MedTech Opinion Leader: Giuseppe Battente talks Evolution of MedTech Sales - Customer centricity, Shifting Sales Mindset from Product to Solutions.

Stan: How to understand what customers truly want in the medical device industry?

Giuseppe: The complexity of the needs of the customers in the medical device industry is well-known. What is important about this complexity is how it is evolving in time.

In my experience we are still having a lot of attention on the clinical outcomes, but we are also facing two dynamics along the way: a) the clinical outcomes are assessed in a broader context than the medical procedures, including the entire patient pathway from diagnosis to long-term follow up, b) there’s a very high level of focus on the financial outcome linked to the medical procedure.

This is a very impactful dynamic and very important for all of us as taxpayers and citizens, besides as MedTech professionals.

When I ask a CEO of a hospital “what are your strategic bets for the next 24-36 months?” Their answer is a lot about financials, about their P&L, it’s a lot about the financial sustainability of their processes, on top of course of the clinical benefits they can provide their patients through what they do.

By the way, one of the most powerful way to understand the customers’ needs is by asking them about their strategic goals over a medium-term period: the discussion would go to a more strategic level with and an opportunity to build up a solid partnership with mutual benefits.

We as MedTech players should make sure that whatever we make can do good for the patients, good for the healthcare systems and good for the industry (in this order!). When we introduce innovation into the system, if we don’t think about how to make it financially sustainable, we are going to be part of the problem, not part of the solution.

In the MedTech industry we have been successful for decades because we developed new technologies with a certain frequency, we have researched and developed amazing products that save millions of lives, and until some time ago that was enough to grow and have success. This is not enough anymore: with the Healthcare spend growing more than the GDPs we need to make sure that we work on creating more efficiency along with keeping to constantly innovate.

Stan: How do you change the sales mindset in the medical device industry?

Giuseppe: The skillset needed in this changing environment follows the trends. In an environment in which the dialogue moves from a pure clinical perspective to a place where on top of clinical you have to be financially savvy too, in which you have to address the inefficiencies that are present in the system, than you need people that can have a consultative approach as opposed to a transactional approach.

By consultative selling I mean people that are equipped with skills that make them able to talk financials, to help them assess the inefficiency in the hospital processes, able to mobilize the company’s resources to address the customers’ needs, able to network within the organization to provide the best possible solutions to the customer.

I think the soft skills that are needed in sales people in this changing landscape are: understanding the trends, being aware of the financial impact of the medical devices in the hospitals’ processes, assessing the inefficiencies and being able to reduce them, on top of course of being able to sell features and benefits of their own product portfolio.

This would require:

Education: constantly train sales teams

Organization: hire and promote people that are inclined to evolve in this direction

Managerial attention: tone from the top and strategic focus on this evolution.

Interdisciplinary collaboration: foster collaboration between different departments in the company to support the complexity of the customers’ needs.

Leverage Data: Use data analytics to provide insights into device performance and patient outcomes, supporting the sales narrative.

Incentive Alignment: Align incentives with long-term customer satisfaction and patient outcomes rather than just immediate sales.

Stan: When shifting from one go-to-market strategy to another in the medical device industry, what do you need to consider?

Giuseppe: When you change the go-to-market in the medical device industry you have to consider multiple factors:

a) It’s a relationship market: don’t underestimate the value of the relationships that sales reps have built in time. It’s important to build up a risk mitigation plan when you change the go-to-market, it’s key to make the customers feel that the interactions with the company will improve and become even more effective and efficient.

b) It’s a long-term partnership what you are after: the sale-cycles in the medical devices industry are relatively long, so you want to build partnerships with your customers that have a long time span. In order to do so you have to focus on the medium-term goals and needs of your customers. Thereafter, in a change in the go-to-market model, it’s important to consider this by creating or strengthening roles that have the responsibility to provide value on the strategic levels of the relationship with the customers

c) Reward and motivate the sales force: invest in teams’ development through training, career paths, incentives, so that the attractiveness of the sales jobs is kept as high as possible. People don’t necessary like change, so make sure the sales force has clarity on what’s in it for them, they buy-in into the changes and see the brighter future coming from the changes

Stan: How do you identify and understand the specific needs and challenges of your customers to offer tailored solutions in the medical device industry?

Giuseppe: The most demanding part of the services & solutions offer to customers is the required flexibility that comes with this approach.

When you engage a customer into a dialogue of medical devices paired with services & solutions, you inevitably into a field of tailored made offers, so the organization has to be flexible enough to develop those solutions into a reasonable amount of time, with all the regulatory/compliance/legal requirements in place. It can be demanding, especially for organizations that tend to standardize all the processes.

One way to identify the specific needs of the customers is through direct engagement, understanding the strategic journey the customers are undertaking, through advisory boards to gain insights and through data analysis.

Again, the complexity of this approach comes mainly from the internal alignment among functions and business units, often by overcoming internal different and potentially conflicting objectives that exist with the organizations.

Stan Kalinin draws on an extensive track record of more than 14 years of search and executive team-building expertise. He is the host of MedTech Opinion Leader supporting growth of MedTech industry and creating insightful stories with key market executives forging alternative narrative about the sector current and future trends.