6 ways to accelerate your Medtech sales model

By Alex Tolmasoff, Director, KPMG Sales Transformation and HCLS Lead

In our first two blogs for medical device sales leaders, we discussed the challenges for revenue growth and the shortcomings of traditional sales models.

Now it’s time to look at approaches for a sales model refresh.

While some commercial or market leaders are taking a piecemeal approach to counter the challenges outlined previously, strategic sales leaders are driving transformation across their models using these approaches:

Evolve from “sales ops” to Customer Operations

Shift from reactive to proactive, internal to external, narrow to broad empowered commercial operations function across sales, marketing, and service driven by a mission to deliver leading customer experience (CX)
Move from small comp and tools teams to full-fledged commercial operations teams that coordinate CX, deliver insights & analytics, lead M&A integrations across the front office, and manage the marketing and sales tech stack

Create omni-channel differentiated experiences for patients and providers

Conduct patient journey assessments to understand and document new ways of working and pain/gain points that deliver differentiated CX
Use customer journeys to create shared front office processes and vision that lets your organization move away from siloed marketing, service, and sales experiences, that focus individuals to where they can make the biggest difference
Take advantage of data, digital tools, and CX metrics to create seamless and measurable employer, provider, and patient experiences

Shake up customer segmentation and go-to customer models

Refresh customer segmentation models based on new data, market trends (e.g., customer consolidation) and new ways of working post-COVID
Challenge “standard” sales processes based on customer and segment research, and upgrade job designs and hand-offs to align to hybrid, tool-enabled selling
Rethink distributor and partner relationships and programs to ensure you’re getting the biggest bang for the buck from these relationships (and so are they)
Empower “inside sales” models by ensuring they are properly equipped with customer data, modern digital tools, solid talent strategy and career pathing, install base data and account insights

Create a career program that wins the war for talent

Launch a strategy to retain top performers through pay, progression, and culture, while maintaining the large and highly valuable group of moderate performers
Challenge existing talent and develop new talent with intentional recruiting, orchestrated onboarding, transparent and relevant competency models, and varied and clear career path

Revamp incentives to grow the full suite – profitably

Balance profitability, new product sales, and growing the overall provider and procedure pool at the same time by relooking at incentive structures, such as pay and commission metrics
Evolve incentives so that when sales teams pick and choose how they deliver against their objectives, their actions are aligned with sales strategy and do not harm other front office functional objectives

Make digital and virtual selling table stakes

Accelerate sales technology adoption and investment that increase seller effectiveness (e.g., automation, just-in-time enablement, rich customer data) and provider experience (e.g., training, videos, practice insights)
Increase connections of the sales team with marketing and lead gen via digital marketing, nurture campaigns, and AI-driven sales and marketing activity guidance

As you focus on the challenges ahead, KPMG can help you improve the ROI on your sales investments by informing sales strategies, processes, and talent with connected insights. We can help you create winning customer interactions and sustainable revenue growth.