The Creator, The Authority and The Lover

I love health care, and despite all the pain caused by competitive bidding and new health care legislation, my belief is that the highly skilled, strategic, proactive and successful individuals/companies will come out of this new era stronger and far more prosperous than ever before. For those of you who are reading and hearing my voice in this article, I hope you, like me, are excited about your future—because it is up to us and our commitment to business mastery.

Specifically what I want to talk to you about in this article is how to build the most powerful sales weapon and model for your business. Now, this is a model that I’ve used for all 17 different health care businesses that I have owned or operated, and it’s also the model we use for our current clients that range from Fortune 100s such as GE Healthcare, ThermoFisher Scientific and McKesson down to small HME companies. This model has generated more than a billion dollars in sales revenue for providers, manufactures and distributors just like you. You can be confident that when you adopt and implement this structure properly, you will see an immediate and long-term boost to your sales. In turn, this creates a predictable, repeatable and scalable revenue stream so you can meet or exceed your revenue objectives even during challenging times.

Read on, and let’s get growing. You want—and need—to put together a sales structure and strategy that includes three different components and competencies. When you think about sales as a process, there are really three different aspects, and, typically in the past you had salespeople do all three functions—meaning one salesperson handled the prospecting, the closing and the relationship management for one account. Today, we are in the age of specialization and frequency. You want and need to do all three functions better and more often to thrive. You need to change the terminology so you truly understand the skills, purpose and functions; then deploy the right people at the right time to do these specific functions. It’s just a fact that most of your salespeople hate or do minimal, ineffective prospecting. Most are good in front of the customer but lousy at follow-up and after-sales matters, and you find that typically you have great customer service/relationship managers because this skill set is the easiest to find.

There is always the exception to the rule, but very few people are skilled and competent to help your business in all three areas. If you’re lucky, they will be great and qualified at one! You and I know the only way to grow and keep happy customers is to make sure you have people who excel at each stage of the sales process.

The first part of the sales and marketing process we will refer to as “the Creators,” the ones who create the opportunities. Most people reading this suffer from lack of new business and new patient referrals. Without mastery and daily focus on business growth, your business will die. This Creator position, with mastery of the critical prospecting skill, eliminates that problem, guarantees growth and is the focus of this article. The Creator is responsible for initiating the dialogue, understanding what’s specifically going on within that account, getting all the meaningful marketing data and then directing that account to where it belongs in the sales funnel. Is this an immediate sales opportunity, is this a future opportunity or do they not qualify? So, the Creator is the first step, and companies that are successful either have a bunch of Creators or they outsource this critical function. That’s all Creators do every single day: They get on the telephone, they prospect and they do what they do best—create opportunities and market intelligence.

Once those opportunities come into a sales-ready situation, they bring in what we call “the Authority,” which in old-school terminology would be “the Closer.” That Authority is a high-level sales executive who is in front of the right opportunities at the right time, doing what they do best, solving customer problems with better solutions for themselves and their patients. These professionals have a complete understanding of the customer’s business, competition and insurance coverages. When they get in front of the right people at the right time, they take business away from your competition. What will it mean to your business when you have more qualified sales calls for your Authorities? How much faster will you grow?

After the Authority comes in and presents the solution and ultimately converts a new customer, the account is passed over to “the Lover.” We want our customers to be loved. We want to be at their beck and call. We want every one of their needs taken care of because we don’t want them going any place else. In a recent study done by my company, the results showed that more than 87 percent of customers felt that they have experienced poor service or been taken for granted by their preferred vendor.

Scary, huh? I bet you’re thinking “that’s not my company”—which is exactly what your competitor is saying. Most likely, both of you are wrong!

In the age of specialization, you need to look at taking the sales process and making each member of your team a specialist who has the passion and skill for their function so you can confidently grow.

Our focus today is the Creator. The Creator is great at creating meaningful conversations that lead to sales-ready opportunities and market intelligence. For those of you who are in the marketing world, you will love this structure—you can use the phone in order to drive your marketing efforts and database development.

The way you want to look at it, business Creators and their main marketing weapon—the telephone—need to be lifted up in terms of their stature in the company. These business Creators need to be in the front, driving the bus. When done properly, business creation (aka, inside sales) should be the mission control of your organization, directing the activity of your sales force, marketing materials, and your entire sales and marketing strategy. Now, in a sales organization, if you’re using inside sales (most are not, and that needs to change today), you’re typically using lower-end people. It’s an entry-level position—you start on the inside and you graduate to the outside. It’s foolish not to focus, hire, train and compensate appropriately, because it’s the best talent to grow your business! We need to have the highest skilled people, the highest trained people, using the greatest technology out there, and when you find those Creators and do those things, you will see sales grow exponentially.

Okay, so now let’s talk more about this mission-control concept for business creation, this incredible new inside sales Creator organization that has this amazing ability to start new customer relationships, understand your competitors, and understand the buy/referral cycle. What you build is this high-powered organization—it’s like owning your personal sales GPS system. You will be able to turn on your computer and see on your screen all the information that you would want to know—every decision-maker/referral source in your territory, marketplace or country and their key contact information. You will know specifically how many potential targets are in that universe that you’re trying to serve. You would know who is in the market, who is evaluating your products or services and who is the perfect fit for your product. The program would show who’s in the market today, tomorrow, next month, next year; what patient conditions they serve; your closing ratio; your sales pipeline value; and what your revenue will be next month. I could go on and on!

Think about how much of this you wish you knew today. If you are reading this, think about how much better your sales will be and how fast you want to implement this program.

Your Creators will create that database today, and your Authorities will always be at the right place at the right time. Also, your marketing materials will be at the right place at the right time. Together everyone reading this article will spend millions and millions of dollars on wasted field (Authority) sales calls and expensive marketing materials on folks who couldn’t even use your products or services, or they just bought the device that you’re trying to sell or they don’t have the volume of patients you want to serve. You need to be really smart about to whom you’re providing information or on whom you are calling. The best part of this new structure is that you will sell more and spend less

When you have this sales structure and information that I’m talking about, it gives you an unfair advantage over your competition, no matter what size your company is. You have the unfair advantage because you know exactly what’s going on in your market space. You are confident and know more than your competition. Every one of my companies, even the one I sold to Invacare, had a higher valuation because we brought more to the equation than sales and profits—we knew more about the market than anybody else. That’s where you want to be.

Put a plan in place today. Break your sales team into Creators, Authorities and Lovers. Give your team all the tools and training they need to be successful and to start growing. You want to be the dominant knowledge player in your market, and when you are, your productivity increases and you decrease your wasteful expenses. That formula will only be beneficial in this environment and in the years ahead. Here’s to the Creators!

Read all the articles in this series at homecaremag.com/retail-mark