A strong base of satisfied healthcare customers is one of your company’s most valuable assets. These hospitals, clinics and medical facilities not only generate ongoing revenue, they’re great sources of ideas for new product enhancements. They can also provide referrals to potential new healthcare buyers. It’s essential to keep in regular communication with them.
But, where does that important responsibility fall?
Too often, as soon as the ink dries on the contract, the medtech sales team moves on to the next opportunity. Sometimes there’s a customer care representative or account manager to handle a healthcare customer’s ongoing needs, but those situations can be hit-or-miss.
And, if the medtech sales team does not stay engaged post-sale, there’s far less change of growing revenue from healthcare customers through cross-sell, upsell or even annual contract renewals.
Fortunately, there are options to remedy this situation. One of the most effective is engaging in regular “warm calling” to your existing healthcare customer base.
Warm calling deepens relationships with your healthcare customers
In healthcare sales, cold calling refers to introductory sales calls with brand new sales prospects. Cold calls occur at the start of the medtech lead generation process and move potential healthcare buyers into your sales funnel.
Warm calling happens at the opposite end of the spectrum. Warm calls are outbound calls with customers or warmer leads where a relationship already exists. They’re “warm” because the healthcare decision-maker you’re talking to already knows about your medtech company and your product or service. You’ve already done the hard work of establishing trust, credibility and rapport for your brand.
Regularly engaging with your current healthcare customers yields many benefits. These outbound calls can:
- Strengthen your relationship
- Improve customer satisfaction
- Identify opportunities for improvement
- Reveal additional sales and revenue potential
- Keep contact information current
- Uncover upcoming organizational changes that may impact your account
There’s tremendous value in consistent outreach to current medtech and healthcare customers at medical facilities, hospitals and clinics. After all, it costs far more to obtain a new customer than to keep a current buyer happy with your healthcare product or service.
A small investment in outbound calling can generate big returns in customer satisfaction and retention. It can also deliver tangible ROI in new sales revenue.
Don’t miss these three revenue opportunities with current healthcare customers
At Volkart May, we bring more than 30 years’ experience connecting with healthcare decision-makers on behalf of leading medtech and B2B brands.
Here are three outbound calling campaigns we recommend for deepening customer engagement and generating additional revenue from current healthcare and medtech accounts.
1. Timely reorders and renewals
Whether you sell essential medical supplies like personal protective equipment for hospital staff, or keep the paper towels and disposable cups stocked in the employee breakroom, you know how important timely reorders are to ongoing sales and revenue. Don’t leave reorders to chance—especially with new accounts or healthcare systems with numerous locations.
Proactive outreach with an inside sales phone call can help remind customers of deadlines, share details on new items and even encourage expansion of your services to other departments, locations or healthcare decision-makers. A discount or promotion on popular items can pair nicely with this approach by showing value to current customers and incentivizing additional sales.
An outbound call is also a great way to identify customer budgets and contract cycles so renewals occur promptly.
2. Extended warranties
The range of medtech systems, devices and technologies in use today continues to grow; new innovations come to market daily. Hospitals, clinics, medical facilities and other medtech buyers realize it’s critical to keep these technologies running smoothly and to protect both patient care and their capital investment.
A warm calling campaign lets you be proactive in helping healthcare customers safeguard their medtech solutions. The inside sales team can inform new users of the extended warranty options and service packages you provide. With longstanding customers, you can touch base a few weeks before their current warranty expires, so there’s no disruption in service for them (or revenue for your company).
Warranty campaigns to medtech buyers can stand on their own, or work well as a two-pronged discussion that also includes upsell options for upgrades or related products your medtech company offers. In either case, it’s a worthwhile option to protect your current customer revenue and generate additional healthcare sales.
3. Solution upgrades
An ideal scenario with medtech customers is having them purchase multiple products and services from your portfolio. Warm calling to current healthcare buyers and decision-makers can accelerate that process. An upgrade campaign helps generate awareness of additional functionality or related solutions that can help your healthcare customers grow their businesses. It’s particularly useful for technology vendors, manufacturing companies, equipment distributors and resellers.
These outbound calls can identify medtech customers who are ready to step up to a bigger system, add more user licenses or deploy new capabilities. You can also target medical facilities in your customer base with older versions of your equipment or soon-to-be-obsolete technologies.
Your medtech customers will appreciate proactive notifications that help them fit new capital expenditures into their budgets and buying cycles. Your internal medtech sales team and your distributor and reseller networks will appreciate additional market intelligence and a steady stream of qualified leads.
Increase your sales and revenue with medtech customers
Engaging your current healthcare and medtech customers can generate immediate opportunities for sales and revenue. All it takes is a customer list and experienced healthcare conversationalists like those at Volkart May.
Check out our lead generation and inside sales services for medtech and healthcare companies, then contact us to launch your first campaign.
