Sales Enablement for Medical Devices: 5 Critical Challenges MedTech Companies Must Overcome

Sales enablement for medical devices presents unique challenges that can make it difficult for your MedTech sales team to succeed, particularly in today's remote work environment and complex healthcare organizational structures. As a medical device sales enablement leader, you face numerous obstacles that can hinder the success of your healthcare sales team. Identifying and addressing these MedTech sales enablement challenges is crucial to maintaining a high-performing medical device sales team and driving revenue growth in the competitive healthcare market.

In this article, we'll explore the top 5 sales enablement challenges that medical device sales leaders encounter in their daily operations and provide solutions specifically designed for MedTech organizations.

The 5 Biggest Sales Enablement Challenges for Medical Device Companies

1. Medical Device Sales and Marketing Alignment

Problem: Making sure both the medical device sales and marketing teams are working towards the same goals and objectives in the complex healthcare landscape.

Solution: Effective communication and collaboration between MedTech teams are key to finding a solution. With online tools like Figma, real-time collaboration and workshopping have become much easier for medical device companies. We use this tool during our presentation architecture phase with new MedTech clients, allowing us to work together remotely and develop medical device presentation flows in real time. This process eliminates the back-and-forth that often occurs when two departments are working together on healthcare sales content.

It's also important for medical device leaders to establish a sales enablement evaluation process that includes regular check-ins, whether monthly, weekly, or quarterly, to discuss objectives, needs, and key performance indicators (KPIs) for the upcoming quarter. We meet with our MedTech clients every quarter to assess how their medical device presentation content is performing so that we can make informed decisions about how to improve and optimize it for healthcare professionals. When both medical device sales and marketing teams work together harmoniously, the organization is better equipped to overcome sales enablement challenges in the competitive healthcare market.

2. Creating Visually Engaging Medical Device Sales Content

Problem: Developing healthcare sales content that resonates with buyers and helps medical device sales reps communicate effectively with healthcare professionals.

Solution: In today's healthcare environment, prospective clients are flooded with medical device sales content from competitors and other businesses. To stand out in the MedTech market, you must provide visually engaging content that increases brand awareness and quickly communicates what your medical device offers and how it benefits healthcare professionals and patients. Relying on traditional methods such as one sheets and templated presentations may no longer suffice for medical device sales.

To truly engage your healthcare audience, you must approach your medical device sales content like a storyteller, crafting a narrative that not only informs but also inspires healthcare professionals to learn more. This means going beyond mere brochure delivery and incorporating immersive content, such as video and 3D experiences, that enriches your medical device story and adds depth and dimension to complex healthcare solutions.

3. Measuring ROI in Medical Device Sales Enablement

Problem: The challenge of measuring the impact of sales enablement initiatives on revenue and other business outcomes in the medical device industry.

Solution: Measuring MedTech sales enablement success can be challenging because medical device sales is a personalized approach, and healthcare sales professionals have their way of selling to different types of healthcare facilities. However, success can be attributed to actual medical device content and how it is used with healthcare professionals. Therefore, setting up a medical device sales enablement platform and system that tracks specific engagement on content and links it to individual users within the MedTech organization provides a basis for measuring the ROI of your efforts.

The key here is to use those analytics to better your medical device sales content and improve your ROI in the healthcare market. We make it a point to sit down with our MedTech clients every quarter and assess how their healthcare content is performing, who's using it, how they're using it, why they're using it, and where they're seeing success with healthcare professionals. It's this information that allows us to optimize their medical device presentation content to show better ROI.

4. Enabling Remote Selling for Medical Devices

Problem: The challenge of providing medical device sales reps with the tools and resources they need to sell effectively to healthcare professionals in a remote or hybrid work environment.

Solution: While various tools exist in the sales enablement landscape to enable remote selling for medical devices, it is crucial to provide your MedTech team with the right healthcare sales content for every touchpoint in the sales cycle, ensuring it is highly visual, engaging, and communicates your medical device's value instantly to healthcare professionals. Remember that the tool is just a tool, and what you provide within it is what makes your medical device sales team successful.

You want to make the medical device presentation creation process simple. Most sales enablement tools on the market have robust content management systems that allow your healthcare sellers to easily find the content they need for the buyer journey. But what sometimes gets overlooked is how much time is spent searching for medical device assets or cobbling together presentations for healthcare professionals. It's important that we give our MedTech team tools that allow them to present in seconds.

Also, you need to ensure that the medical device content you're sharing with prospective healthcare clients is "remote-ready," meaning everything should be 100% mobile-responsive. Always assume your healthcare prospects are on their phone, so limit their need to download content or pinch and zoom to view your medical device sales pitch.

5. Integrating Technology in Medical Device Sales

Problem: Selecting the right sales enablement technology to support medical device sales processes and improve productivity in healthcare environments.

Solution: Technology, when used correctly, can make the job of the medical device sales team more efficient, thus enhancing your MedTech organization's reputation in the eyes of prospective healthcare clients. To choose the right tools for medical device sales, consider what can help the healthcare sales team sell better. For example, some of our MedTech clients have found customized ROI calculators valuable as they enable them to demonstrate the value or ROI of medical devices in specific healthcare scenarios instantly.

Other medical device clients are utilizing 3D visualizations and interactive experiences to better showcase their healthcare products remotely, allowing healthcare prospects to get a visually detailed understanding of how the medical device works without in-person demonstrations.

However, bear in mind that these can be expensive investments for your MedTech organization. Nonetheless, they can significantly enhance your medical device sales team's selling efficiency and potentially reduce your sales cycle time in the healthcare market.

The "New" Sales Enablement for Medical Devices: Thriving in Today's Remote Healthcare Sales Landscape

The COVID-19 pandemic has ushered in a new era of MedTech sales enablement challenges, especially in remote medical device sales. Medical device sales and marketing leaders have had to rethink their presenting processes as well as the tools their healthcare teams need for success. While remote selling presents many benefits for medical device companies, it also brings unique challenges and requires a fresh approach to reaching healthcare professionals.

How do medical device sales and marketing leaders need to be thinking about sales enablement success in today's healthcare landscape?

Tim Dingersen, the founder of Nuvue, had this to say on the matter:

"I understand that revenue growth is a top priority for many medical device companies. But I strongly believe that combining creativity and technology is the key to success in today's remote healthcare sales landscape. It's important to provide your medical device sales team with an amazing story and visually impactful experience that sells itself and pair it with a piece of technology that allows for consistency, control, and full insight into how your medical device sales content is performing with healthcare professionals.

Investing in both creative content and technology not only provides your MedTech organization with powerful sales tools but also shows your medical device team that you have confidence in your product or service. By providing them with the right tools, you're making their job easier and ultimately making them look good in front of healthcare prospects.

There are many technologies available in the sales enablement landscape, but it's important for medical device companies to choose one that offers a creative twist to truly make your MedTech brand stand out in the competitive healthcare market."

Streamlining Medical Device Sales Success with Nuvue's Tech and Creativity

Nuvue was born from creativity with a focus on medical device companies. Tim Dingersen, its founder, has over 25 years of experience in the production business, creating medical device sales content for startups to Fortune 500 MedTech companies. In 2019, after repeatedly hearing the same concern from medical device clients about visualizing their healthcare story and delivering it consistently to healthcare professionals, Tim decided to build world-class technology to complement his creative offerings specifically for the MedTech industry, and Nuvue was born.

Since then, Nuvue has helped leading medical device brands build scalable modular sales systems, achieving exponential growth while fostering a culture of team members empowered to sell faster and more efficiently to healthcare professionals. Schedule a "Hello Call" with our team to learn more about how we've helped other MedTech brands produce real results in the competitive healthcare market.

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