Jim Poggi
By Jim Poggi
This month, I will pass along a bit of wisdom I learned from an exceptionally skilled and successful general manager of health systems. His advice was simple but remarkably effective if used consistently. It applies to selling lab or any other product in our bag: “Treat every customer as if they were ‘new’ every year”.
Think about how you felt (and acted) the last time someone actively used their knowledge and expertise to help you solve a problem or help you to improve your skills or performance in a specific area. Did you feel supported, special and in good hands? Most folks do, and we all need to remember that more buying decisions are made to solve a problem than to take advantage of a unique or limited time opportunity. Hence, we know we need to position ourselves as consultants to our customers and prospects.
How does this relate to viewing our customers as “new” once a year? Using this approach provides a chance to change your mindset and that of your customer during a specific “new customer” visit. Doing so gives them and us the opportunity to see their situation and our mutual relationship with new eyes and openly critique our objectives, progress and needs for adjustment and refinement. Hopefully it gets us away from gradually becoming accustomed to mediocre results and accepting the status quo.
Taking the time and having the objectivity to critically examine progress against objectives keeps us sharp and more in charge of our destiny and results. It also helps us step away from solving immediate problems and responding to “fire drills” and gives us a chance to review the big picture. Whether you are selling lab or any other patient care solutions, this approach works wonders if you commit to it and ask your customers to as well.
Tips for getting the most out of this situation
Inform your customers of your intent and outline the process before you meet. Gain agreement to take this approach and set guiding principles such as:
- This meeting is a high-level review of our mutual business and will focus on examining our objectives and objectively challenging to what extent we are meeting them.
- Commit to focus on market and technology changes since the last “new customer” meeting. What has changed? What is the best way to respond to the changing environment?
- Questioning progress and process is not criticism.
- Assumptions are subject to review and change.
- Opinions may differ, but facts should be universal and not vary.
- Focus on a limited number of items/issues to review and agree on them before you meet.
How to prepare
Have your facts and data at hand before the meeting. Seek to understand and examine several factors that separate best-in-class customer performance from run-of-the-mill performance.
Run spend reports, gap reports and grade your service level to the client. Think about inventory, ordering and consulting services your company and best suppliers offer ahead of the meeting and bring up the pertinent ones during the meeting. If in doubt, ask your manager or other experienced rep how to best prepare for a comprehensive customer business review. Then, use their ideas to create an exceptional meeting for you and your customer.
Issues to explore
Overall
- What are their key clinical, economic and practice objectives?
- How are they preforming against them?
- What do their patient visit trends look like?
- How do their objectives and performance match up against current market conditions and your best customers’ performance?
Services/product/technology portfolio
- What key services do they offer their patients?
- Which products do they order and in what volume?
- Are they taking proper advantage of private label opportunities?
- What special offers did they miss last year?
- Which applicable ones are coming up?
- What are their testing patterns?
- Do they match the customer’s objectives and patient needs?
- Are their testing systems up to date or subject to upgrade?
- Does their EMR and LIS system meet their needs?
Operations
- Are their ordering patterns and frequency efficient?
- Have they experienced avoidable back orders?
- How often have they had “fire drills” due to operational inefficiency or lack of planning?
Supplier support
- Is their training up to date?
- Are there webinars or supplier visits that could help them with MACRA or other market conditions?
- Are there new products or technologies that could help them meet their objectives?
Questions to keep in mind and discuss with your customer to stimulate new thinking
- What are the top 3 items that keep them up at night?
- What are the top 3 areas of improvement for the practice?
- What new regulatory and market issues are they experiencing?
- Are there things on the practice “wish list” they just can’t seem to make the time to get to?
- How would they rate their patient service level overall? By department? Lab, billing, nursing, reception, other
- Do they feel the need to get objective input from a patient survey?
- Are they reporting under MACRA? How prepared do they feel? What gaps do they perceive?
Follow-up assures success
The power of this meeting comes from objectively understanding strengths of the practice that they can leverage for better patient services and satisfaction, as well as issues to work on to become even better. So, follow-up is critical to assure the findings from this meeting translate into meaningful actions and improvements.
The three keys to success and improvement following the meeting
- Agree on plans you can help with and prepare to implement with a schedule and specific deliverables
- Engage your key suppliers based on customer needs and feedback
- Track results quarterly
If you implement these thoughts with your key customers, they will always feel “new” and special to you. This puts you in a strategic customer relationship and helps with both customer retention and customer penetration.