3 Keys to Move from “The Account View” to “The Opportunity View” in Sales in Healthcare
The Indian healthcare ecosystem is undergoing transformative changes that significantly impact healthcare buyers, including patients, healthcare providers, insurers, and the government. These changes are shaping their preferences, expectations, and decision-making processes.
In the doctor-led model, individual physicians predominantly influenced healthcare buying decisions based on their clinical judgment and preferences. On the other hand, in the currently organized institutional buying approach, healthcare institutions like hospitals or integrated care entities make purchasing decisions, taking into account factors such as cost, quality, and standardized protocols.?
Most Players are still tuned in to the older model, and here lies the problem.?
?While companies have created Key Account teams to drive demand with the organized players, they are still dealing with the mindset challenges between “The Opportunity View” vs “The Account View”. As most players transition their approach, it creates conflicts between the Clinical Teams and the Key Account Teams. They certainly do not work in consensus, but a few times they are even at loggerheads with each other.
The 3 Challenges To A Smooth Changeover:
Sales Team Capability – Most KAM teams have people who have been successfully working in Clinical teams, and who are now promoted to handling Institutional Business. While they are assigned Targets, they rarely receive inputs on how to reach and influence buying decision centers beyond the traditional procurement team.?The discussions are mostly around Therapies and Prices,?due to their limited focus on Clinical Practitioner/ Procurement or Formulary. KAM teams need Mentoring to help them learn navigation through the maze of these large accounts. They need to understand that the objectives of the Institutional Decision Makers are largely around Improving Patient Outcomes, Cost Efficiency, and Differentiating their Services.
Account Plans – Most times the account plans are created as an annual or bi-annual routine. In our Research on the Top Performing Seller Benchmark Report, Execution and implementation of the Account Plan is the second biggest differentiator from a skill perspective between the Top Performers and the Rest, with 65% of Top Performers excelling at this. An extension to this is a revision and alignment of the plan with the Account’s Objectives regularly in interactions with various decision-makers. ?
Sales Team Structure – Most organizations in these Accounts have both the Clinical Teams and the KAM teams. While the Clinical teams work with the Doctors, they do not understand the importance of reaching out to the correct stakeholders e.g., the Doctors on the procurement committees. They tend to work with Doctors who are positively disposed towards them and may just influence the pharmacy. The other common challenge is sharing of revenue credit and incentives, which becomes undoubtedly a sensitive issue.
The Organisations while introducing Key Account Management have to understand that the ramifications of it go beyond just managing relationships with the IPD procurement. In theory, the objective of both approaches is to achieve Revenue Growth, while the methodologies may be different.?
领英推荐
The Solution
The Answer to Success lies in clearly defining the objective and outcome of an initiative like KAM; Creating a Blueprint for success for the Account; and Resourcing it to produce results. RAIN Sales Performance WheelTM can be an answer to align the Organisational Drivers to produce the desired outcome for the KAM Initiative. ??????? ?