Internal Stakeholders –
Your Resource for Effective Messaging
By Ann Maloley, MBA
You know your audience best. You know what gets their attention and you know what drives them to take action. And gathering the “right” content makes all the difference in your ability to craft a message in a way that shows your physician audience that you understand them and their needs. Yet, sometimes this can be challenging – collecting information from your clinical and operational colleagues that can be shaped into your selling points. If used effectively, this information not only will help differentiate your message, but will also enhance the trust and confidence that the physician has in you, which goes a long way in building your credibility.
The best sources for this information most often are those on the clinical side – service line leaders, lead physician specialists, quality directors, etc. While they have what you need, they may not know how to package it for your specific purpose. It is up to you to work with these invaluable resources to help them understand what you need.
Following are some tips to help guide your conversations with internal stakeholders to ensure you get “marketable” message points that allows you to be more effective with physicians.
Nearly 60% of marketers surveyed indicated that they are moderately or highly aggressive in marketing to physicians in order to maintain or increase referrals, while another 26% answered slightly aggressive.
2009 HealthLeaders Media Survey
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Explain your objective. While they may think they know your job function, it’s always a good idea to clearly outline your position objective and specifically the context within which you are presenting the information. Describe a physician visit scenario – the dialogue that takes place, the questions you get from the physician, the desired outcome, etc.
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Prepare your questions in advance. Don’t presume that the clinician will know what you’re looking for. Make sure you think through what you need. It will help if you write out the questions before the meeting.
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Develop your questions in a way that positions them from the referring physician’s perspective. For example, instead of asking “What are the benefits of our cardiology program?” try “If you were talking to a referring physician about our cardiology program, what would you tell her are the top three benefits?” “Are these attributes unique to our program or do others also provide them?”
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Categorize your questions to help the clinician think through the specifics. Break it down for them. Focus in the areas that your physician audience is most interested in and/or areas that you believe make the service line most competitive. Consider these categories for starters: technology, physician credentials, unique procedures, patient satisfaction scores, physician satisfaction scores, clinical outcomes, patient throughput and turnaround times. And remember, physicians love data.
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Experience the service first hand. Sometimes it can be helpful to spend some time with the internal resource in their environment to experience the service for yourself – maybe it’s shadowing the oncology service line leader or observing how calls into the physician call center are triaged. But one caution here, manage the amount of time you commit to this. Too much internal time keeps the representative from being in the field.
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Have a conversation with your marketing team. Ask how they’re positioning the service to consumers. Understanding the consumer message can help you develop a complimentary physician message. For example, if your Breast Center offers same-day diagnosis on breast biopsies, targeted physicians might want to know this because it can be a significant patient satisfier. In this case, the message is both a benefit to the physician and to the patient. Your connection with the marketing department is important as research tells us marketers are becoming more active in targeting physicians.
Let me close by reminding you to re-connect with your internal constituents after your physician visits. You’re likely already reporting back on the issues you uncover but remember to bring back the positive feedback too. Tell them how you used the information they provided to you and the response you received. This will help the next time you’re in their office asking for more information.
