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Healthcare Software Sales Tips to Build a Steady Pipeline of Qualified Leads

Anna Kuser 1923 Views 7 min read Share

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When you work in the healthcare marketplace, you understand how long the sales process can be. Prospecting, outreach, then some more outreach, closing, then repeating, over and over. One of the best ways to fuel this long sales pipeline is by building a steady flow of qualified leads and managing a CRM efficiently. Remember, it’s not about the number of leads you have, it’s about the quality you have. Because those quality leads are the ones that will convert into a sale and become a reoccurring customer. According to the Technology Advice report, firms that apply pipeline management experience 28% higher growth than those that don’t!

Selling a product can be difficult even if the product is wonderful. In today’s saturated market, it’s important to take the time and think about your buyer’s journey toward purchasing your product. What do they have to go through in order to find you, let alone decide if you are the right fit for them. Generally, consumers like to research before purchasing a product, no matter if it’s B2C or B2B. What does this mean? It means that the consumer is putting effort to find a solution in order to solve a problem they might be facing. Let’s take a deeper look at the three stages your buyer encounters.

Here is how you can build a steadily increasing sales pipeline to boost your healthcare software sales:

Understand how your customers buy

Buyer stages affect your sales pipeline and should be aligned with your ideal Buyers Journey. Below, are the three stages that matter most for your Healthcare Software sales pipeline.

• Awareness Stage – This is the beginning stage of your sales pipeline. Your prospects realize that they have a problem or challenge they are facing and are in the process of identifying, and thoroughly understanding this problem or challenge.
• Consideration Stage – Here, your consumer is in the second stage of your sales pipeline.Your prospects have a full understanding of their problem or challenge and are now researching possible solutions to answer to their needs.
• Decision Stage – You are now entering the third stage of your sales pipeline. Your prospects have decided which approach to use for resolving their problem and are now comparing specific vendors. This is where your Healthcare Technology software swings in to save the day.

These stages are here to help you understand what your buyer is going through before they sign the dotted line. This technique falls under Inbound marketing techniques that closely tight with sales.

Clearly define the different types of phases in sales for yourself

Always keep the buyers’ journey in mind when you are working on your sales pipeline. It’s very important to understand what they are going through and how you can help. Let’s take a look at the phases of your pipeline.

• Identify – You want to identify who your ideal Healthcare Software customers really are, and who visits your website. Whatever form it may be, whether filling out a form at the end of your content piece, attending a webinar, or asking questions via the chat box on your website, you’ll want to see who they are and understand where they are coming from for what purpose. You won’t find your ideal customer and these outlets are great to gather information that could generally slip under the radar. You are also building your leads by doing this, which is a step in the right direction!
• Lead Nurture – Now that you know who your ideal Healthcare Software prospects are. You want to focus on Lead Nurture here. It’s very important to carefully craft specific messaged catered to the person you are reaching out to and build an idea around the type of conversion you will have with that possible lead. Using a tracking software is also very important, especially when you are trying to convert.
• Engage – It’s time to engage. Opening up a conversation with your potential lead is necessary in your sales process. This happens majority through email and phone calls. You’re here to see what your prospect is all about. When you make contact, start building up a report. Schedule a follow-up call after your first call to keep that engagement going. You want to know what your prospect is dealing with and their pains.
• Discover – Through your meeting together, you will discover what your prospects unique challenges and goals are. You want your prospect to know that you were listening and hearing them out before you talk about your solution and how you can help.
• Prepare Presentation of a Tailored Solution – Side step, as you have had your first meeting, you have already prepared a list of tailored solutions for your consumer’s needs, you’ve heard them loud and clear.
• Propose a Tailored Solution – At this stage, you will give your custom presentation based on what you have heard from your prospect and tailoring your service to their solution. Remember, use their language and provide quality details.
• Agreement Review – After you have discussed problems and presented solutions to their Healthcare needs, you want to make sure you covered all your bases if they agree. Then, if they agree, you will them prepare an agreement to review with your prospect and iron out any objections.
• Close – Now that you ironed out all the deals to the agreement, your customers sign the dotted line, make deposit payments, and close the healthcare software sales.

Establishing your goals

You want to establish your specific goals for each stage of your sales pipeline. This will keep your sales team motivated and enhance the chances of success, drastically. For instance, If your goal was to close around 120 large healthcare software sales deals in a year, realistically this will translate to fewer deals but it all depends on the quality of leads you have! Not the quantity. Aim high, but understand you might not reach that goal… yet. You want to gather as many quality leads as possible and close the deals effectively and efficiently. The way to achieve this is by getting everyone on the same page with your company goals.

Create a dashboard

After defining the stages of your pipeline and establishing your goals, create a sales dashboard which will help track your progress, along with your prospects as well. The dashboard should be updated on a daily basis with important information regarding your sales pipeline. At a glance, you should be able to know where you are and what your next course of action is. You can build a dashboard using a spreadsheet or sophisticated CRM software like Hubspot. You can check out Hubspot’s Advanced Sales Dashboard here. The dashboard should help you monitor details such as:

• Priorities – Which projects and tasks are the most important?
• Calendar – Is my schedule influenced by my priorities?
• Activity goals – For instance, how many proposals do I need to send out every month?
• Revenue goals – What progress am I making towards my revenue targets?
• Leads – Do I have sufficient leads to fill my pipeline?

Keep your sales pipeline filled

According to the sales guru Colleen Francis, many salespeople find themselves caught in the ‘sales trap‘. This is a situation where a lot of effort is put into making sales and little or no effort in generating prospects. With time, this results in a dry pipeline. To avoid this, you need to have a discipline of filling your pipeline continually. Here are a handful of ways to keep a steady pipeline of quality leads:

• Buying Lists – Although most salespeople find purchased lists inaccurate and off target, sometimes lists can be helpful for providing a pipeline of leads.
• Lead Generation Services – Similarly to buying lists, these services are a hit or miss, however, specialized services can provide enough leads to add to the mix.
• Build Your Own List – With professional networks like Linkedin, you can create a list of ideal companies and find the individuals at those companies there. Then using services to try and identify contact emails and phone numbers can help you get qualified leads in your pipeline.
• Inbound Lead Generation – Getting qualified leads to come to you is by far the most ideal. These leads already have a recognition of your brand and have some interest in a topic related to your solution. The indication of their interest can range from visited your website, opened and clicked within an email, downloaded a premium piece of content on your website when doing research, requested a demo, or filled out a contact form. To learn more about generating leads online to fill your pipeline steadily, check out this article “Generating Leads Online: The Birds and the Bees“.

Maintaining your pipeline

As you send proposals and close deals, take time to find new contacts to fill the top of the funnel. This should be a daily routine to ensure that your pipeline is always flowing. Figure out how many prospects you need in the Engage stage in order to meet your sales targets. The good news is that there are sales management software out there that can help you monitor the movement of your prospects in the sales pipeline.

Cleaning up your pipeline

This is a necessary step in your healthcare software pipeline that is often overlooked. If a potential customer becomes unresponsive (which they will be – it happens) or remains at the same stage of your healthcare software sales pipeline for too long, it is time for you to reevaluate them and their relevance to your own goals. This happens, and is totally ok! Now that you have your sales pipeline down, you will plan better next time in making a more accurate sales forecast. Cleaning up your pipeline also involves ensuring that your data is up to date, always. If you are running off old data, common sense should be speaking to you. Many people change companies, hop ship, or just retire, so it’s imperative to know what is happening with your leads.

The bottom line

Building a steady healthcare software sales pipeline is a challenge even for the best salesman. This is why it is very important to understand who your prospect are and what they stand for, what their wants, needs, and pains are. You want to create a strong pipeline to create the best buyer journey experience. This process is a larger body of marketing and sales strategies called the Inbound Marketing Methodology. This methodology will help you understand both sides, and assess the best leads for your business.

It can be very challenging to do all of this alone. Generally, companies will hire a team of writers, marketers, editors, and more. We here at Responsify we partner with health technology sales and business development pros to offer strategy, support, and help to build an inbound leads pipeline. By collaborating together, we help marketing and sales strategically attract new website visitors, convert them to qualified leads and turning them into happy customers. Remember, it’s not about the number of leads you pull in, it’s the amount of quality leads you gather.

If you are looking to learn more about your Healthcare Software Sales Pipeline and capitalize on your marketplace, reserve your spot for a 1-on-1 strategy session today!