Shrinking the sales cycle in the managed care market: strategies for success.

Healthcare startups face increasing pressure to accelerate their sales cycles while navigating complex purchasing decisions. As a sales leader or founder, your ability to compress the sales cycle can mean the difference between sustained growth and no momentum.

Without momentum or a continuous flow of sales, you risk burning your runway and not being able to achieve the milestones you and your investors expect.

Decision-makers in managed care organizations are juggling multiple priorities: cost containment, quality improvement, and regulatory compliance. Their purchasing processes have become more complex, with more stakeholders from various departments having input.

Add to that more regulations regarding AI and privacy, and you will have a sales cycle that can last months.

That’s why it’s critical to shorten the sales cycle as much as possible. In this post, we’ll share the strategies that are working best for our clients.

1. Lead with Outcomes Managed care executives don't buy solutions but specific outcomes. Frame your initial conversation around specific metrics, whether revenue or patient satisfaction. When you align with their performance indicators from the first interaction, you eliminate exploratory conversations that are not only unnecessary and tedious but also lengthen the process.

2. Identify all stakeholders in the purchasing decision early. Identify anybody who could have input or will sign any documents. Beyond the apparent c-suite, understand who controls the purse, who can veto, and other hidden influencers. Send them messages that resonate with each key opinion leader (KOL). For example, the CFO's concerns will differ from the CMO's priorities.

You will have to use your skills as a sales leader or founder to figure out your prospect's organizational structure. You can do this by talking to people in the organization and asking questions. The point is to do it early and use conversations to identify these stakeholders. 

3. Create standardized materials that address common objections. Our favorites are ROI calculators, regulation fact sheets, implementation timelines, and case studies.

Prospects will have similar questions and concerns, so there’s no need to repeat yourself.  These materials eliminate the weeks of requests that typically extend sales cycles. They eliminate the back-and-forth emails and phone calls that lengthen your sales cycle. Finally, they save you from repeatedly answering the same question, so you can spend more time on specific objections and concerns.

The most successful healthcare startups in managed care aren't just selling differently. They’re shortening their sales cycle, closing deals, and having more productive conversations. They are proactive and get all stakeholders involved early.

Understand your buyers, lead with outcomes, and anticipate the information they will need, and you can shrink your sales cycle in managed care.

If you want FoxGlove6 to help your startup or business implement these strategies so you can close more deals faster in managed health, then send us a message to get started.