CEO Blog

We just finished our 2^nd Annual National Sales Meeting.   By all accounts the meeting was a huge success.  Not only did our internal staff, who spent hours and hours preparing for the meeting, produce a solid educational and fun two days, but they did it within budget!!!  Fantastic Job.

The difference between our first year’s meeting and last weekend’s was the evident talent improvement from one year to the next.   As a group, working together as one sales force with a common mission, we shared an incredible amount of success stories with each other.  Thank you to all of the attendees for shedding their “other company affiliations” at the door and acted as one superb OrthoHelix selling organization!!!

So many good ideas came out of the meeting, but one consistent theme reckoned over and over……the steps to successful selling in our industry has become much more complex.   The  “One Minute” management theme, brought to life by Ken Blanchard, Ph.D.  and Spencer Davis, M.D.,   in the 1990’s is now more important than ever.   I remember when those books hit the bookstore shelves, and enjoyed reading them.   Of course, I thought, after reading them, that it is just common sense and I really didn’t learn anything new.   However, in retrospect, it is the sound idea of practice, practice, practice and more practice that is the underlying message.   At our meeting, our Sales Leadership made a point to say that the audience should look at the learning opportunities at our National Sales Meeting as practice sessions for the main event, that being back in the local territories executing the skills learned and engrained during the practice sessions.

With healthcare reform relaxing the “partnerships” between Providers and Physicians, the role of hospital/surgery center staff in product usage decisions is expanding.   The buying influences within the providers have always been there, but have been overlooked or ignored in the past.   Not now, my friends.   To gain a sale in our business, a sales professional not only needs surgeon approval, but must be approved by facility product committees, meet quality criteria, be included on group contracts, be available on consignment,  be available twenty four hours a day, seven days a week, be supported by an educational  program, have solid referrals from other users, show proven clinical success, be supported by local inventory back up, etc., and oh, by the way, be price competitive, not only to similar products but also to other treatment options. 

It is clear successful sales professionals in our business must be adept to practicing the “One Minute” Manager steps to success, in addressing all of the buying influences in our business.  

There is “no free lunch” in our industry, we did give our sales force a free lunch in Cleveland, but that is because they are truly in a “League of Extraordinary Sales People”.