How to accelerate your health technology sales cycle effectively

by Martina Lewis Marketer

As a salesperson, your sales cycle includes every move you take to close a new customer. However, there is a chance that the sales cycle will be misunderstood with sales methodology. A sales methodology is a framework for carrying out a sales cycle. The sales cycle, on the other hand, is the step-by-step method by which you, as a salesman, consummate a transaction with a client.

Piper Drive, a sales CRM, and pipeline management platform, describes a sales cycle as the set of predictable phases necessary to sell a product or service, adding that sales cycles can vary considerably between businesses, products, and services, with no two sales being the same.

A detailed grasp of your health tech sales cycle, particularly in the healthcare market, will make your sales activities more efficient. One of the major healthcare sales and marketing goals is to shorten the sales cycle without an upfront investment in sales. Shortening your health tech sales cycle gives you more time to generate new leads. This will eventually lead to a higher bottom line.

The Difficulties of a Long B2B Health Tech Sales Cycle

According to Marketing Sherpa, a market research firm, the length of the sales cycle varies by industry. In comparison, the sales cycle in the health tech market is lengthier. Nonetheless, there are several efficient strategies to reduce it and improve your sales process.

B2B sales, in general, require a long time to maintain. As a result, the B2B health tech sales cycle might take months to complete a transaction with a prospect and is fraught with difficulties. As a health tech seller, you may face the following problems during the process:

Developing a Sales-Ready Prospect from a Lead

No health tech salesman will uncover a lead who is ready to buy without your help. Lead nurturing is your greatest shot in the health tech sales cycle for converting a prospect.

With lengthier sales cycles, it will be difficult to nurture a lead all the way through the process and turn it into a sales-ready prospect. If you stay in touch with prospects, it will be simpler to convert them when they are ready. People frequently find it difficult to do so over the lengthy health tech sales cycle, and as a result, potential clients are not converted into delighted customers.

Keeping People Involved Over Time

The sales staff continues to convert leads on their radar. It becomes difficult to remember each prospect you have dealt with as the days and months pass. Neglecting them has no benefit to your firm.

Balancing new prospects with established SQLs might be difficult. As fresh leads come in, older ones may become lost in the weeds. Nobody knows which is the higher priority. Who will you pay more attention to, and how long will you do so? It might be a significant impediment in the lengthy B2B health tech sales cycle.

Keeping Your Sales Team Motivated

If your sales crew is not invested in and appreciates the process, they will have a more difficult time dealing with leads. Unfortunately, working with challenging and hesitant prospects can cause salespeople to feel annoyed or bored.

It’s difficult to stay emotionally calm while the health tech sales cycle grinds on. If you do not have immediate tactics to invigorate them, indifference or discouragement may set in.

Ensure Marketing and Sales Coordination

The most serious issues might arise from a lack of communication between the sales and healthcare marketing teams. It has the potential to have a significant influence on the health tech sales cycle. This misalignment between marketing and sales can harm lead nurturing and lead to other issues such as the ones outlined above.

When the two teams go out of rhythm, it can be difficult to bring them back on track. These teams can function independently with diverse decisions and goals, but it will not help the overall firm.

The Five Stages of the Average Sales Cycle

It is preferable to grasp the five stages of the health tech sales cycle in order to fully know how the sales cycle operates.

Prospect

This is the stage during which the sales staff attracts leads, listens to them, and learns what they require.

Connect

This is the stage at which you will generate leads to move forward with your proposals. You may make use of all of the information you gathered while prospecting.

Research

This is when you, as a salesman, learn about leads and assess if the prospect plans to buy.

Present

At this phase in the health tech sales cycle, you propose your product or service as a viable solution to your lead’s problems.

It’s a fit! You should know by now whether your lead wants your product or service and should proceed.

The Advantages of Shortening Your Sales Cycle

A shorter health technology sales cycle allows you to meet with more prospects in the same amount of time. For example, if you give each prospect one week to complete the cycle, you can meet more individuals than if you give each prospect a two-week average life cycle. As you meet more individuals, you will be able to earn more money. Furthermore, most prospects prefer shorter sales cycles as long as you meet their needs and address their problems.

Methods for Shortening Your Long Health Technology Sales Cycle

Shortening the healthcare technology sales cycle is a big problem for healthcare technology salespeople. Unlike B2C sales, B2B sales must engage with a large number of decision-makers and educate them on the value of your products. Typically, it takes a significant amount of time and effort to persuade your prospects that your solution is tailored to their specific requirements.

However, because each prospect views your product differently, your health tech sales cycle might grow excruciatingly protracted. It may also happen in B2B firms because of the large number of people involved in decision-making. According to the most recent Demand Gen Report, the buyer’s journey is becoming more intricate and time-consuming. This aggravates an already arduous sales procedure.

The good news is that you can use these marketing methods to tactically reduce your health tech sales cycle.

Recognize Your Buyer Personas

Keep away from attempting to engage the wrong individuals. This will not provide any results in the long run. Before you begin the sales process, you need to know who your target audience is. Your buyer personas are the decision-makers or influencers in the companies you’re targeting.

You can outline your personas’ attributes after identifying them by answering the following questions:

• What are their aspirations?

• What are their roles and responsibilities?

• What motivates them to make a purchase?

• What are the issues they are dealing with?

• How do they like to do research?

• What prevents you from making a purchase?

As you answer these questions, you will have a better understanding of how to approach them.