Act like a force of U.S. Marines who are establishing a beachhead and then moving inland toward their ultimate objective.
New sales leads – based on a white paper download, case study download or product literature download – are simply beachheads into a much larger buying landscape. Use these new sales leads as critical new windows into your prospects current thinking and requirements. A beachhead – a term I use to designate a sales lead that gives you an initial point of contact into an organization – can be established at many positions in an organization and then must be utilized to broaden your understanding of the critical decision makers and the process that will determine the ultimate sale.
It is critical for medical marketers to fully understand the combination of business and practitioner decision makers that influence the purchasing decisions for their products. Many firms miss the opportunity to establish a ‘beachhead’ within prospect organizations by overlooking the involvement of key business and adminstrators who are researching their product offerings as part of a support system to the physicians and medical practitioners.
One client recently asked us to qualify prospects exclusively with chief surgeon titles. Why? Because they had determined that the chief surgeon was making the final decision in many cases. With some more in depth study we determined that the chief surgen had played a role – but not the only role – in the buying process. The real ‘decisions’ were actually being influenced, vetted and determined by key business stakeholders and reviewed by hospital decision makers. The chief surgeon was simply rubberstamping the decision.
Beachheads are influencers who are involved early in the buying process when vendor selection is still under consideration. Instead of qualifying sales leads based on their titles, consider each sales lead with business and technical influencers as a potential beachhead to be nurtured early in the buying process. Then, use that beachhead to dig deeper to determine who within the organization will help to accelerate the decision process.