1. B U S I N E S S
P A P E R
Pivotal CRM for Medical Device
Manufacturers
Go to Market the Way You Innovate
Executive Summary
Medical device manufacturers need to get the right products into the hands of the right
customers. Faced with opportunities to capitalize on high growth rates, new markets,
and increasingly global alliances, forward-thinking organizations are intent on leading
their markets by pursuing smarter, more disciplined development strategies. The goal
is to get more profitable and innovative products to market—more cost-effectively—to
out-run the competition. Effective and innovative product development is thus
dominating the business agenda.
2. Go to Market the Way You Share Information Effectively with
Innovate Distributors and Partners
Your organization may sell its products directly to
Medical device manufacturers need to get the right customers, work with distributors, or both. When several
products into the hands of the right customers. Faced parties are involved in the sales process, it’s essential
with opportunities to capitalize on high growth rates, to exchange the appropriate information. A system to
new markets, and increasingly global alliances, forward- manage distributors, the contracts you have with them,
thinking organizations are intent on leading their markets their volume commitments, and their pricing structures
by pursuing smarter, more disciplined development makes selling simpler. Your sales teams can better
strategies. The goal is to get more profitable and manage co-selling opportunities and ensure that the
innovative products to market—more cost-effectively—to right distributors are involved.
out-run the competition. Effective and innovative product
development is thus dominating the business agenda.
Integrate Data from Multiple
At Pivotal CRM, we believe there’s an even greater
opportunity for medical device manufacturers. You can
Organizations Smoothly Through
realize further advantages by investing in technology Rapid Growth
solutions that inject critical market intelligence into When your organization grows through acquisition or
the development process and engage your company consolidation, you often inherit fragmented technology
in instant, two-way dialogues with customers. In fact, systems and business processes. The challenge is to
incorporating the voice of your customers into product re-engineer, streamline, and improve as your enterprise
and marketing strategies can transform your organization. evolves. A system designed to integrate new data and
business processes helps you gain insight into corporate
You’re already putting a lot of thought and effort into
performance, which results in better planning. Your
product innovation and development. At Pivotal CRM, we
sales teams function more efficiently and sales cycles
help you put the same thought and effort into the way
are shortened.
you get your products to market. We provide you with
the solutions you need to commercialize your products
more quickly than the competition. Developing innovative Overcome The Limitations of Legacy
sales and marketing processes can shave weeks—or Systems and Hard-coded Applications
even months—off the time it currently takes to get your
products to your customers. The result? First-mover As your industry changes, your organization changes
advantage. And first-mover profit. with it. New regulations, new markets, and increasing
competition drive new requirements all the time. Using
generic technology systems or applications designed
Help Your Organization Present a Single specifically for the pharmaceutical industry can constrain
Face to Customers your ability to create and modify unique business
processes. A system designed with the inevitability of
As a medical device manufacturer, you likely sell a range
change in mind enables you to adjust more readily,
of products to multiple organizations. For prospects to
get products to market more quickly, and devote your
become your customers, you need to deliver a smooth
resources to moving forward.
buying and service experience with professional and
well-informed personnel whose approach is tailored to
meet each facility’s unique needs. When you present
a consistent image to the market, you improve brand
recognition and market profile, enhance the quality of
customer interactions, and shorten sales cycles.
Pivotal CRM | Business Paper
3. CHALLENGE ONE: When your competitors get their products to market before you lose market share. You
may even have to wait out the lifespan of competitor contracts before regaining entry into the market.
Avoid Paying the Price for Understand Complex Customer
Being Late Inter-relationships to Target the
Right Influencers
Research shows that, on average, every month a product
is late to market decreases its gross profit potential by Your company’s sales teams need to understand the
0%. Automated sales and marketing capabilities can numerous relationships that exist at customer facilities.
decrease the time it takes to get your products out the Not only do they sell to a facility’s purchasing department,
door. The impact on your business can be dramatic; they also need to interact with individual doctors and lab
you’ll capture market share by getting your products to technicians. Being able to determine easily who the key
customers before your competitors do. influencers are at each facility, their departments, their
specialty areas, and their level of influence on others
helps your sales teams target the right people to close
Ensure You Have the Right Team deals. Any insight that your non-sales employees have
Assigned to Each Account into customers can help, too.
As a medical device manufacturer, you constantly look Facilities such as hospitals often have committees
for ways to improve the sales process. You likely have responsible for making decisions about large purchases.
numerous sales teams, each responsible for working Sales reps who do not have access to this information
within a particular geographic area. Some sales members may spend too much time trying to uncover details or
may be qualified to sell more than one product line or to working with the wrong contacts, which reduces their
target more than one facility type. You may segment your productivity and lengthens the sales process. When
sales force into distinct units based on expertise; you may you map out existing relationships between contacts,
segment further according to facility type, size, your sales representatives can target the most influential
or account size. contacts at a facility and sell more effectively. They spend
less time chasing the wrong people, and they gain insight
When you segment your customers according to criteria
into which relationships have the most potential. Over
beyond simple geographic boundaries, you refine the
time, strengthening these relationships with influencers
sales process. You can fine-tune the process further by
can help close deals faster and increase revenue per sale.
monitoring and controlling the way sales members are
assigned to accounts. When the appropriate personnel Beyond the inter-relationships within a customer
are in contact with an account, they generate more facility, your sales teams benefit from understanding
business and shorten the sales cycle. the relationships your customers have with other
organizations, such as Group Purchasing Organizations
Depending on the type of product being sold, you may
(GPOs), distributors, and industry associations. In some
need to include staff qualified for training, installation,
cases, groups of facilities form Integrated Delivery
or support with the information surrounding a particular
Networks (IDNs); understanding the relationships
account. Just as your sales teams may be segmented
between members is often extremely important. Sales
by role and geographic area, your support staff may be
representatives should also know which facilities comprise
organized according to similar criteria. When you include
each IDN; selling to one facility in an IDN may lead to
all supporting staff in your approach to segmenting
opportunities with other facilities in the IDN.
customers, you extend the efficiency of the sales
process into implementation and support areas. Understanding and taking advantage of the relationships
When people are assigned to a team for a specific between facilities gives your sales representatives insight
purpose, being associated with a defined role makes into channels of influence and new sales opportunities
them more accountable. that may exist outside of an individual customer facility. In
many cases, understanding these relationships ensures
accurate pricing and can lead to your products being
purchased by other facilities in a network.
Pivotal CRM | Business Paper
4. Monitor Contracts for Their Duration to Automatically Assign the Right Leads
Ensure that Volume Commitments are to the Right People Quickly and
Fulfilled, Expirations are Tracked, and Consistently
Renewals are Processed On Time Once a marketing campaign is in progress, leads are
generated from your target prospects or customer base.
Once a quote has been approved and accepted by
The question is what to do with them. You don’t want to
a customer, it has to be converted to a contract that
let hot leads just sit there getting cold. Forwarding them to
reflects the details defined in the quote. This ensures
the right sales reps immediately keeps up a campaign’s
that the pricing offered when fulfilling orders is correct.
momentum. Taking advantage of marketing automation
Contract details must always be monitored for volume
enables you to assign leads to sales representatives
commitments and expiration dates. Volume commitments,
according to the way customers are segmented and
in particular, often dictate pricing structures, so keeping
prioritized. After every campaign, your sales team can
track of customers’ progress along these lines is essential
analyze and track leads throughout the sales cycle.
to maintaining the margins calculated for a given contract.
From geography to product of interest to customer
When you give your sales representatives tools to keep characteristics, you can ensure that the right sales
track of numerous contracts and the details they contain, representative receives every qualified lead—every time.
the entire quote-to-contract process is streamlined to
increase efficiency and minimize costly errors. They
can track competitor and contract expirations to ensure
that existing contracts are renewed and that competitor
contracts are replaced. You maintain market share and can
even gain market share by overtaking your competitors.
Create Effective, High-impact Marketing
Campaigns to Generate Leads and
Drive Additional Revenue
Your organization likely devotes considerable resources
to advertising and promotions at tradeshows. For many
medical device manufacturers, tradeshows are an
excellent forum for announcing new products and getting
face-to-face feedback from customers.
It’s important that all prospects and customers
know about your company’s presentations well
in advance. Marketing automation systems enable you to
deliver targeted information to specific groups, whether
your goal is to announce an upcoming tradeshow, create
effective Continuing Medical Education (CME) events
to promote products, or distribute clinical research
studies and journal articles. Your marketing teams can
profile customers and prospects, target them with highly
personalized and relevant messages, deliver each
message at the right time via the right channel, and
ensure consistent and effective follow-up. Disseminating
information to target lists is faster and more efficient than
having sales reps send out information to one customer
at a time.
Pivotal CRM | Business Paper
5. CHALLENGE TWO: When your sales representatives misquote or lose track of contract details, they
lose opportunities to cross-sell, up-sell, renew existing contracts, and capitalize on your competitors‘
contract expirations.
Don’t allow profit margins—or your revenue potential— Gain Management’s Approval on Pricing
to get squeezed. Increased profit margins and revenue
potential is more than a matter of product quality or Before Sending Quotes to Customers
effectiveness. Centralize the way you manage opportunities and Minimize the Revisions that Can
to improve the way quotes are handled. Relate essential
quoting functions to the goals of your organization. Develop
Disrupt a Potential Sale
realistic and appropriate performance standards. Educate Based on the relationships your sales representatives
and develop opportunities to sustain, improve or build on have with customers, some proposed discounts or pricing
employee performance. breaks may exceed acceptable limits or margins. If sales
managers are notified each time a quote is below a
suggested price, they can investigate the quote further
Ensure Appropriate Pricing for Every and propose a new amount consistent with established
Customer to Minimize Fluctuations ranges. In these cases, following an approval-process
in Revenue workflow prior to sharing a quote with a customer can
prevent over-discounting.
As a routine part of the sales process, sales teams
must provide price quotes for the products customers When sales managers have a way to review inappropriate
are most interested in. Pricing is based on a number of quotes before they are sent to customers, they can
factors, so sales representatives need to understand intervene if necessary. The entire process becomes more
all of the relevant relationships involved to be sure that efficient because you minimize excessive discounting, and
they are providing accurate and appropriate prices. customers receive quotes that do not have to be revised.
Limited knowledge about these relationships can lead
to incorrectly priced quotes, which has a direct effect
on sales revenue.
Products Are Your Lifeblood; Track
Essential Details for Each and Every
Without fully understanding existing relationships with
GPOs and distributors, the likelihood of misquoting a
One to Increase Up-Sell Revenue
price is tremendous. This is complicated further when Your sales teams need to know which required
a facility wants to purchase a large quantity of products components must be sold along with a product, as
that justifies an appropriate pricing break. Add to this the well as the optional components that are available, in
dimension of purchase versus lease, and the order to take advantage of cross-selling and up-selling
pricing options multiply dramatically. opportunities. The most effective way to keep everyone
informed is through a comprehensive product catalog.
When your sales teams have access to every pricing
option, they can provide quotes that accurately reflect But creating a catalog is only a first step; keeping it
their knowledge of the customer relationship and the updated with new product information is often more
products that the customer relies on. Sales productivity complicated. Not only does the catalog need to include
rises and the revenue fluctuations due to inconsistent comprehensive product details, it must often be used
quoting are minimized. to track the way product information changes over
time. Furthermore, you must ensure that your company
frequently updates important regulatory and coding
Know the Primary Vendor for Each and coverage information, enabling sales teams to
Facility to Ensure Valid Price Quotes discuss product details and counter objections during
Sales representatives also need to know who the primary the sales cycle.
vendor is for each facility so they can appropriately
Tracking product details helps your organization
channel their sales approach and provide appropriate
understand the relationship between the profitability of
price quotes. Similarly, the representatives’ lack of insight
products and the sales activities associated with them.
into which distributors the facility works with could result
Ultimately, streamlining these relationships saves time
in quotes that are incorrect, which increases customer
and leads to increases in revenue.
dissatisfaction and affects your company’s credibility
when obtaining future business.
Pivotal CRM | Business Paper
6. CHALLENGE THREE: When you have trouble managing distributors, their pipelines, and their contracts,
your bottom line suffers.
Keep track of distributor relationships—and capitalize on Monitor and Manage Distributor Volume
them—to boost revenues for the long term. In dealing with
your distributors, it’s essential to be flexible. Collaborate Commitments, and Gain Insight Into
with your distributors during the selling process, and build Relationships Between GPOS, IDNS,
a methodology for managing partners.
and Individual Facilities
It is often difficult to track the complex relationships
Associate Distributors With the between distributors, GPOs, IDNs and individual facilities.
Appropriate Sales Team to Streamline For a start, you can monitor the way your distributors
the Sales Process fulfill their contracts to ensure that they price products
accurately when giving volume discounts. Non-performing
You may be working with one or more distributors who distributors can be charged penalties and you’ll have a
have exclusive rights to sell one of your company’s way to evaluate each distributor for future contracts.
products; in some cases these distributors may even
co-sell a product with your own sales team. In these A system that can track all of these inter-relationships
situations, it is important to make sure that the appropriate minimizes the chance of pricing your products
distributor is connected with your sales team so that a inappropriately; you understand the agreements that are
sales member working on that account knows which already in place. Furthermore, your company may create
distributor should be involved, in what capacity, and for GPO- and distributor-specific pricing based on contracts
which products. that you have with each individual GPO or distributor.
These pricing options may be made to match the effective
Associating relevant third parties with your sales teams period of the contract. Your company needs to be able
extends the efficiency of the sales process beyond your to place timeframes around individual pricing options to
organization—to complement the processes of outside ensure compliance with contracts, and also to allow for
partners involved with a given customer account. Your promotional time periods. Incorrect quoting can lead to
organization benefits further by extending process rebates for frustrated customers, which damages the
efficiency to everyone involved with an account, both credibility of your company.
inside and outside your company. You also improve
your ability to identify potential distributor deals and
co-selling opportunities.
Pivotal CRM | Business Paper
7. CHALLENGE FOUR: When your sales managers can’t keep track of their sales representatives‘
activities, opportunities, and price quotes, the effectiveness of your entire sales force and marketing
efforts is compromised.
Ensure That Managers Have Tools to When you store the collective knowledge gained
through numerous relationships that change over
Measure the Effectiveness of Sales time, your organization retains valuable information on
Teams and Distributors every customer, developing a “corporate memory” that
transcends individual employees and supports lasting
When you take advantage of tools that provide insight
relationships. When new sales representatives are
into the quality of generated leads and their progress
assigned to long-term accounts, they can take advantage
through your sales process, you give your account
of the knowledge gained by others to maintain existing
managers and executives a complete picture of the sales
customer relationships, which minimizes disruptions.
activities and revenue potential. Managers can monitor
each sales representatives‘ call reports, interaction history
with customers, and price quotes; they can also monitor Track and Measure the Effectiveness
contracts and competitor contract expirations at each of Marketing Campaigns to Minimize
facility. With a comprehensive view of sales forecasts and
pipelines, your managers can plan and allocate resources Guesswork—and Costs
to increase sales efficiency. Your marketing department always needs to do more
with less. Campaign budgets are tight and it’s difficult
Integrate Sales Teams and Territories in to determine where to invest unless you understand
the performance and return on investment of previous
Advance Of Consolidation to Minimize campaigns. With marketing automation tools, you can run
Transition Headaches “nurturing” campaigns for your prospects and customers.
You learn which campaigns have been most effective
If your organization is growing through acquisition or
by asking your prospects what they have heard about
consolidation, you’re likely faced with the challenge
your company and products. You can reduce marketing
of merging customer databases, sales teams, and
costs by determining what works and refining successful
other employees to make sure that the right resources
techniques. And you will generate more high-quality
are assigned to the right accounts. Depending on the
leads by testing marketing messages and improving
circumstances of consolidation, you may be hiring new
them over time.
employees or aligning people with similar expertise to
work on teams. You may also be aligning people to work
with additional distribution channels. When you add new Track Which Invitees Attend Your Events
staff to the appropriate teams in advance of organizational and the Costs You Incur for Each One
changes, you ensure that the right people are added to
or removed from relevant account teams to make territory When your sales team organizes Continuing Medical
alignment less time-consuming. Education (CME) events to launch or promote your
company’s products, there is always a cost attached.
For every event, your organization needs to track which
Maintain a History of Every Sales Rep’s sales representatives are involved, which speakers are
Activities and Gather Knowledge About employed to help promote products, and which literature
or product sample is given away. And as you well know,
Your Customers Over Time your organization is federally regulated to monitor
Over the lifetime of an account, many employees or the amount of money you spend on each physician
distributors may interact with a customer. In cases where every year.
new sales representatives are assigned to long-term
customers, you may need to tap into the experiences of Systems that track event information to ensure that you
other employees who are, or were, responsible for the are not over-spending enable you to automate and
account to learn as much as possible about it. You may monitor each event so that your sales representatives
also want to track which sales representatives have been spend less time managing lists and tracking attendance
involved with customers over time to better understand records, and they spend more time selling. Your
these relationships. representatives can create CME events that are more
effective, using luminaries as speakers, inviting target
prospects, and sharing clinical research studies, journal
articles, product literature, and samples.
Pivotal CRM | Business Paper
8. Pivotal Medical Devices For more information, contact us today to learn more
about Pivotal CRM for Medical Device Manufacturers.
When you plan your customer relationship strategy, Visit http://www.pivotal.com or call + 8-PIVOTAL
it is important to select a CRM solution that is (+ 8-8-8).
designed specifically to accommodate the distinct
characteristics of your industry: complex distribution Pivotal CRM for Medical Device Manufacturers—go to
channels, influential relationships, and complicated market the way you innovate.
contracts and pricing structures.
Based on years of experience implementing and
deploying solutions for medical device manufacturers,
Pivotal CRM for Medical Device Manufacturers is
designed to address the key business drivers and
challenges you face every day. The Pivotal CRM solution
currently includes capabilities for territory and role
management, relationship management, quoting
and contract management, event management,
and marketing automation.
Pivotal Medical Devices includes % of the functionality
typically needed by medical device manufacturers—out
of the box. We also understand that every business is
unique; your organization can take full advantage of the
flexibility of the Pivotal CRM toolkit to customize your
CRM solution to adapt to the way you do business. The
combination of industry-tailored and custom components,
along with the inherent flexibility of the Pivotal CRM
platform, leads to a lower total cost of ownership and
a competitive edge for your company.
Take the Pivotal Step
At Pivotal CRM, we work in partnership with medical
device manufacturers and their peers to build technology
solutions that help you commercialize your products more
quickly. Our solutions are designed specifically for your
industry—to work the way you work.
We understand your challenges because we listen. We
draw upon the shared knowledge and experience of our
user base to continue improving our products over time.
As we gain feedback, we respond, we refine, and we seek
additional input.
With every new customer, our knowledge of medical
device manufacturing grows. All of our customers can
take advantage of the collective industry knowledge built
into our technology. After all, you’re the experts. That’s
why we apply to our technology what we learn from
customers like you every day.
Pivotal CRM | Business Paper
