Driving a frictionless sales experience within the MedTech space

Otto Von Bismarck, the famous Prussian statesman, once said: “Laws are like sausages, it is better not to see them being made.” But laws and sausages are a good thing, right? The same is true for data. It is seen as a very good thing within the MedTech industry, in fact it is often seen as a precious commodity here – right from when a medical device is approved for sale, all the way to the assembly line.

However, as most MedTech organizations have made investments in tailor-made tools and applications for specific sub-processes, it’s difficult to harmonize and leverage data for holistic sales management purposes. This is a problem for MedTech salespeople, as owners of their customer relationships, they already face a variety of complex compliance and technological challenges to overcome.

This is precisely why MedTech salespeople would benefit from more meaningful insights and greater transparency across the sales cycle – generated in real-time. In short, they want to know how the sausage is made, so to speak.

The current state of pricing in the sales cycle

Although discovering buyer behavior and examining price rationality across segments helps align MedTech product pricing decisions, this pricing discovery is typically the outcome of a standalone exercise – often after a sale. Worse still, most pricing analytics projects see winning prices as the optimal outcome of complex pricing analytics algorithms, which are typically separate from how any MedTech salesperson navigates the deal cycle with their customers.

This means that most pricing algorithms designed and used by data analysts end up being “black boxes.” They only allow salespeople to see the prices they produce, without letting them see how they are actually generated or why the proposed price is the most optimal one available. As a result, most pricing within the MedTech sector is currently done in isolation, with the salesperson being a consumer of the output of this process – rather than being informed on how the output was generated or on the rationale behind their price offering.

In short, this setup undercuts any MedTech salesperson’s relationship with their customer, as these analytically generated prices often don’t consider the unique factors present in every customer relationship. These prices are never clearly explained or outlined to any MedTech salesperson, leaving them unable to explain why their offering costs more or less than other offerings on the market. This damages trust and can cause the customer to see the salesperson as unprofessional or even inept.

Making the frictionless sales experience a reality

However, making pricing analytics a key component of an integrated decision support mechanism overcomes the challenges outlined above, enabling MedTech salespeople to make better-informed decisions while keeping their proprietary knowledge, valuable insight, and pre-existing customer relationships intact.

Ensuring pricing analytics becomes a fully-fledged decision support mechanism also enables sales managers to get better insights into how and why deals are approved. They receive more context and information surrounding any deal in real-time, which helps make the frictionless sales experience a reality.

Finally, it’s important to remember that proper pricing analytics change management also requires accepting and incorporating how salespeople work into the pricing process. Pricing is critical to the sales process, and salespeople should be at the core of any pricing conversations.

Getting a frictionless sales experience is easier than you think…

To ensure salespeople introduce a frictionless sales experience into their sales cycle, a provider needs to be capable of dealing with technological change, complex compliance requirements, regulatory demands, and the power of relationships during direct sales interactions. Price is a key variable in all sales discussions, and it can be spectacularly disenfranchising for a salesperson if they are not actively engaged in this critical sales activity.

Capgemini enables salespeople to drive productivity and growth within their teams – backed by whatever digital transformation or long-term operational support they might require. Capgemini also integrates deal pricing data into how MedTechs apply price differentiators to their customers, which optimizes margin and win-rates and drives sales productivity gains and sales engagement. All of this helps make the frictionless sales experience a reality.

To learn how to make the frictionless sales experience a reality for your MedTech organization – and understand how the sausage is made from end-to-end – reach out to deepak.bhootra@capgemini.com

Deepak Bhootra is an established executive with two decades of global leadership experience. He delivers process excellence and sales growth for clients by optimizing processes and delivering seamless business transformation.