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Four Barriers to Successful Physician Sales
Author: Kriss Barlow, RN, MBA
This article appeared in Healthcare Marketing Advisor, January 2007 and was updated by the author in 2009, to provide readers with the most current market reflections.
What makes some physician relations programs so successful, whereas others seem to hit every bump in the road and constantly struggle? No two medical staffs are alike so there is no perfect physician relations model. Programs often struggle when one hospital borrows a concept from another hospital and fails to tailor it to its own facility. It's sort of like trying to run a marathon in borrowed sneakers—even if they are nice shoes and the owner won a race in them, they won't necessarily produce the same results for you.
There is no magic, but there are some attributes that can be difference makers. Those who are most successful are focused, they have a strong team, there is visible support from leaders who understand the role of the physician, and they are driven to show measurable success. The right physician relations program for your facility needs to reflect the unique aspects of your market, location, and medical staff, as well as the expectations of the organization. It also should take into account your organization's fundamental referral patterns and your current referrals. For example, will your goal he to retain business from physicians who are already loyal to you? Or will you work to earn new referrals from physicians who may send your facility some business or who send no referrals but logically could?
Look Before you Leap
There are barriers to success. Those that seem to do the most damage result from a lack of understanding about how a growth oriented physician relations program really works. Admittedly, the people who implement the program may understand these obstacles, although getting to a solution is often easier said than done.
Here are four barriers to a successful program:
- Lack of focus.
This is the most insidious and most common barrier, usually found when the program is implemented with lots of enthusiasm, but not as much consideration for the infrastructure. The lack of infrastructure will not be immediately evident, but it becomes more evident when the initial sizzle is gone. One essential part of the framework is ensuring there is consistent field effort and that you are targeting the right physician audience to grow new referrals. Another is ensuring you have the people and processes in place to support the sale.
Symptoms of a program that lacks focus include the following:
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Too many service lines or departments—whether clinical or strategic—compete to use sales to grow their referrals. A program that purports to be all things to all people generally fails to meet all expectations. Get strategic about what you want to sell and stay focused on it.
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For the sake of internal equity, the plan includes all service lines. While it is an "easier sell" internally, there is no opportunity to provide depth within key services to persuade physicians to shift their referrals. Your representatives must provide physicians multiple messages on a topic to create interest and opportunity to grow the referral base. Rather than taking the all-service-lines approach, focus on a few key service lines and then build a model with good depth to create change.
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In an effort to maximize their time, sales representatives are charged with all things related to physicians, from organizing a golf outing to overseeing continuing medical education credits. The challenge, of course, is that they may not be good at all of these tasks. In addition, under this scenario, they spend too much time in-house, planning education events and the like, rather than in the field connecting with physicians.
- The wrong hire. Creating credibility and trust is a people-intensive job.
Beyond the ability to build relationships, you want someone who can get a commitment from physicians. The right talent can be the best asset or the biggest detriment to a physician relations program.
Consider the following when staffing a physician relations program:
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Find someone who can advance the relationship, if the desire is to grow the program. People who love to fix what is broken are great at customer service, but they will tend to focus on process and solutions internally rather than new growth with prospective physicians.
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Avoid trying to fit a person into a job. You need someone who is right for the job, rather than the other way around. Attempting to shoe horn someone into the wrong job because he or she was good at something else or is going through a rough time will always come at a price to the success of the program.
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Work to minimize turnover and attrition. A significant amount of either one of these hampers the relationship between sales staff and physicians. The bottom line is that a candidate needs to clearly understand the job, the pay, and the expectations before he or she starts the job.
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Hire a person who will be seen in a good light by the physicians to whom he or she is selling. Someone who feels or is perceived to be too far down the chain of command will struggle to feel like a valuable resource and won't succeed at physician sales. The individual must understand healthcare and how it works and be able to earn the respect of the physician and the internal stakeholders.
- Internal sabotage.
Internal political challenges are not unique to the physician relations effort. However, because the effect of physicians on a hospital is so high-profile, the politics can be more troublesome for a physician relations program.
Although there are many ways to sabotage a program, both purposeful and not, there are three that generally are not intentional but can cause chaos in the program.
Look out for the following potential problems:
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Decisions made without consideration of the needed people or processes. Decisions about what to sell are often based on the strategic plan, pressures from specialists, and revenue potential. This is fine, unless the program does not have the appropriate resources in place to support the growth.
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A lack of operational support. Many facilities sabotage themselves because of lack of consistency or accountability for solving physician concerns, which more often than not means that nobody really deals with the problems.
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Opposition to or unawareness about the need for a physician relations program. Some believe that the quality of their service alone is a draw for referrals. While most have come to appreciate the need to grow, there are still service lines that are not interested in more business. Sort through this on the front end with very frank "what if" conversations.
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Senior leaders sometimes think they are already doing physician relations and don't see the need for a formal program. The key message is about who is targeted by each of the parties. Many of the central targets for a physician relations effort are primary care physicians who are rarely in the hospital setting. A good solution for this is to have leaders "own" the process of building relationships with the physicians who are currently the strongest referrers, and then have the representative focus on targets for new growth.
- No measurement.
Although many individuals are absolutely well-intentioned when implementing their programs, they also need to put tools in place to measure the results. Measuring outcomes is the very best way to keep the focus on growth and effort in the field. Each representative needs to be accountable for a set number of meetings with doctors—not just quick, run—in visit, but a focused conversation with outcomes and next steps. There must also be measurable changes in referrals as a result of his or her efforts.
Challenges often arise when there is a lack of consensus about which results can be attributed to a specific sales effort. Some facilities stay soft on this because of inconsistent data or changes in what is trended and how. While measurement is an issue unto itself, the bottom line is that you need a system. Tracking problems often start because the admitting department does not capture referring physician data. Realize that there are other ways to measure if this is the case for your facility. Even if it is less than ideal, a system for measuring is a wonderful reminder of why the person is in the field and offers tangible results.
Most healthcare professionals understand what sales people do in a retail environment or they have seen a pharmaceutical representative at work. However, the ability to grow referrals from physicians is a different type of sale. The program has to be created with an understanding of what you have and what you want. It requires an approach built around the nuances of your medical staff and marketplace. There is much to be gained by taking the time and providing the right communication internally to ensure the relationship sales effort emulates the organization in its message, approach and style in the field.