Is your pathology lab executing a growth strategy?
Have you hired a sales person or team to grow your specimen count?
We talk to pathology groups daily that are at some point in the process of developing or executing a sales strategy. They are either 1) attempting to grow their specimen count or 2) defending against larger laboratories with more resources. To successfully compete, there are 3 items that laboratory sales people need to be armed with in the field:
1. Connectivity (and a lot of it!)
It is critical that a modern laboratory can offer a full menu of connectivity options. Not every referring physician is looking for the same type of report delivery or consumption. Also, some connectivity options are more expensive than others, and they need to be lined up with the business drivers associated with specimen volume and physician relationship. For this reason, sales people need flexibility in this department. Some of the connectivity “must haves” are online reports, on-demand faxing, remote PDF transmission, remote printing, and EMR interfacing. Check out some previous posts on FilePath, ReportPath and EMR interfacing. These include some examples of connectivity options.
2. Sexy Reports
The lab report provides the image of the pathology group. Generating reports that are marketable and physician friendly is critical to differentiating your practice. Here is a previous post on lab branding and marketable reports. Make sure your LIS lends itself to the development, customization and deployment of marketable reports.
3. Efficiency
The ability to add efficiency to the entire lab process can help sales people open up opportunities with referring physicians as well. One example of this can be found in the ordering process. Providing an online requisition system that 1) fits into the ordering work flow of the physician office, 2) cuts down manual processes and duplicate data entry, and 3) reduces the number of calls associated with the requisition process will open some doors.
If you are a lab sales person, consultant, pathologist or just someone interested in great healthcare, we would enjoy your comments.