Tuesday, June 21, 2022
Intro to Core Capabilities of The Brooks Group
Tuesday, June 7, 2022
3 Unique Aspects of the Brooks Group Learning Experience
Monday, February 28, 2022
5 Reasons Your Company Needs to Invest in Key Account Management
Acquiring new customers is the most obvious way for healthcare organizations to drive growth, but it is not the only way. More and more healthcare consulting firms are offering key account management training, an innovative new approach to account management that teaches professionals to focus their efforts on a few key accounts in their portfolio. Here are a few of the benefits of investing in this type of training for your firm’s account managers.
1. Retain Existing Customers
Keeping the customers you have is always easier than finding new ones. Existing customers know what you have to offer and have found your services satisfactory over the months or years they have been working with you.
Key account management training can help you build on that existing trust to forge iron-clad relationships that benefit both parties. When customers know that you will go above and beyond for them, you can win their loyalty for a lifetime.
2. Grow Existing Accounts
It is easy to think that the goal of customer retention is to maintain consistent income from that account over time. This is not true. Your existing customers may actually have much more interest in purchasing additional solutions from you than either of you realizes.
A well-trained account manager understands that key accounts in their roster have untapped potential. They should always be looking for opportunities to show their clients some new product or service your organization offers that will meet their clients’ needs, even before those needs have been expressed. Doing this will allow them to capture more revenue from these accounts and easily achieve sustainable growth.
3. Develop Your Understanding of Your Target Customers
When you know your current customers like the back of your hand, you also gain knowledge about what future customers will respond to. Products or services that are popular with several accounts will probably be appreciated by similar organizations and may merit greater investment from your firm.
Key account management training teaches your staff to observe trends in their customers’ needs and apply them to later sales opportunities. This tactic is especially effective when excellent account management skills are paired with additional information from pharmaceutical market research companies and other sources of real-world customer data.
4. Secure Long-Term Revenue
No firm can rely on project-to-project income forever. Every organization must build long-term sources of revenue to continue to grow and expand.
Key account management training gives your staff the tools they need to deliver outstanding service on a consistent basis. This keeps customers satisfied and happy to keep giving you their business for many years to come.
5. Drive Word-of-Mouth Marketing
When your customers know they can depend on your organization for innovative solutions and excellent service, they will happily recommend you to other organizations in the industry. This allows you to build momentum based on your past successes and organically grow your customer base.
Key account management training helps your staff further develop their skillsets to meet the needs of even the most discerning customers. With this knowledge to guide them, they will have no trouble delivering the high-quality service that will get you those coveted recommendations.
Get Key Account Management Training from a Top Training Organization
Healthcare is a highly competitive field, and your firm needs every advantage it can get to stay on top. Key account management training can help your staff master the advanced customer service skills they need to make your biggest accounts even more lucrative.
The Brooks Group provides a full curriculum of training programs for account managers in the healthcare industry, including employee onboarding training and strategic account management training. Contact us today to learn more about how you can enroll your workforce in these programs and set your company up for success.
Sunday, February 13, 2022
Account Managers: Conduct Winning Meetings Starting Today!
Account managers regularly conduct meetings with some of the busiest professionals in the healthcare industry. These meetings offer a critical opportunity to exchange thoughts with clients, receive feedback, and explore new pathways to grow the account. However, it is just as easy for these events to go awry.
As an account manager, you owe your clients the courtesy of proper preparation. Here are five easy steps you can follow to plan winning meetings that will deepen your client relationships and secure new business for your firm.
1. Take Time to Prepare
Every successful meeting begins with thorough preparation.
First, decide who will attend. Keep meetings as small as possible. If possible, find out how many people the client is bringing and make sure to include relevant people from your own organization.
If you do not know some of the people in your client's party, be sure to check their LinkedIn page to learn more about them before you meet them in person.
Make sure that everyone who is set to attend the meeting knows when and where it will take place. If the meeting is online, make sure that everyone has access to the right software and has received any links or account access they need to participate.
Finally, figure out how long it will take you to get to the venue on the day of the meeting, then add an extra half-hour or so to account for detours, delays, and last-minute preparations. This ensures that you will have more than enough time to arrive before the client and set up the room.
2. Sort Out Your Logistics
Once you know how you want your meeting to go, think about what you will need to have ready to make things go smoothly.
Do you have backups of all the files you need for your presentation? Is the conference room's equipment working properly? If there is an online component to the meeting, is the office's internet connection stable? Are there enough chairs for everyone? If you will be serving coffee and snacks, how will you get them to the conference room? Will someone be taking notes, and if so, who?
Planning for all of these factors minimizes the number of interruptions you will experience during your meeting and makes you and your company look like consummate professionals.
3. Establish a Framework
Before the meeting begins, ensure that everyone is on the same page by quickly reviewing your goals for the day and how much time you have allotted for the event. It may also be helpful for you to use your strategic account management training to create a brief elevator pitch for any products or services you are planning to bring to the client’s attention.
Laying these details out in advance gives your meeting some direction and a clear endpoint that respects everyone's time. Setting these guidelines in advance reassures your clients of your professionalism and makes it easy for you to keep the meeting focused and productive.
4. Account for Different Communication Styles
The way you present information in a meeting can have a significant impact on that meeting's outcomes. Some people enjoy some social chitchat up-front to break the ice, while others prefer to get straight to business matters. Know your audience’s communication style and adapt your presentation style to suit them. This will keep your clients engaged and reinforce their confidence in your skills.
However, remember what you learned about your company culture during your employee onboarding training; many organizations frown on taking too casual an approach, and your communications choices should remain consistent with internal expectations.
5. Listen
Account managers typically come to the meetings with a lot of reports, presentations, and information that they want to share with the client. In their eagerness to offload all that information, sometimes they forget to allow time to listen and let the client share their most pressing concerns or ideas. Sometimes the reports you want to share are not as important as the new ideas the client might be thinking about, as it might uncover new opportunities for your growth together. So, make sure to ask the clients some open-ended questions and then listen!
6. Follow Up Afterwards
Good follow-up after a meeting is critical for reinforcing the customer experience.
Thank each attendee for their time and include a short summary of the key points covered during your time together. Doing this demonstrates that you are committed to understanding your customers' needs and are making the most of every learning opportunity. It also shows the kind of initiative and leadership That are hallmarks of good customer service.
Master Meetings for Account Management Success
When your next meeting comes up, put these tips into action and witness the difference they make. With the right approach, you and your clients will all leave feeling focused and confident that you are on the right track.
Interested in further development? The Brooks Group is a leader among America's pharmaceutical market research companies and healthcare consulting firms. We provide training programs that help account managers sharpen the skills they need to succeed. Contact us today to learn more about our services and how we can help you develop your sales skills, market knowledge, and customer relationships.
Monday, January 17, 2022
Cut Costs and Save Time on New Employee Onboarding With A Smart Investment
Monday, January 3, 2022
Do Your Account Managers Have the Pulse of Your Customers?
One of the most important goals of strategic account management training is to help your account managers forge a better understanding of your customers' current and evolving needs. If your account managers become too complacent, you risk losing some of your valuable accounts.
Fortunately, you have ready access to the best source of information on customer needs: your customers themselves. Have your account managers ask them the following five questions to get a better idea of what they need now and what they would like to see from your organization going forward.
5 Questions to Ask Your Customers
1. How can we better serve your needs?
Even the best healthcare organizations and their account managers have areas in which they could improve. Ask your customers about what you could be doing better, as well as which products or services they would like to see you provide in the future.
Answers to this question can help you develop a framework for future improvements within your organization. If you chart your growth according to stated customer preferences, you should have no difficulty retaining the customers you have and adding new ones to your account managers’ rosters.
2. How satisfied are you with our services?
Your customers might not be outwardly complaining about your services, but that does not necessarily mean they are fully satisfied with them. Ask them directly to confirm that your services are meeting their expectations.
An even better way to do this is to ask them whether they would readily recommend your services to another organization. If they would not or are not sure, ask them what would need to happen for them to change their mind. These questions demonstrate how much your organization values customer success and give you some concrete steps to take to solidify your relationship with your client base.
3. What aspects of our services do you find most valuable?
There are a multitude of different ways to approach account management in the healthcare industry. Ask your customers which parts of your approach they value the most to find out what it is you do best.
Perhaps your account managers always make a point of presenting the data that supports the solutions they represent. Maybe they are exceptionally compassionate and good at making those they work with feel comfortable around them. Maybe they always seem to know what the customer will need before that need is ever expressed. Whatever the strengths of your workforce may be, you will want to emphasize and capitalize on those attributes.
4. What are your biggest challenges?
Your account managers’ role is to help your customers achieve their goals, so it is important to know exactly what those goals are. Asking your customers about the challenges they are facing allows your account managers to translate those challenges into meaningful service improvements.
For instance, a customer whose patients consistently request the latest treatments might appreciate being shown some of the newest drugs on the market. Matching your account managers' services to your customers' expressed needs will win your organization a lot of goodwill from existing accounts and the market as a whole.
5. Why did you choose us over our competitors?
Both you and your customers know that there are many other healthcare companies with similar solutions to those your organization provides. Asking them why they ultimately chose you (or why they stayed with you instead of switching) will help you determine what your customers see as your organization's main selling point.
Their responses might highlight the things you intentionally emphasize in your services, but they may also surprise you with new useful insights. For instance, you may think of your firm as a provider of established healthcare solutions, but perhaps your customers are more excited to access the small roster of cutting-edge solutions you have recently invested in.
Get a Better Grasp of Your Customers
You can acquire more valuable customer insights like these with help from The Brooks Group. In addition to our healthcare market research services, we deliver healthcare executive coaching and new employee onboarding training programs to biotechnology companies, pharmaceutical companies, and other healthcare organizations. Contact us today to learn more about how we can help you better understand the needs of your most discerning customers.
Friday, October 1, 2021
4 Keys to Driving Sales with Existing Accounts
Monday, August 16, 2021
Employee Onboarding - Best Practices
Monday, August 2, 2021
Healthcare Market Trends Overview by The Brooks Group
- US healthcare spending rose by 4.6% in 2019 to reach a total of $3.8 trillion or $11,582 per person. Hospital care and physician & clinical services make up $1.2 trillion and $772.1 billion of that total respectively.
- Commercial care is by far the largest segment of the healthcare market, accounting for 153M lives and approximately $1.33 trillion in total spending.
- The Biden administration has indicated that they are interested in implementing a Medicare drug pricing model similar to Germany’s Institute for Quality and Efficiency in Healthcare (IQWiG). Under this model, drug companies could freely set the price for their products for their first 12 months on the market but would face strict value-based limitations after this period.
- The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) are also investigating several alternate methods of delivering and paying for care, including physician-focused payment models and value-based care. Now may be a good time to offer employees managed care training as a refresher on the current state of the US healthcare market.
- Precision medicine, pharmacogenomics, and gene therapies have emerged as excellent but expensive treatment options for cancer, rheumatology, and other gene-based diseases. Now is the time for payers to plan how they intend to handle these expenses in the future and invest in strategic account management training for executives in these up-and-coming fields.
- Similarly, AI is poised to have a greater impact on healthcare in the coming years. Key stakeholders such as hospitals, research centers, and biotech market research companies are most interested in using this technology to streamline billing and administrative efforts and to aid in scientific research.
- 2021 saw a new focus on social determinants of health, or SDOH. Vulnerable and underserved populations, including racial and ethnic minority groups and those who live in rural areas, will receive $2.25 billion in targeted support from the CDC.
- To combat waning consumer trust, new CMS rules for 2021 require hospitals to electronically publish comprehensive and transparent pricing information on all items and services they provide.
- 2021 has seen a new political focus on affordable healthcare, with increasing support for Medicare-for-all and strong outcry over drug prices from increased patient advocacy in the pharmaceutical industry.
- The Biden administration also plans to work on expanding access to specific types of care, including contraceptive care, mental health care, and care available through community health centers. This initiative will likely require extensive collaboration between payers and health organizations; healthcare executive leadership training courses may be useful in helping leaders develop the skills necessary for these interactions.
Intro to Core Capabilities of The Brooks Group
As one of the best healthcare consulting firms, The Brooks Group strives to facilitate improvements that benefit both healthcare organizatio...
-
As one of the best healthcare consulting firms, The Brooks Group strives to facilitate improvements that benefit both healthcare organizatio...
-
Offering workshops, conferences, and various learning assets are an ideal way to ensure that your team is equipped with the right tools an...
-
Digital technologies have crept into every facet of daily life, and the healthcare industry is no exception. Digital health is the latest tr...