How HME Organizations Can Create a Healthcare Sales Strategy for 2023

If your HME organization isn’t on track to reach your goals for 2022, how will you finish off the year strong and ensure you have a solid healthcare sales strategy for a successful 2023?

It’s essential for HME suppliers to determine the right Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and ensure your sales reps are spending their time on the most valuable activities, which will not only increase referral sources and ROI, but will help them grow into stronger sales professionals.

With the right healthcare sales strategy, KPIs, and execution, you and your team can complete your 2022 goals and hit the ground running in 2023.

A Goal is a Wish Without KPIs and S.M.A.R.T Goals

Having big goals for your sales team is great, but without a plan in place to achieve them – they are merely wishes.

So how can you ensure that your HME sales team is set up for success to achieve your organization’s goals?

The first step is to establish your top four KPIs for the year.

Ty Bello, Managing Partner and Chief Coach for Team at Work, suggests the top four non-negotiable KPIs HME suppliers should be tracking are:

• New accounts/customers
• Monthly sales/cash flow
• Hourly, daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, and annual sales
• Customer turnover rate

The implementation of these top four KPIs will help your agency grow and increase ROI while staying ahead of the competition.

Once KPIs are decided, you’ll want to establish your Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Time-bound (S.M.A.R.T) goals. Big audacious goals are great to strive for, but you don’t want your team to feel like they are out of reach. Creating achievable and timely SMART goals will help your team stay focused and succeed.

Without Urgency, Desire Loses Its Value

In addition to establishing your organization’s KPIs, it’s important to build urgency with your sales team and not let them lose their desire to gain new referrals while staying on track with your healthcare sales strategy.

Create urgency with your team by measuring these additional metrics:

• Monthly revenue produced by each sales rep
• The amount of time each rep spends prospecting
• Number of NEW prospects and conversion rates
• The referral source churn and lost account percentage
• Growth of base accounts, including the number of referrals and sales dollars

These metrics provide HME sales leaders a better understanding of their sales team and help them grow into more productive sales professionals.

Two Approaches to Enhance Your Healthcare Sales Strategy

To ensure your healthcare sales strategy will be executed correctly, your sales reps must understand that every referral is unique and may have different qualities.

An important question reps must ask themselves is – am I investing my time in the right referral partners and providing the information they need?

Below are two approaches to evaluating referral partner targets and the effectiveness of those meetings:

Market Data

Sales reps can target accounts all day, but are they targeting the right high value referral partners?

The best way for your reps to find the right referral targets and is to utilize market data. With the right market data, sales reps can see what providers are currently referring patients, the amount of market share you are receiving, as well as the competitors in your market that are also receiving those providers’ referrals. Additionally, this gives your team the chance to identify additional referral partners they should be targeting.

Sales Coaching Model

Introducing a sales coaching model is a great way to ensure your reps are effective at sharing your organization’s value and competitive differentiators to referral partners. Adequate coaching, on-going training, and reviews are essential steps.

According to socoselling.com, when coaching skills exceed expectations, 94.8% of reps meet quota. When coaching skills need improvement, only 84.5% hit.

With this consistent sales coaching model in place, you’ll be able to review your rep’s methods for calling and prospecting, identify any areas of need for coaching and improvement, and allow them to achieve their sales goals develop.

Utilizing the Right Tools for Success in 2023

As mentioned, providing your reps with market data is an essential asset for identifying the best referral targets. To truly empower your reps, implementing a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tool that includes market data can improve your sales team productivity and visibility into the activities with referral partners that are most effective.

With a CRM purpose-built for HME organizations, your sales team can achieve their sales goals for the remainder of 2022, and into 2023, to stay on track of the best referral partner targets and ensure they are performing the necessary visits and activities.

How to Successfully Implement Your Healthcare Sales Strategy

The use of CRM and market data can be valuable tools to support your sales reps’ and enhance their sales strategies throughout the year.

With only a few months left in the year, it’s important to start planning for next year NOW.

A critical step in your strategy planning is to begin working with your reps on ways to track specific KPIs to improve their prospecting, keep them focused on the right referrals, and allow them to grow into true sales professionals.

Want to learn more about HME growth strategies? Watch the webinar “Finish the Year Strong and Achieve Your Goals” featuring Ty Bello