7 Steps to Get in the Hospital CEO's Office

"The most complicated skill is to be simple" - Dejan Stojanovi?

This is a simple technique that only works for large hospital systems and healthcare corporations. I’m talking about organizations like Ascension, Kaiser Permanente, Tenet, and HCA. (Here’s a list ranking for-profit and non-profit hospital systems)

Many of these hospital systems are bigger than most nations.

CEOs are like royalty, and their executive teams are the royal court.

The closer you get to the center of an organization that big, the harder it is to make a sale.

The reason is that people who are getting paid more than a $250k a year ($10k-$50k a week) focus on one main goal more than anything else-

Don’t get fired.

The Bigger it is.....

Being an executive officer at one of these hospital systems entails having large responsibilities where any decision can quickly turn into a financial landslide.

This is why the C-suite is risk averse and not impulsively making decisions that could jeopardize the bottom line.

In medical devices, when you bring innovation to someone whose goal is to not make decisions that could get them fired, all they’re thinking is, “Will this get me fired ?”

The scarier it is, the more people it touches in the hospital, the more impact it’s going to have on revenue, the more likely it is going to be a threat to their job and political capital.

Now if you want to sell the small regional hospital one or two surgical instruments and you run enough calls, someone’s going to buy those instruments for the small regional hospital.

And it only works when you have an offer of significant benefit to the hospital you’re trying to sell to.

Those are the two key pre-cursors to getting into hospital c-suites.

Persistence and presenting a solution to a pain (that you don’t have to point out).

But let’s face it, that’s med device selling 101.  

Getting Strategic

With the medical device landscape changing dramatically in the last decade, everyone (from management down to reps) must be able to sell not only into the operating room but also the executive suite (C-suite).

Referencing a tactic from the book “Selling To VITO”, we will deploy an effective way to leverage into the C-suite and wedge yourself between the prospect and your competitor.

(VITO is the ultimate approver of everything that happens in the organization, including your sale.)

7 Steps to Get In

Step 1

Write a single page letter that describes not what is on offer, but what sort of offer it is. Describe the effect they will get as a result of this product.

That doesn’t mean feature and benefits. People don’t buy things, they buy the effect those things bring them.

This means, “I have something I want to tell you about. It takes 10 minutes and it’s going to increase procedures by 20% and operating efficiencies by 50%.”

Or,

“Hospital XYZ (aka their competitor) has purchased this product and have seen a dramatic change in their business.”  

This leaves mystery to the question.

Don’t ask enough of a question that you can get a “no”.

You should avoid giving them something to think about, otherwise they will tell themselves whatever story they want in order to justify saying “no”.

It’s, “Are you interested in hearing about the thing that’s behind this curtain?”

That's it.

STEP 2

Then you use their website and find five people in the organization who might be in charge of the answer to this question.

Senior President of this, Senior Vice President of that, Director of this, Vice President of that.

STEP 3

You list all the names in the “To:” line of this letter.

STEP 4

You print five copies and you highlight one name for each of the five copies.

STEP 5

Take the five letters (or emails) and you put them into five high quality, business envelopes and you write the person’s name on the envelope.

So now you have five envelopes—Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Guy Kawasaki, etc.

STEP 6

Call the hospital and ask to speak to the person in charge of the mailroom.

Whoever answers the phone in the mailroom you say, “What’s your name?” and the guy tells you his name. You say, “Thank you very much,” and you hang-up.

STEP 7

Get a FedEx envelope and you FedEx the guy in the mailroom the five envelopes with a postage that says “Dear John, Please Distribute.”

Using post it notes has actually been shown to dramatically influence behavior.

This study suggests that the Post-it leads the request to be interpreted as a solicitation for a personal favor, thus gaining compliance for the request.

Now what happens is it’s his job to distribute them.

Five of these letters get delivered to the five people you’re trying to reach. The best part is that you know that they’re going to get delivered.

The person opens it. They see the other four people who got the letter.

No recourse occurs other than contacting the other four people to see who is going to handle this.

The person doesn’t want to say “Yes, I want to take a meeting” only to find out that someone else wrote them a “Not interested” or three of the four offered you separate meetings.

So one person gets assigned to deal with you and often that person will either call you or send a note saying, “What’s up?”

Look What You've Done

What you’ve just done is you’ve found one person who’s willing to give you one- minute to find out what it is that you have that they really need to hear about.

This is more effective than spamming people’s e-mail or leaving messages on their voicemail system.

What you’ve done is respected the hierarchy, and everyone in the executive system has done what they need to do.

What the C-Suite Expects

The C-suite has two expectations:

1. Valuable content.

That means having:

• Something they don't already know.
• Something the C-suite wants to overachieve.
• Something said in a way that the C-suite easily understands.
• Apparent knowledge about the C-suite's goals and obstacles.
• Some knowledge about the C-suite's company.
• Clarity on the outcome you want from the call.
• Clarity on the outcome you want from the call.

2. Confident Delivery

That means:

• Quick, to-the-point, focused statements.
• A conversational tone.
• Plenty of chances for C-suite executive to interrupt.

C-Suite State of Mind

Meeting with the C-suite, and selling into it, is, first and foremost, a state of mind.

If you’re regularly in touch with how they think, then you’re regularly going to be “in the zone,” and you’re going to find it very easy to consistently implement what I’ve shared with you in this article. 

Remember, this is just a way to get in. Once you're in there, you better have a way to drive home the deal. If you don't, you've shut out your company and any related competitor for a while. Don't foul it up!

If you enjoyed this article, you can download the pdf of "Selling to VITO" here. Photos Courtesy of Club VITO.