There are big differences between B2C and B2B sales, and in the B2B world, selling MedTech to healthcare professionals stands alone. But some things hold true across the entire sales spectrum – almost everybody trusts a recommendation from a friend, colleague, or family member above all else. In fact, 93% of people favor personal influences in their buying decisions.
I received a great personal lesson in the value of peer networks when I led a team selling in the total joint space. We covered a busy territory in greater Boston, and I put a priority on one particular community doctor who did several hundred knee procedures in the area. I tried everything I could to convince him to try our knee product. Custom instruments built to his specs, dinners, educational events, I used every move I had. But he was getting good results with his current knee product, the one he was trained on. To him, there was unneeded risk involved in changing products.
The twist is, this doctor was already one of our customers. We had all of his hip business in our portfolio. If you asked me at the time, I probably would’ve said I was one of this doctor’s personal influencers. But clearly I wasn’t because I couldn’t get him to budge even after 7 years of hustle and hard work.
Commiserating with a colleague one day about how I could not crack the code, I learned that this doctor had trained with another doctor that my colleague had just sold our knee product to. My colleague offered me an introduction, and I asked our new customer if he would recommend our knee product to my priority prospect. He agreed and after a 20-minute peer-to-peer call, I heard from my prospect. He was willing to try the knee product on a trial basis.
7 years versus 20 minutes. That’s the value of a peer network. That’s the speed of trust in action.
During our live webinar on this topic, 86% of respondents to one of our polls answered that they rely on strong relationships when selling. But unless you stumble into some information on a prospect’s peer network like I did, historically the only way to connect the dots on peer networks was through meticulous, manual data pulls, assuming you could even find this information. Sales reps don’t get paid hourly, but they definitely don’t get paid for doing hours and hours of research.
This is why AcuityMD’s Peer Network feature is such a powerful tool. Just like the colleague call I mentioned above compressed 7 years’ worth of work into 20 minutes, this feature compresses weeks of research into minutes.
Just by looking at your prospect’s profile in AcuityMD, you can access their Peer Network, and with the click of a button, find out if they have a peer that can champion your product. All of the valuable information that previously had to be tracked down manually - if you could even find it - is available in our platform.
Now you can lean on peer-to-peer selling, which increases trust through shared experiences and authenticity. It also, like I found out the hard way, tremendously shortens your sales cycle. It’s no wonder I once had a customer tell me, “The old way of getting prospect data is like IBM. AcuityMD is like Apple.”
And if you’re wondering, that doctor that got the peer network recommendation on our knee product? He began routinely booking our product for procedures on a certain patient demographic, which helped up exceed our quota for the year.
Arthur Posch
Customer Success Manager, Growth
AcuityMD
