I share my secrets for having sold to over fifty fertility clinics in seven different countries despite having no outside funding or previous experience in the fertility field.
Listen to Hear How To
Engage multiple decision makers at fertility networks
How to shorten the sales cycle to fertility clinics
How to pull in the chief decision makers like practice owners and CEOs when they kick you down to gatekeepers
Transcript
Griffin Jones 00:06
Do you sell to fertility doctors? How do you sell to fertility practice owners? How do you do this and a time when fertility practices are consolidating, when MSOs are participating in the channel conflict to get better deals, there are fewer buyers. When there's channel conflict on the player side, we have so many people trying to sell in to such a small percentage of people with me be 300 independently owned clinics in all of the US. and Canada, if there still are of that many there's only about 500 fertility clinics to begin with, and relatively proportionate numbers and other parts of the world. How do you sell to these folks, we're going to explore that today, fertility doctors and those of you that work in fertility clinics, I don't know if this episode is going to be interesting to you, maybe it will, you're kind of a bug on the wall, I suppose in this conversation. This is instruction to industry side companies, those businesses that are calling on you and I put industry in quotes, some people like the word some people don't. And I'm telling them how they can call on you and be more effective in their sales and marketing to you, you'll tell me if I'm totally off this episode is for them. But I hope you enjoy it too. So start off with what I think the problem is. And there are multiple problems, but you could distill it down to there is a divide between sales and marketing in the fertility field. In many businesses overall large and small, it's one of the things that you hear very often breaking down the barriers between sales and marketing, breaking down the silos between the two, it's very common in small companies to what it means is we need to connect sales and marketing marketing is just copy. It's just art, it's just promotion, if it doesn't actually connect to the sale, That's its job. And there is a bit of an under appreciation between the two. Sometimes marketing people see sales as a less noble approach to the same aim, that it's pushy, that it's not as creative. And sometimes sales view marketers is a bunch of artists and English majors that don't actually have to be accountable for a result, at their most cynical they can be right but what we want is for marketing to set up to sell. I'm not good at a lot of things in this life. But one thing that I have gotten really good at professionally, as I think that I've gotten really good at professionally is appreciating both that there has to be a bottom line result, a sale has to eventually come from your efforts. And that marketing can uniquely position you to be able to do that so that you're adding value to your prospects so that you have greater opportunity than you do have capacity. So you can walk away from lousy deal so you don't have to pressure people. So you can be that helpful resource that you want to be in the sales process. What does this disconnect look like in the fertility field? There's a lot of booths, there's a lot of sponsorships, maybe the webinars, you have brochures, you have newsletters, and sometimes those go out through marketing channels. Sometimes it's your sales people that are manning those different channels. But then it's very often disconnected from what the actual sales process is the prospecting, call your discovery call the sales download, follow up the sales meeting, the follow up the follow up. In fact, those names are so sales oriented, that is are very often is something missing in walking the prospect all the way through the process in a way that adds value to them, and puts you in a position where you're helpful where you can walk away and aren't just somebody trying to peddle something, of course it depends on what sub vertical you're in within the fertility field very often I asked you how did SRM God PCRs go? How did this particular event or that particular endeavor go? Very often responses? Well, you know these things, it's about showing up and about building the relationship. And those are good things. But that's still too fluid. For me, that's still too much of marketing being over here. And sales being over here and want marketing to set up the sale now want to have at least a good idea of how it's helping to do that. Not saying that you can quantify everything that is a mistake that many people demand of sales, you can't qualify and attribute everything. But we should be able to do better than that. So instead of having marketing over here, and here's all your marketing efforts, and here's all your sales efforts over here. I want to walk you through a process of linking these different phases together. This is the process that my companies use that I've used to sell 1000s of dollars in marketing services over the last few years and this has been from someone that came into the field with no money, no capital whatsoever, not just no venture capital, no private equity, not even a dime from a bank loan. No money coming in as a D student who had been a generalist Digital Marketer and have been able to sell millions of dollars in marketing services to a field that generally has not been interested in marketing services. My prospects fertility clinics have spent half a percent of gross revenue on marketing. And yet somehow we've been able to do this since because I've gone through this connection to marketing and sales. Let's think of these from your prospects point of view. From a fertility doctors point of view fertility practice owners point of view a CFO at an MSL, or CEO or CEO of a fertility network, you might have seen different funnels and different flywheels it's pretty similar. Let's start with indifference, they're indifferent to their problem, or at least they're indifferent to your solution. Then there's awareness where they become aware of their problem and acknowledge it, then there's consideration where they actually might start to talk to you and consider you as a solution or consider solutions period, then comes indecision. Indecision is that point in the sales process where every single person that's ever sold anything knows exactly what I'm talking to? will think about it. Oh, yeah, we're ready to go. And then you don't hear back from them. Oh, this is something that we really want to work on, we just have to talk about it was so and so. And that process, which sometimes when things are going really good happens right away, but very often takes weeks and months, not only does the indecision phase very often take several months, it can also become a graveyard where sales go to die, things that had been very promising conversations, end up becoming nothing if you can get past indecision, that's when you get to commitment a decision from the buyer. These five phases are when fertility doctors, fertility practice owners and execs are in when we're trying to get them to buy our product, when we're trying to get them to write to our pharmacy, we're trying to get them to write our drug, when we're trying to get them to use our carrier screening company or genetic testing company to buy our EMR to demo our new software. These are the five phases that they're but to be honest with you, I very often don't think of that this in terms of the phases that they're even though I will say, but to be honest with you, I very often don't even think of it in these phases that they're in from their end. Yes, I always believe in talking about the problem that your prospect is facing, not starting with the feature not starting that with what you do, we're all tempted to do that. See it all the gosh darn time, even though every sales and marketing book and every wisdom, piece of wisdom that has come out about sales and marketing wisely advises that we start with the prospects problem, we often skip that. And even knowing that I just often don't think of it in terms of where the prospect is, I think of it in terms of what I have to do. And it's a sequence of things that I have to do in order to get their attention and trust so that I can actually help them and actually provide value first, I'm going to attract them get their intention, then I'm going to engage them then I have to secure the conversation, the process the relationship. So it doesn't go into the graveyard to indecision, how they have to close the deal, actually get the person to sign something to a money for it, and then be able to deliver it to them. And I used to think of the nurturer and delight phase, just in that delivery form. There is some bit of nurture and delight that you want to do across all those days, you want to be nurturing and delighting a little bit while you're attracting them a little bit while you're engaging them a little bit while you're securing them a little bit while you're closing them to nurture and delight shouldn't just be saved for the delivery phase. In my view, I think it's best when it comes in the delivery phase, I'd much rather have a happy client than a happy prospect. I can't sleep when clients don't feel like they've gotten value. And I love it when you can get a prospect to buy at the lowest expectation for them. So that then you can exceed that expectation. So this is how fertility bridge has done it through inside reproductive health over the years to sell millions of dollars in client services to a very small niche with no outside budget, no fancy parties, hardly even any sponsorships. And one part time salesperson, wha who is also running a company, and this is all very visual. So if you want to see the visual, I will link it, you can download it, go to the show notes of this page, go to the email that you got this episode from or go to insidereproductivehealth.com/fertilityclinicsales, and then you can get an idea of what this actually looks like. So in order to attract the audience in order to get their attention, that's where the marketing series comes in. And even though the main problem that we're solving for today is connecting sales and marketing. That's our central theme. What's one of the problems that has come from the consolidation that's happening in the field, though, to be fair, I think it's there, even if you're selling to small, independently owned practices is that there's multiple decision makers, even in a small independently owned practice, you might have the physician you might have the physician spouse, you might have a practice manager that the physician really trusts and relies on On, if you're selling lab solutions, you might still have to talk to their lab director. If you're selling lab solutions in general, very often you need the lab director to buy in. But they can't totally say yes, or write a check without having a senior partner, physician or the managing partner. If it's a multi physician group, they have different decision makers involved of their senior partners, some of whom are very involved, some of whom are less involved, some of them make decisions on committees, if it's an MSO, you'll very often have a chief medical officer, maybe a chief scientific officer, maybe there are some junior partners that you need to come and advocate for you. There's a CFO, a CE, O N, sometimes other different relevant C positions beyond the CEO. So that's where you'll see different articles and podcast episodes coming out from me that target lots of different types of folks. We'll talk about IVF conversion, branding, reputation management, we'll talk about things that my company itself doesn't even help with mergers and acquisitions, operational improvements, physician recruitment, because that's engaging the different decision makers, we're getting lab directors here, we're getting CEOs here, we're getting ce o 's there, and then we're putting in different messages at different times to let people know about our services. But that way, when I do get invited to a sales conversation, it's more likely that the person's partner has heard of me that the executives have heard of me, and they've heard of me and my company in different places, a podcast episode here and article here, any book here. So I have different nurture pieces for each of these different types of decision makers. And this is what advertisers who advertise on inside reproductive health do the same thing. We just help them make their nurture pieces and put it in their different places, to the different decision makers that we reach. But the advertisers just like us can't jump all the way to the sales offer. Well, they can and sometimes they'll get lucky. But it's not the most trusted way of fluidly going through the process. Well, it makes more sense in our second phase to engage the prospective fertility practice owner or the prospective fertility Exec is to give them a marketing hook something of value. A great marketing hook is something that really talks about your prospects problem and gives them the insight and data that they probably can't get elsewhere or would be hard to get elsewhere without talking about your solution. Talking about your features. A couple of really great examples of marketing hooks that we've had that have been really successful. We ranked every fertility clinic based on our online reputation. And then we gave that ranking to people to be able to see where they were we did the same thing. With brand, we ranked every fertility clinic on a four point brand scale. And people wanted to see that we gave them the criteria for the scale. So fertility practices, got to see interesting information, things that they wanted to know without having to hear anything about our sales message. And they got that for free. The more generous you can be here, the better off you can be. This is what we counsel advertisers who advertise on the inside reproductive health to do and some are better than others. Some tried to jump too far, the marketing offer that they have isn't that generous. The information isn't that competitive. It's not that detailed, and so less people are interested. Another example of a really good one was psycho clarity. And I can share this because Dr. Shore has given me permission to use them as a testimonial and a case study very graciously. They were also very gracious and generous in their marketing offer. They gave averages for physician time averages for physician salary for ultrasound Time for Nursing time for time spent on ultrasound, and they were willing to give that away in exchange for some contact information. But without any thing about cycle clarity about all the great stuff that they do. It was just in trusting and valuable information that they were willing to parkways in exchange for building that next step of the relationship with the prospect.
To get an idea for how your company might be able to get multiple fertility companies as leads, you can get a visual of the process at insidereproductivehealth.com/fertilityclinicsales, that's a free visual that shows you what the process looks like when it's broken, shows you all of the points of the process when it works. That's insidereproductivehealth.com/fertilityclinicsales or you can just email me Griffin, griffin@fertilitybridge.com or insidereproductivehealth.com/fertilityclinicsales. Now back to enjoying your episode.
So now we're in our third phase. We have nurtured them to our marketing series one, we have got them on with our marketing OIC, which maybe I'll change to marketing bait, and nobody likes to think of themselves as a fish. I'm happy to be a fish as long as everybody's transparent with our interests. They people don't like that. But I think it's a valuable way of thinking about this and maybe I'll change it to marketing data because I've got marketing hook onto sales hook but you need something to grab on to at least time so I might keep the word up and you may be dispense with the fish analogy altogether, because really, it's just about latching on, it's about getting traction. First is the nurturing pieces that happen through the marketing series, then we're getting them we're latching on with a marketing hook that is valuable and generous to the prospect. And then the sales hook is really where we want to latch marketing on to sales, we want to bridge this gap, we want to successfully pass off the baton without having to get them so fully committed into the sales process. Without wasting the prospects time without wasting your time. If we don't know if it's a good fit, now there hasn't been that qualification. And that happens with your sales hook. Your sales hook should be low commitment to yourselves into the prospect and it's gotta be valuable to the prospect, it has to be more relevant than Hey, do you want to talk on the phone for 20 minutes and see how we can help you even if it is actually a 20 minute conversation, give you an example number the marketing hooks I was talking about the one of the examples I had was we ranked all of the clinics on brand that was the marketing hook, you had to download that you had to give your information, say this is something I'm interested in. And then the sales hook after that was a saw that you downloaded this ranking Do you want to see the criteria to I can walk you through it. So it's relevant, it's valuable to the prospect because they've already been interested in the ranking. And you're putting a constraint around it that you're not just going to take up all of their time or your time. That's one example of a sales hook. Another example is, for example, what we just talked about this visual that if you go to insidereproductivehealth.com/fertilityclinicsales, or if you download this from the email, or if you download it from the page that this particular podcast episode is on, that's a marketing hook, you're getting this visual, and then I can reach out to you if I if we haven't talked already, or if I think might be a good time to have a conversation and say, Hey, do you want to see the rest of these examples? Do you want to have a 20 minute conversation, and we'll go over this and I will show you the different points of exactly how we use each of these five different phases so that you can see for yourself in a perfect world, we'd go right from the sales hook to the sales offer. But we usually need a sales nurture series. First, this is really where the sales comes in. This is really where people often don't like to get their hands dirty. Everybody wishes you could just put an ad up someplace and then all of a sudden you get 10 calls in the prospect as their wallet out and they just want to buy your genetic testing offering you want to buy your new AI solution, they want to sign up for your software they want to demo your EMR usually doesn't happen like that, we have to continue to build the relationship provide value. But there are ways we can do that more systemically where we waste a lot less of the prospects time where we waste a lot less of your time. So when you see the visual, you'll see the sales nurture series in between the sales hub, phase three and the sales off for Phase Five. But really, I like to use it as like a phase two and a half and a phase one out, I like to use it between the marketing and the sales up to so what I like to do is get the sales conversation scheduled. But then I'd like to send the prospects some information before we even meet those sales nurture pieces that come even before the sales hook that first sales conversation should have to do with the prospects most frequently asked questions. And very often the most common objections want to send that to them ahead of time to show them that you've thought about this before. And if there are any deal breakers, that they should cancel the meeting, you're not trying to get them in a meeting, you're not trying to squeeze them into something, you want to show them that you've thought about a lot of their questions ahead of time that you're ready, you want to show them that you don't want to waste their time you want to give that to them so that they can cancel if there is a deal breaker and example of one of those sales nurture pieces for us that I use between the marketing hook and the sales hook is we have a very extensive FAQ page probably need to update it. There's a lot of stuff for especially inside reproductive health advertiser prospects that I don't have on there, but on the client services, and Marguerite said is really robust it as most of any questions they could possibly ask and says, you know, here's what the deal breakers would be if this is important to you, we're not going to be a good set. If this is important to you, we might be and it links to a lot of information about our sales and our delivered process. I like to get that to people before I have that sales hook conversation with them, because then they can cancel if they want. And very often that meeting just goes much more smoothly, because we're both prepared. But let's say we're in the sales nurture series, where it really is the fourth phase it is coming between the sales hook and the sales offer. This is where you want to do some objection busting. And very often your sales nurture pieces can also be marketing pieces, the marketing nurture pieces, and just like in the marketing series, where you're creating different nurturing pieces for each of the types of decision makers. You do the same thing with sales, nurture pieces, you have different pieces that can speak to the objections of different decision makers. And this is where you can really smash that sales cycle, the length of that sales cycle and that's where a sale Sales Person proves their value, you can resurrect some of the potential conversations that were in the graveyard, you can crank down that 910 1112 month sales cycle to a few more months at a time, you can take some of those few months sales cycles and have a couple more of those unicorns that just go through real quickly. This is where you want to really meet the fertility doctor, the practice owner, the exact where they're at and bring them value with the objections that they have for implementing your software writing to your pharmacy, writing for your drug, adopting your EMR, trying out your AI product, because they're so effing busy, they have so much going on, there are a whole bunch of good reasons, believe it or not, for them, not even try your product, much less to buy it. I know you wouldn't believe it if I told you but despite having done business with dozens of Fertility Centers, we still have not done business with the majority of them. Can you believe it the best marketer and salesperson on the face of the earth, oh, my goodness, it's because they're busy, they have things going out, there are good reasons for them, not to try my product or service, let alone work, spend money and work with us. And that's the case for you too. So we want to address their objections with well thought out pieces, so that it isn't just you responding to an objection in a conversation, you can send it to them before the objection comes up. They want to read, watch or listen to it, because it's valuable. And when it does come up in conversation, you can reference it. And it's more valuable than you just bring up a point because you want to get a sale, it's something that you clearly establish a valuable point of view on a couple more examples for you for this is for the sales nurture series, two of the biggest objections that a client services firm can get, at least if it's in marketing is we already have a marketing team, we already have a marketing director, or if you're a client services firm, you often need buy in from the top that is more than just the vertical that you're helping with. In other words, if it's marketing, you need buy in from the top because there's going to be operations, things that involve the outcome that they're ultimately in search of, if you sell some kind of accounting, it isn't just the financial department that you might need help with it might be from the sales department as well the way that they send invoices and, and do other things and bring people on to their sales process. And so we have those two different objections. The first is we already have marketing team, we have a marketing director, that's a really big one. The other one is that there are different decision makers and many of them want to kick it down to someone else they want to step out of that process, we have to solve for each of those things, I have a piece called should I fire my Fertility Centers marketing director, now it doesn't say you should fire your Fertility Centers marketing director, that wouldn't be valuable. It instead, it very lays out the different roles for Fertility Center for Fertility company that they could actually use for evaluation, what those different roles do, what levels of responsibility they can be expect to have, what outcomes can and should be assigned to them, and then what support each of them need in order to achieve those outcomes. It's a valuable piece, we send it to people. And then people can see how we can help them in different ways. Instead of shutting out we have them we have a marketing director, we have a marketing team, which could mean anything, they could have a physician liaison, they could have an in house ad agency, it could mean a number of different things. And they can see oh, this is how they might be able to help not because we're saying this is what we do. But because it's very valuable for them to be able to see the different functions, the different outcomes, and what each role needs in order to be able to achieve those outcomes. On the decision maker side, I have something called the 12 point spectrum. And I give this to CEOs I give this to practice owners and I show them here are the areas where you don't need to be involved. And here are the areas where you absolutely need to be involved. And here are the points where the handoff comes. And I give this to them because we don't want them getting sucked into things that they should be able to delegate that they have to be able to get off their plate so that they don't have to micromanage and to show them. Even if you have a chief marketing officer, there are still some things that only the visionary and the integrator are responsible for. And these are the sales and marketing roles that cannot be delegated beyond the number one person in the company and here are the other roles that can be and we show them that 12 Point spectrum. It's valuable to them. We share this with them. If I run into the objection in the conversations, I sent it to them beforehand. And those two things are really important from stopping sales conversations from going to the graveyard to get you out of indecision infinitum. And to move on to what the sales offer is there can be multiple sales offers, but I break it off into something digestible and this is something that I tried to get our advertisers to do as well try to advise them and workshop with them on how to do this Because very often our solutions are a lot, there are a lot for Fertility Center to adopt or to even think about want me to implement this software with all of my nurses, you know what that's going to do to our whole billing process? How much work is this going to take for my staff. So if you can break off a piece of what you sell, that will help you sell other bigger things potentially in the future, but at least give you something that the prospect has to part ways with money for that they can actually become a client in take them away from the prospect phase and into the client phase in a way that is valuable to build a working relationships. And now you're not just somebody calling on them, but you're actually doing business together, and in a way that doesn't have them create a huge commitment or have to make a huge commitment. It doesn't put you on the hook if they're not a good fit, and it must be valuable, whether they buy anything from you after that or not. It's a big piece. Think of what our prospects do themselves. Think of what fertility clinics do, do, you just walk into a fertility clinic as a doctor and have three cycles want a gestational carrier, you're gonna write this amount of Clomid by the way, go ahead and throw in a couple of donor gametes and some Miksi in there first, they do a console, they do a workup they go over the results, they give a follow up, some people might in could be disappointed if that doesn't go on to IVF it has to be valuable outside of just the potential of it leaving to IVF the best fertility doctors and practices know this and do this. And fertility patients all over the world appreciate those that do when you can give someone answers when you can give someone guidance when you can give them value for parting ways with a little bit of money $300, somewhere between 306 $100, right, and hopefully it leads to the next step, whatever that may be, but it has to be valuable. Either way, almost all of you can do this in some way. This is where we help people work shop and get creative within it takes a little bit of time, it takes a little bit to get good at our sales offer. Another example for you is the gold diagnostic. You've probably heard me talk about the gold diagnostic on the podcast before dozens of fertility clinics have done it some industry side companies have done it to maybe 10 industry side companies have done but it's four or five something dozen clinics that have done it up to this point. And it took a little while to make sure that it was really valuable. But now I know that's going to be valuable virtually every time that people that we engage with to do the goal diagnostic love that they learn a ton and only about half of them do we go on to do more business with and I set that up from the very beginning. Just like a consults, it makes it easy for the prospect to say yes to as long as you've done all of these other things. It qualifies prospects further and it leaves them with a valuable experience. You'll convert more folks, yes, but even the folks that you don't convert will leave saying you know what, you should talk to those folks, they got something there, they have a good experience. Yes, it takes a while to figure out we can help you figure out it took us a little while to figure out but guess what, when you're starting at something so small, you can make the value up if for some reason you fail, I always started off charging $600 for the goal diagnostic. And if I couldn't deliver value, somehow I could find a way to make that up before moving to the next phase. That might be the last point on the sales offer, as it should be called something that is worth buying, as opposed to discovery call demo, things of that nature. We call it the goal diagnostic because we turn it into a deliverable. They get something from it and you can do the same thing. I hope this has been helpful to you. There's a temptation very often to say doctors aren't business people are these people coming in to the fertility field, they might have MBAs and have worked in private equity backed groups, but they have no idea what they're doing and the fertility field. Those are all tempting things to say, as a great salesperson or as an aspiring great salesperson, I always want to put the onus back on myself, it's always my responsibility to provide value, never the prospects responsibility to just perceive my value, always, always have to get better always have to provide more value. Always, always always. And with that, I hope you can repair this disconnect. It doesn't just exist in the fertility field. It's in almost every facet of business where you have a silo of marketing here, you have a silo of sales here now just doing a sponsorship or a booth or creating a newsletter or making a brochure, you aren't just having a discovery call a prospecting call over here. That becomes a process that fluidly links sales and marketing where the fertility practice owner is that the indifference awareness consideration and decision commitment, and you're doing that attracting them, engaging him securing them closing now all while nurturing and delighting the entire time by giving them a nurturing piece, a marketing hook latching on to a sales hook, using your sales nurture series to get them out of decision, indecision hell in order to move things along in order to provide value, instead of arguing about objections and to have a sales offer then makes it easy for them to buy and for you to begin to become a relationship that isn't just prospect but his client and that allows you to add more value and continue to repeat this process. For those of you on the industry side I hope this was valuable to you again you can get the visual in the notes in the email that this episode came in by going to insidereproductivehealth.com/fertilityclinicsales, fertility Doc's and practice owners if you did the last through all of this episode, I hope that it was valuable to you I hope that it gets more value to you from the people that are calling on you if you found this episode valuable where you tell me where you email me and tell me I love hearing. I love hearing when that happens. And if you didn't find it valuable, will you just shout it into a pillow quietly in your house when nobody's around. Never tell anybody about how bad it was. I hope so. I hope you enjoyed this episode of Inside reproductive health and I hope it gave you something to add more value for you for your companies and for the fertility practices, fertility, Doc's and fertility companies that you call on.
Sponsor 31:09
You've been listening to the Inside Reproductive Health podcast with Griffin Jones. If you are ready to take action to make sure that your practice thrives beyond the revolutionary changes that are happening in our field and in society. Visit fertilitybridge.com to begin the first piece of the fertility marketing system, The Goal and Competitive Diagnostic. Thank you for listening to Inside Reproductive Health.