Ten Steps To Prepare Your Small Business To Sell To Hospitals
Small businesses contemplating taking their company to the health care market space
will immensely increase their probability of success with in depth preparation. There are ten key areas involved in setting the foundation to sell to hospitals.The initial action item is to get familiar with the different market segments in health care that center around hospitals. These include Integrated Delivery Networks (IDNs), hospital systems, individual hospitals plus the long term care and clinic components of the market space. Long term care is made up of nursing homes and assisted living centers with out-patient clinics and surgery centers comprising the clinical component of the sector.
Next is to recognize the different levels of decision makers in the purchasing process of a health care facility and the related items of interest to each level. Hospitals have five main echelons of decision makers, C-Level and Vice Presidents, departmental directors, departmental staff, purchasing or contracting, and committees that are assembled for the task of approving a vendor for a large project. Nursing homes and surgery centers have Chief Administrators that control the purse strings at those facilities. Each group has their own view point of what is important to their facility and investigation by the small business needs to determine how the presentation of their products and services fit into each echelon.
The third area of preparation is determining messages that will spark the interest of the individuals that will be solicited. A solid approach for health care marketing messages usually contains one or more of the following topics: maintaining accreditation and regulatory compliance, increasing patient satisfaction, cost reduction, risk reduction, and increasing productivity.
With the information obtained from the first three steps of preparation, the next step is brainstorming for the lead generation activities that will get interested hospitals to raise their hand and say they are interested in finding out more information from the small business. Successful lead generators often contain providing value to a health care client in exchange for information or an appointment, versus asking for money. Excellent examples include items such as free educational webinars, reports or an evaluation survey.
After acquiring the lead, a small business needs to determine the definitive next step sales process that can move a potential client through a predetermined process to becoming a client which also includes a defined follow up plan. In the majority of small businesses the owner is either the main sales person or the firm is reliant upon a single individual, so a known method to accomplish a sale will allow several items to be in the sales pipeline with proper follow up and measurement without adding additional employees.
Also prior to initiating activity in contacting facilities, is the area of product or service offerings. Through years of experience, the formula of a lower front end product or service leading to a higher back end product or service culminating in some form of continuity or residual service is a proven winner in the health care market place for a small business. Time must be spent on how bundling or rearranging the different offerings of a business can accomplish this goal.
The seventh step in getting ready to sell to health care is knowing the business numbers. This needs to include not only if activity is profitable, but also the lifetime value of a client, average transaction size, how many leads it will take to keep the business going, etc. This is extremely critical if a lower priced front end product or service has been designed to penetrate the market place, so the back end needs to be profitable enough for this to make mathematical sense. If not, the lower front end price point will destroy a company.
Once the small business plan has been set into motion, there will be an abnormally high amount of information that must be prepared for in advance to avoid any items falling through the cracks of the company. Momentum is key during a launch and improper handling of information will not allow that to happen, forcing the small business to constantly be starting over. The key to jump starting the business into health care is putting a system in place to handle as much as possible, including customer contact and follow up information, sales proposals, transaction activity and invoicing with collections.
Throughout the time period of looking into the above items, competitive analysis needs to take place as well. Determining who else is in the market, what are they doing that is working or not and most of all how can the small business developing this plan differentiate themselves from all the competitors. This will be of enormous benefit if it is clearing defined why the small business developing this plan is better than a competitor from down the street.
Finally is setting the deadline for the preparation to be complete. Nothing will stop a small business faster than to never get started. Momentum will come from movement and nothing moves without a deadline.
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