January 17, 2024- Respiratory season is here. As a sales rep, build your infection prevention checklist and watch your sales take flight. Read on for a Repertoire article on infection prevention and sales: We should all use the discipline that pilots must have to build our infection prevention business. What kind of checklists could we develop? I’d start with collecting the following:
- Recommended product formulary that follows regulatory guidelines. Include product assortment from major sub-categories, hand hygiene, gloves, PPE, surface, sterilization.
- Cross reference information on the major brands in the category.
- A good list of go-to supplier representatives. You never know when you will need to call in a favor.
- Regulatory guidance documents. This may sound intimidating; however, the CDC and FDA have developed user-friendly guidance over the years. Having these on-hand provides you with the opportunity to be a trusted resource to your customer base.
- Become a member or tap into the appropriate associations. You will accelerate your learning and value as you become embedded into APIC, AORN, AHRMM, and HIDA. These are good places to start, but you might want to check into the state chapters as well.
- Work with your go-to suppliers on providing samples where possible. Literature is good, but providing samples to show and tell really helps. Your manufacturers will start to see you as the go-to resource they want to prioritize and support.
- Develop reports on which customers are using or not using key products in the category. All these ideas are examples of saturation strategies that will help you sell more to existing customers.
- What metrics can you keep track of to make sure you are on course? It gets exciting to watch trends that provide confirmation on your planning.
It is hard to believe that we are at the end of 2023. As the year slows down and things get quiet, work on your checklist. Build the framework of a checklist that keeps you on track and that you can come back to for on-going support for a successful 2024.