Mark Copeland on what it takes to get your products through the value analysis filter in a healthcare setting.
By Pete Mercer
Whether you are in over your head or simply don’t understand the lingo, it’s not uncommon to feel like you need a translator for a meeting with clinicians. Even when you know your product lineup front to back, it might feel as if you and the other party are not matching up on what they need and what you can provide.
Value analysis is one of those departments in healthcare that can feel like it has its own special language that is a struggle to understand. This is why you need a translator, or even a value analysis whisperer.
Repertoire Magazine recently sat down with Mark Copeland, the Value Analysis Whisperer, to discuss the role of value analysis in medical sales, what a good pitch should look like, and how medical sales reps can get past gatekeepers.
Becoming the Value Analysis Whisperer
Copeland has been in medical sales for 28 years and selling medical devices in hospitals and ambulatory surgery centers for 20 years. Along the way, he developed a sort of aptitude for navigating value analysis in healthcare.
“About 10 years ago, I got really good at getting products approved through value analysis committees, which didn’t exist in a lot of places at the time. While Harrisburg, Pennsylvania wasn’t ground zero for value analysis, I experienced it in its earlier iterations.” he said.
His ability to get things through value analysis proved to be beneficial for his company and the healthcare partners he was working with at the time. Copeland remembered speaking to a surgeon at a scrub sink, where the surgeon marveled at his ability to get medical products approved by the value analysis committee. “He said, ‘You’re like that guy who talks to horses, but you’re like the value analysis whisperer.”
Because Copeland worked hard to develop a business case for the product and formulated a plan to get the product approved, the name ‘Value Analysis Whisperer’ stuck. While he’s adamant that, were it up to him, he would’ve come up with something much cooler, the name ‘Value Analysis Whisperer’ speaks to the efficacy of Copeland’s process. In other words: if it works, it works.
What to know about value analysis
Value analysis works as a sort of filter for major hospitals and health systems. Think of it as a quality assurance team that is measuring the effectiveness of the product against its cost, while also having to consider whether it brings enough value to the equation to justify any changes to what the hospital is already using.
“It’s been driven by two market things: hospitals and health systems merging and doctors becoming employees of those health systems. About 70% of all doctors are employed by health systems now. While that may change, those two shifting dynamics have created this new filter that sales reps have to go through,” Copeland said.
According to Copeland, it’s important for sales reps to understand and reconcile that the theoretical “good old days” are gone. This new style of selling involves a bit of sophistication in its execution, but it still requires an understanding of the clinical benefits to the patients, doctors, and nurses. From there, you have to create a simple business case for the product. If you can develop a justification for why hospitals and patients would benefit from your product, it’s much easier to get it through value analysis.
“I spend a lot of time convincing reps and their companies that they can build a simple business case and that they likely have everything they need already,” Copeland said. “They just need to know how to put everything into a package that makes sense to the non-clinicians who are major stakeholders in the decision-making process.”
Another approach Copeland uses in conversations with sales reps is to help them understand the role of the clinician. His go-to analogy for doctors is to liken them to a three-star chef at a Michelin restaurant.
He said, “How many of those three-star chefs, who even have their name on the restaurant, actually run the business? Very few. They might know what the best ingredients are, but about three quarters of them put the restaurant out of business in a year because they don’t have business sense. That’s who you’re calling on – you’re calling on the chef and value analysis is running the business side of the restaurant.”
Navigating gatekeepers in healthcare
One of the biggest challenges most medical sales reps have to overcome is navigating gatekeepers in healthcare. Many are going into meetings with “a foot in the door” mentality, hoping that a meeting can pave the way for future partnerships. Copeland believes the best way to get your foot in the door is by creating a sense of urgency.
“If you say, ‘Hey, you’re wasting money, you have a problem, you have an issue,’ it accelerates it because they may not know that they’re wasting money each month. Now, there’s an urgency – it’s not about the product or the service, it’s about the problem. All of a sudden, they’re asking you to send a sample over.”
By leveraging the urgency of a healthcare organization, you are starting in the same place as you would with another approach, but with a different perspective of the solution that you can provide.
While some might consider value analysis as a gatekeeper, Copeland disagrees. He looks at value analysis as the prefrontal cortex of the health system: the high-level executive function decision maker. “I don’t see them as gatekeepers, I see them as the brains of the place, and you just have to learn their language. If you do it right, they will respond and they will buy your product because it does make sense.
Recontextualizing the role of value analysis in healthcare can bring a sense of clarity to how you approach your products. He said, “What I have found is when you put together a decent business case and you start asking at the clinician level who runs the service line, you will usually end up at a nurse who is at the director or VP level. The higher on the chain you get, the more effective you can be.”
Understanding the opportunities and challenges with value analysis
When you are trying to navigate the value analysis filter, it’s important to understand the challenges and opportunities that healthcare facilities are facing right now. We are several years removed from the pandemic, but the effects of COVID are still very real and prevalent today. We can see that manifest in certain parts of the care continuum before it trickles down to affect things like the quality of patient care.
“Health systems are struggling with, not decreases in revenue, but decreases in profitability. I just saw on Becker’s that the average hospital margin is about $4.9, which is pretty slim. Another major issue is that they don’t have enough staff – they cannot afford to lose doctors or nurses, although doctors and nurses will complain they are not being treated very well,” Copeland said.
Developing an understanding and appreciation for the sheer volume of the challenges facing healthcare gives you a better perspective of how your solution can help. It’s all about how you position your product in the pitch – understanding the value that you bring to the equation is an essential part of the sales pitch.
“Being able to get people in and out of these facilities safely and healthily with good quality outcomes is important,” Copeland said. “If the product helps them get people out the door, especially complex patients, that really matters right now. Even if the product helps with those things secondarily, sales reps need to highlight that and have their champions talking about it while they are not there. That makes it more likely to get approved.”