How to reach the right people in Healthcare #1
Getting a meeting with healthcare target buyers is one of the toughest challenges in selling to hospitals and other healthcare organizations. They buy differently and take forever to sell to. There are no silver bullets to this. Over the next few weeks, we will provide some simple tips on how you can increase your sales conversions by reaching the right people in a healthcare organization.
Step 1 is to develop a stakeholder map.
Stakeholder Checklist
Selling to healthcare is complex and involves multiple stakeholders. Stakeholder management is the best practice in complex sales. Experienced salespeople know that to close deals with healthcare organizations, you have to identify all those who have a stake in the decision to buy your solution.
Here is a checklist of stakeholders:
- Champion – The single most important stakeholder. The person in the organization who wants their organization to buy your solution and will jump through hoops to make you successful.
- Problem Owner – The person who owns the problem you are solving.
- Decision-maker(s) – The person or people who make the final decision
- Budget-owner – The person who has the budget for the solution.
- Influencer(s) – People who can affect the requirements and other factors that go into the decision.
Note: Often, stakeholders play multiple roles in buying your solution. For example, the champion may also be the problem owner; the decision-maker also owns the budget or; the champion and problem owner may be the decision-makers.
Stakeholder Map
We created this simple framework to help you map your stakeholders. You can download the framework here.
In my own experience selling communications solutions, the typical stakeholders were:
- Champion – Often the person responsible for technology innovation
- Business Owner – Typically the Chief Medical Officer and sometimes the CIO
- Decision-maker – Usually, it was shared, and sometimes the CEO
- Budget-owner – Most often, the CIO
- Influencers – The Medical executive committee, the chief security officer, the applications directors
You can download a simple checklist and the framework here.
In our next post on healthcare targets on how to reach the right people in Healthcare, we will cover personas and why they matter in selling to healthcare.
Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash