and streamline your sales cycle overall.

  1. Create Sales Enablement Content

Instead of making your potential buyers uncover the value of your product/service on their own, you can speed up your sales cycle by doing the work for them. And one of the best ways to educate your buyers on the benefits of your product/service is through sales enablement content.

HubSpot defines a sales enablement strategy as “the approach your business takes to provide sales with the resources they need to effectively sell.” [v].

Unfortunately, almost 80% of executive buyers claim that salespeople don’t have these relevant resources or materials. [vi]. Providing prospective buyers with targeted content throughout the entire sales lifecycle allows you to overcome objections before they happen and proactively communicate your healthcare organization’s value.

Some examples of sales content you could develop are:

  •   Whitepapers
  •   Product sheets
  •  Email templates
  • Competitor comparison reports
  1. Develop Case Studies

According to a report by Gartner, “The majority of B2B buyers (93%) require a business case for all technology solutions.” [vii] Since the nature of B2B sales typically involves a long-term investment on the part of the buyer, it’s critical that your organization shows how that investment is a worthy one.

Developing case studies can help instill confidence in your product/services in the minds of all the decision-makers you are trying to sell to.

Leveraging this social proof can assure your leads that what you are offering can solve their pain points, allowing for a shortened sales cycle overall.

  1. Be Transparent with Cost

Being transparent with pricing can keep your sales team from pursuing leads that were never going to convert in the first place. You shouldn’t shy away from discussing the cost of your product or service because when you believe in the value of what you’re selling, it should be easy for you to explain its return on investment.

Additionally, transparency with cost can also help you establish trust with your leads from the start. Buyers don’t want to feel like they are being manipulated or that you are keeping information from them for any reason.

  1. Consider a Website Redesign

Finally, you should always be questioning whether your healthcare organization’s website is helping speed up or slow down your sales cycle. If your answer is the latter, it’s probably time to consider a redesign.

Over 50% of B2B decision-makers begin their sales process with a simple web search. [viii] It is vital that your website is clear, optimized, and helps you convert leads. For insight into developing a website that best reaches your target audience, explore our article on 6 new strategies for B2B healthcare websites.

If your healthcare organization is struggling to shorten its sales cycle, we can help. Let us partner with you to implement strategies and processes that will help you speed up your ability to convert leads into buyers. Whether you need to integrate a new CRM platform or develop sales content, our customizable range of services can be tailored to meet your healthcare organization’s unique needs.

References AND RESOURCES

  1. Gartner. (n.d.). The New B2B Buying Process. [online] Available at: https://www.gartner.com/en/sales/insights/b2b-buying-journey.
  1. Kusinitz, S. (2018). The Definition of a Buyer Persona [in Under 100 Words]. [online] Hubspot.com. Available at: https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/buyer-persona-definition-under-100-sr.
  1. Davidoff, D. (n.d.). 3 Ways to Use Buyer Personas to Shorten Your Sales Cycle. [online] blog.hubspot.com. Available at: https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/buyer-personas-shorten-your-sales-cycle [Accessed 15 Mar. 2022].
  1. Salesforce (2014). What is CRM? | A Definition by Salesforce – Salesforce.com. [online] Salesforce.com. Available at: https://www.salesforce.com/crm/what-is-crm/ .
  1. HubSpot (n.d.). What is Sales Enablement? | HubSpot. [online] www.hubspot.com. Available at: https://www.hubspot.com/sales-enablement
  1. Seismic. (n.d.). Sales Enablement – The Complete Guide. [online] Available at: https://seismic.com/sales-enablement/[Accessed 15 Mar. 2022
  1. Gartner. (n.d.). How B2B Technology Buyers Need You to Market to Them. [online] Available at: https://www.gartner.com/smarterwithgartner/how-to-market-to-b2b-technology-buyers[Accessed 15 Mar. 2022].
  1. www.linkedin.com. (n.d.). The Growing Importance of SEO for B2B Businesses. [online] Available at: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/growing-importance-seo-b2b-businesses-adriana-stein/.

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