It’s just B2B fertility sales. How many challenges could there possibly be?
Oh, not many, just...
Fewer qualified prospects
Limited time and access
More gatekeepers
Long sales cycle
Short sales window
Detached point of sale and
High regulation
Other than that, I can’t think of a single reason why it would be harder than ever for companies to sell to fertility centers. In other articles, I'll address why lack of change has relegated many B2B fertility companies to commodity status. Here, I will attempt to define the principal challenges that fertility companies face in marketing and selling to fertility centers. I will also try to explain why these very challenges inhibit fertility organizations from investing in alternative approaches to solve them.
1. Fewer prospects
Stat News reports more than twice as many private equity affiliations were made among REI and OB-GYN groups from 2017 through 2019 than were made in the previous seven years. For some companies, this means huge customer growth. For others, in certain cases, it means half as many potential customers when networks negotiate exclusive deals with other vendors.
2. Limited time and access
When the groups are larger, the dynamic usually changes to an enterprise sale where there are more decision-makers (though many small fertility practices have the characteristics of an enterprise sale). Even when there is still one principal decision-maker, she or he frequently needs the blessing or inclusion of many others. When committee decision-making takes over, it only takes one skeptic to derail the verdict. Most of them are gatekeepers.
Among independent fertility practices, who are often the most viable prospects, the senior partners’ responsibilities as physicians almost always take priority over their responsibilities as business owners. I agree with Dr. Paco Arredondo that physicians have the intelligence and training that can set them up to be entrepreneurs, but I agree by Dr. Andrew Meikle’s definition, that most of them are not. I won’t go into why--I wrote a four part series about why most fertility practices are not entrepreneurial ventures--but this business owner-physician tension greatly reduces the time that they have to make business decisions. When they have so little time to focus on the core responsibilities of a business, they often delegate the duties without the autonomy. Also, gatekeepers...
3. More gatekeepers
Fertility sales reps often view gatekeepers as administrative assistants or receptionists. Here is a more encompassing definition of gatekeeper that will better direct your attention to the access you need. A gatekeeper is anyone who cannot say “yes”; they can only say “no”.
4. Long sales cycle
It can take months and sometimes years from first meeting to when the client is actually ready to purchase. They have construction delays, breakups with partners, and sometimes they wait for the pain to hurt worse. It usually takes a long time to get in the door, wrangle stakeholders for follow-up meetings, get the yes, the signature, and finally get the payment.
5, Short sales window
It’s “hurry up and wait”... until it’s “hurry up again”. A practice is opening up now. They won’t need another office for years. They may never need another lab. They only buy this type of equipment every several years or even a couple of decades. They just got out of a network affiliation and hopefully, they’ll never have to do that again. The short sales window is the yin to the long sales cycle’s yang.
6. Detached point of sale
You don’t buy an IVF lab at the click of a button. There isn’t a single digital point of sale for many business dealings in the fertility field. Because of the long-term relationship dynamics of the enterprise sale, single-source attribution of marketing efforts is sometimes impossible.
7. High regulation
For some segments of the “fertility industry” the disclaimers have to be longer than the content. There are some limits to interactions, joint ventures, and messaging with and to physicians and practice owners.This difficulty may be obvious but the challenge compounds because it prevents many companies from making the necessary move to being a media company.
CAUSE OR EFFECT?
These seven challenges have certainly made your job more difficult. Still, it’s the (not so) strategic response to these challenges that compound the sales pain many fertility companies are feeling. The solution involves brave decisions in positioning and the activation of the position by putting forth oneself as a media company. I’m not talking about putting out a couple of webinars. Be sure to subscribe to Inside Reproductive Health and Fertility Bridge to be alerted about the coming content that describes the solution in more detail.
Read about how we help B2B fertility companies differentiate themselves and increase sales here.
