October 2016

Why are so many intelligent, sharp, knowledgeable, and articulate wound care and regenerative medicine professionals unable to gain customer trust and drive product adoption and usage? Introduction Years managing advanced wound care centers and advising investors, device, and services firms in the industry have given me countless opportunities to be on both sides of sales and marketing activities. Sometimes, I’m on the buying side of wound care: Deciding which dressings, offloading devices, allografts, negative pressure wound therapy (NPWT), and other consumable and capital medical devices to budget for and purchase, like when I was a director at Healogics in the US. Or when working with international healthcare services firms and investors considering adding a wound care service line to their existing or planned hospitals, clinics, or rehab centers (and if so, how to proceed). Other times, I’m on the selling side: Assessing and negotiating with medical distributors, facilitating a business war gaming workshop for a new wound care product launch in the US, or training wound care and regenerative medicine sales and marketing professionals on how to drive product adoption and usage from the customer perspective. In both situations, I frequently asked myself: Why are so many intelligent, sharp, knowledgeable, and articulate wound care and regenerative medicine professionals unable to gain customer trust and drive product adoption and usage? In search of the answers, I compiled my experiences and spoke with colleagues and industry professionals. It turns out that I was not the only one interested in this answer. Demand was so strong that I began to offer a specialized workshop for sales, marketing, product specialist, and leadership teams in the industry. In the training program, we focus on the user and customer perspective, demonstrating actionable methods for improving commercialization effectiveness. Following are ten of the most common and devastating mistakes made and some ways to avoid them:   1. “Showing up and throwing up” (instead of asking questions I’m not talking about the rep running to the bathroom and vomiting during a product in-service (though I’ve witnessed that, too). “Show up and throw up” is a behavior most sales and clinical education professionals are guilty of at some point–especially when in a new role or right after in-depth product training. Often due to nervousness, or simply being eager to demonstrate their newly acquired knowledge, a sales rep (and often the manager or VP) will arrive for a meeting, blurt out a quick introduction, then launch into a rapid fire barrage of product features and technical specifications, regardless of the audience and their unique pain points. “Asking nurses and doctors questions rather than lecturing them about your product or what to do, is key,” says Isaac (all names have been changed), clinical nurse manager at a leading outpatient wound clinic in the mid-Atlantic US. A sales professional fresh out of an intense week of training is likely to want to talk about how their company’s antimicrobial foam line has more silver molecules or absorbency than the competition, or that their tissue-based product has a higher percentage of living cells or a thicker extracellular matrix (ECM). It’s understandable behavior, but it’s ineffective. Rather, establishing a relationship and learning your audience’s pain points by asking questions yields much greater success. Ron, a mentor and sales executive I used to report to, is currently a Senior VP of Business Development for a leading wound care services firm. He quotes one of his favorite sales analogies: “Questions to the sales professional are like a scalpel to the surgeon. It’s the primary tool for doing your job well.” Asking the right probing questions will both effectively build rapport, as well as help you determine which of your products and their features will solve real problems for your client. When I deliver a workshop for wound care sales, marketing, product, and leadership professionals, I review the call points and personality types involved in wound care purchasing decisions in detail. Participants leave understanding the most powerful questions that can stimulate a valuable wound care dialog to drive more sales than “show up and throw up.”   2. Not having a basic understanding of a facility’s clinical quality, operational, and other metrics (and which ones your customers are most focused on) The products you sell probably solve one or more real wound care problems. Adhesion, elasticity, wicking, and fluid retention are all examples of important characteristics of wound care products. But of equal importance, can you competently carry on a discussion with your customers about their key clinical and operational metrics and goals that your products supposedly help them achieve? Can every wound care product manager, account executive, clinical specialist, and executive in your firm or on your team answer (or know how to find out) the following questions that directly affect your customers’ clinical and operational goals and challenges?: What are the most common wound etiologies treated by your customers, and which ones present the greatest challenges (and why)? Do you know how to define key clinical metrics such as MDH, outliers, and others (which can vary across management approaches and care sites) that your stakeholders are evaluated on? Do you understand your clients’ key operational metrics, such as staffing and patient ratios, cancellation rates, average supplies per encounter, and clinical flow metrics (see #3 below)? While an effective NPWT product manager or CTP (allograft) account executive does not need to know all of these points for each customer, a big mistake that many of them make is not attempting to learn more about them when planning or discussing. Strategically, corporate executives can use this knowledge to drive future direction of their R&D efforts and product portfolios. Tactically, field-based professionals can use it as a tool to gain customer trust, and to select which of their product’s features to focus on. Unfortunately, most employees at all levels of most wound care and regenerative medicine firms are unable to articulate these critical considerations, much less incorporate them into their daily sales, marketing strategy, and clinical education activities.   3. Not understanding and adapting to the clinical flow