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Making the Leap: Four Key Insights for Generating Leads in the Future of Healthcare

Nov 9, 2020 | Appointment Setting, Call Center, Healthcare, Lead Generation

Four keys on a table

A year ago, VSA would hear the same insights from many of our clients who sell into healthcare: that it was hard to reach decision makers, that hospitals were hesitant to make new investments, and that sales processes could take forever.

But then, triggered by the global disruption of the pandemic, that landscape started changing quickly and dramatically.

Some hospital executives are calling it a “leap into the future”—because they can no longer afford to be cautious and methodical, healthcare providers have rushed to implement a slew of new technology tools that enable them to gather and analyze more individualized health data while allowing both staff and patients to access that data and interact with the institution remotely. From telehealth, home care, and outpatient services to apps and devices that allow for self-reporting of symptoms, new products are flooding the market, which is welcoming them with open arms.

Naturally, this creates a whole new ballgame for B2B companies who target healthcare, many of which had been kicking their tires earlier in the pandemic. If your company is amongst them, this is an ideal moment to ramp up your lead generation activities. The rapid changes in the market have led to tons of new opportunities.

So—what are those opportunities, and how can you best take advantage of them to reach more decision makers and set more appointments?

From VSA’s research, past experience, and current work with clients, here are some key insights we’ve discovered:

1. There’s an increased demand for a la carte health tools that often sell at a lower price point. Increasingly, health institutions want modules, apps, and gizmos that are portable and will communicate with their EHRs or CRMs. This includes everything from smartphone apps that doctors, nurses, and care staff can access from anywhere to modules for testing and reporting symptoms that patients can take home with them. Right now, you don’t need an all-in-one, high-cost offering to sell successfully into the healthcare market. This is a great opportunity to take stock of your full range of offerings—big and small—and consider how they might meet a healthcare provider’s specific need.

2. It’s not just hospitals and health clinics who might be interested in your offering. From outpatient centers to home health providers to retail businesses and even patients themselves, a much more diverse base of potential healthcare targets is emerging as the market shifts towards individualized and remote care options. If you’ve had trouble selling to hospitals in the past, it’s a good time to consider selling to someone else entirely. Think about the full range of organizations who might have a use for your service or product, and get creative in how you message it to them. Who knows? You might just tap into a few surprising new markets.

3. There’s a lot more interest in patient-facing products. Large health systems always want to make life easier for their staff, but in the current environment there’s a real emphasis on making everything easier for patients, too. Not only are patient satisfaction scores being increasingly tied to reimbursements and funding, but patient throughput and self-service are emerging as key revenue generators (or cost savers) post-COVID. Now’s the time to consider how your offering adds value for patients, too—not just practitioners.

4. With everything changing so much in healthcare this is a great time to follow up on old leads. This final insight might seem like common sense—but many companies still don’t do it! The pandemic has deeply affected every healthcare provider, which means that everyone’s needs are different now—including those old prospects who said 8 months ago that they weren’t interested in your offering. Don’t be afraid to call them up and ask for an update. Currently, there’s no lead too cold to be worth your time.

COVID may have brought a great deal of chaos and uncertainty to the healthcare market, but it also triggered an immense shift. The resulting landscape is deeply altered, but also rife with opportunity.  

VSA has already witnessed these changes firsthand; every week, new and returning clients approach us with ideas for novel, innovative healthcare campaigns. And within mere weeks, many of them have seen these ideas ripen into high-quality sales appointments.

Your team can be just as successful by taking advantage of some of the insights outlined above. Should you need any help getting started, VSA is just a phone call away.