Cold Calling on Healthcare Providers

Advice to software vendors cold-calling on healthcare providers

While working for a large healthcare provider for a number of years, I probably had well over 1000 meetings with vendors who I met with as a result of a cold calls or an introduction from an acquaintance. I probably remember ten of those meetings with any level of detail. For the rest, in most cases I remember the company, whether they did badly or well, and possibly a few names.

It seems that nowadays everyone and their dog has a solution to meet your population health needs, or your readmission reduction, patient engagement, or (insert buzzword here) needs. One of the reasons I often avoid large healthcare software trade shows is that you can take any emerging category, and 50% of the vendors on the floor will claim they do that, along with nine other things.

Software vendors who are successful grow by reputation. There is no replacement for a referenceable client. They will proactively rate you on KLAS, sing your praises to Gartner, be a good reference in calls, attend conferences with you and let other providers know about you products.

Having said that, there is a still a significant amount of selling that occurs through cold calling. The reality is that sales is, to some extent, like a job search. For every one hundred well written job applications you send out, you may get ten interviews and one job offer. The same applies to software sales, which in turn results in sales managers expecting their sales reps to be making a certain number of calls and have a minimum sales pipeline.

Here are a few tips to those of you calling on health systems, from the perspective of someone doing critical assessment of vendor systems on the client side, as well as having supported sales calls to large institutions on the vendor side.

1 – Methodologies are useful to track what you do, but nothing replaces soft skills. I have been in countless meetings where sales folks are unable to read body language, make no eye-contact, have no idea when they have lost someone, and don’t pick up on cues to drill into an area. Slow your delivery down, engage with people.

2 – You have to be an expert at what you do. Don’t call on me to talk about a subject or technology and be unable to present without reading off the slides. Know you acronyms. Be well versed not only in your technology, but the healthcare landscape around your technology. Regularly read healthcare news articles, the ONC and CMS websites, and healthcare articles in the New York Times and other news outlets. Don’t ask stupid questions (such as what is a DRG, or what does ONC stand for, I kid you not), if you don’t know ask a colleague later. If you don’t have an answer, just say so and promise to get back with me. Then do it.

3 – Don’t try to educate me about my business. Unless you are presenting a ground-breaking disruptive technology, I know what my priorities are, in fact my budget and priorities are already set for the next year. I know them better than you do. Very often folks outside of healthcare proper learn just enough about emerging trends to be a danger to themselves.

4 – Don’t be patronizing or arrogant. You may have a very good product, it may have worked great in the twenty locations you have installed it in, but when I tell you it won’t work in my environment because we have made a strategic decision to do things a certain way, don’t tell me I am wrong and your way is better.

5 – Don’t make promises about your product you can’t keep. If functionality doesn’t exist don’t say it does, the fact that something was “vaporware” comes out at some point, and when it does things just get unpleasant. Don’t promise that something is on your road-map if it isn’t; chances are you will be caught out, plus you annoy your product managers. And by the way, when you get caught lying once, the amount of damage you to your company is much larger than the benefit you gained from the lie.

6 – Don’t ask me what “keeps me up at night” or where my “business pain” is. Do some research! Come into the meeting knowing about my organization; what my revenue is, what my mix of private/Medicaid/Medicare is, if I have an ED/Birthing Center/Cardiology Center of Excellence. I am not going to educate you about my business if I agreed to meet you as a result of a cold call or introduction.

7 – If you have been told there is no current business opportunity for what you sell, don’t push for next steps that are not going to happen. I know you sales manager may push to do that – it doesn’t work. All you are doing by trying to push the next executive meeting/define next steps/propose a pilot is become a nuisance, which means you lose any opportunity going forward. You do better becoming a trusted advisor in the long run. Ask if you can meet again in three months and go back with compelling material.

8 – Never make political statements. You may be a dyed-in-the-wool Republican/Democrat/Libertarian, and may think you know the politics of the people you are meeting with, but I have seen this backfire in meetings really badly. While we are on this subject, avoid sexist behavior and treat everyone in the room equally. I could obviously say the same about racism but I would assume that is a given, On the other hand I see a lot misogynists in sales, most not even aware of how they come across.

9 – Treat administrative staff with respect. They control calendars and have their bosses ear. Enough said.

10 – Understand the business and workflow of healthcare. Understand what DRGs, CPTs and ICDs are, when they are generated and what they are used for. Understand the significance of physicians as a referral source in affiliated networks. Understand who actually works in clinical systems, and what their roles are. Never downplay the role of nurses. As new trends like bundled payments emerge, understand them for your market - they vary from state to state. Understand the implications of HIPAA, HITECH and 42 CFR part 2. Understand how MU really works, and what a CMS ACO really is. Read.

Cold-calling is not a science, it is an art. If you do it well you leave at worst with an impressed contact who will research your product and talk about your meeting with others. If you do it badly at best you become another name in a long list of vendors.