October 2013

Volume 9, Issue 10

In This Issue

Text to Join

Find the Hole in Sales Training

Stakeholder Navigator

Are You a Medical Device Sales Manager? Join Our LinkedIn Group

Stay Updated with our Twitter Feed

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Now anyone can join our email eNewsletter list simply by texting TAPLLC to 22828 and follow the texted instructions!

TAP White Papers:

Identify A Successful Hospital Salesperson

A Successful Sales Manager is a Great Sales Coach

"Find The Hole In Your Sales Training System"

At Technology Access Partners (TAP) we often speak with medical device companies that have recently purchased and implemented the latest and greatest sales training system. There are many out there, some better than others. But when we speak with the VP of Sales a year later they often tell us that the system didn't work. They spent a significant amount of money on training their sales force on the new system and it didn't improve sales or streamline the sales process at all. If anything, the new system irritated the sales managers and salespeople because of all the extra paperwork they were required to complete and made their selling efforts LESS productive than before!

Over the last several years, we've studied the many different sales training systems available and carefully dissected, analyzed, categorized and otherwise ripped them apart. What we found was that many of the sales systems offered a very important element-sales process. What the systems failed to offer (and why the systems ultimately fail in the medical device world) is a system tailored to the unique needs of medical device companies.

Click here to read the entire white paper

For comments or questions, contact Martin Gold at mgold@tapllc.com.

Introducing the Stakeholder Navigator for the iPad

Have you ever reached the end of the quarter and discovered that the sales you predicted to close had evaporated? Or that your sales cycles keep getting longer and more complicated because of hospital committees and complex hospital review processes?

Finally there's a sales tool for the iPad that will drive results, create predictability in your pipeline and shorten your sales cycles.

Right out of the box, the Stakeholder Navigator guides a salesperson to the stakeholders that impact the sale of their products. Click on a stakeholder and access their roles, responsibilities and concerns.

A built-in tutorial guides them through the process of micro-mapping the hospital organization and stakeholder influences.

TAP's Focused Question sets, organized by stakeholder, will help the

salesperson collect important information, uncover committee policies and procedures and decision processes--the issues that usually delay the sale.

The Stakeholder Navigator can be customized to include Focused Questions specific to your organization and your products. It can also be customized to include your organization and product-specific value propositions, making it easy for your salespeople to consistently communicate the right value propositions to the right stakeholders.

For more information contact Jay Spielvogel at jay@tapllc.com or call (914) 584-2282.

1% of Population Accounts for 21% of Healthcare Costs and 5% of Population Accounts for 49.9%

A recent study by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) identifies that a mere 1% of the population accounts for 21% of the nation's healthcare costs and 5% of the population account for almost 50%!

Sometimes referred to as super-utilizers or frequent fliers, these patients are those that suffer from chronic conditions such as heart failure, diabetes and kidney disease. According to a Kaiser Health Network (KHN) article on the subject these patients end up back in the hospital on a frequent basis "because they have enormous difficulty navigating the increasingly fragmented, complicated and inflexible health-care system. Because of lack of alternatives or force of habit, they use hospitals, often several in the same city, for care that could be provided far more cheaply and effectively in outpatient settings. Many suffer from the phenomenon known as "extreme uncoordinated care."

Click here to read the KHN article

Click here to read the full AHRQ report.

Are you a Medical Device sales manager? Join our LinkedIn group

The LinkedIn Medical Device Sales Management group is a community for all levels of sales management in the device industry to network and share ideas and best practices with their peers.

This group is strictly for regional, area director and VP level sales managers in medical device (implantable and capital equipment), diagnostic, tissue engineering and other medical technology related industries.

Within this group we will share updates and ideas on issues related to direct and indirect sales force management, recruiting techniques, economic sales tools and resources, managing hospital value analysis and technology management review committees and new regulatory initiatives affecting hospital and physician customers.

Click here to learn more and join the group

Follow our Twitter feed

For daily articles and updates on issues affecting the Medical Device Industry, such as Hospital Readmissions Reductions, Accountable Care and Value-Driven Healthcare, follow us on Twitter as @Reimbursement.

Click here to follow

Martin Gold and Jay Spielvogel

Technology Access Partners LLC

Ph: 845-596-6508