MedTech + Mindset Newsletter #014

Welcome to the MedTech + Mindset Newsletter!

This week we talk about M+M Cohorts, Getting Customers Excited About Your Product, the M+M Moment, and Sizing Opportunities of Customers.

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Brought to you by MedTech + Mindset Cohorts

The Pitch Deck Accelerator (starting Monday, September 12) is designed for a founding team to build materials for funding discussions that is purpose-built to address the challenging dynamics of the Medtech industry.

If you have an interest in discussing a closed cohort dedicated to your team or organization, reply to this email to set up a discussion.

Have a question? Reply to this email.

Know someone who needs this...feel free to make an introduction to Matt for a conversation.

1. How to ensure your customers are excited about your product

Insight from Matt Tucker

I've spent 25 years introducing products to new customers.  

There have only been a few times in my time in MedTech that I inherited products that the market knew really well...interestingly, they all happened to be at Mylan.

So, I've worked hard at perfecting a framework for introducing a product to any customer or audience.

If you're introducing a new product to any audience, whether it's an investor, an end user, or a patient, or payer, there's a great framework to follow.

By starting with defining the problem, then explaining the product, and closing with sizing the customized payoff they will get, you can create excitement and engagement from the very beginning.

And a desire to learn more.

Seems simple right?

There are a lot of missteps people often make. Make sure you don't make these mistakes:

1) Forgetting to customize the problem to the customer.

Patients, providers, and payers all look at a given problem differently. Make sure you customize it so it speaks to them...in the language they use to talk about the problem.

2) Assuming the payoff is the same for everyone.

While everyone wants patients to all get better. That's not always the payoff that really motivates them to act. Providers might want fewer follow-up visits with patients, or they might be frustrated with workflow and want new technology to solve that. Payers might want to control the spending on high-cost claimants or be perceived as a leader in a category in their market. Not all payoff's that spark action are the same for everyone.

3) Mismatching the level of science the audience wants.

Don't put yourself in a position where your audience might glaze over because they are confused with too much science...or might get bored because you don't have enough.

This framework is an effective way to engage customers and create excitement about a new product. But be careful to avoid the common pitfalls listed above.

2. Time to Take a 'Moment'

The Medtech+Mindset Moment continues to get a lot of interactions! In case you missed any, see below. They are listed in order of popularity based on Impressions.

1. A critical targeting mistake marketers and sales people make all the time - 1086 Views
2. When you can’t get over the hump with a customer - 970 Views
3. If you want to be as valuable as you can throughout your career - 772 Views
4. Struggling to find good people for your team? 572 - Views
5. Get the real feedback from customers – 432 Views
6. If you want to kickstart your day – 291 Views
7. Is worrying about what others think driving decisions? – 226 Views

If a 'Moment' really speaks to you, please comment and share the vibes on your page.

 3. Taking More Than A Moment...Bad Targeting Mistakes

Insight from Matt Tucker

Why was this Moment so popular and had so many views?

I think it speaks to how human nature can drive our decisions.

The background: at Mylan I discovered there was no targeting schematic in place that was formal. Targeting at the hospital and clinician level was driven by an individual rep. Territories were decided based on where the reps lived, rather than based on data.

When my team and I started asking questions and some documentation for who the targets were, we discovered that they were misaligned with where the opportunity was.

No wonder the brand was shrinking year over year!

Reps and even managers were making targeting selections based on how easy it was to schedule an in-service or conduct education.

But you can't blame them...without guidance, of course it would be human nature to go to the places that welcome you with open arms - even if they were clinicians that barely had enough cases to support consistent utilization, let alone growth.

In my moment I mentioned a pretty typical way to evaluate opportunity: customer opportunity X expected utilization.

But here are some other ideas--

• Target customers by their expressed behaviors or buying patterns
• Targeting customers based on profiling their needs
• Evaluate and determine a customer lifetime value
• Analyze and understand where your competitors have business and targeting it directly (or avoid their accounts and go to those they ignore)
• Use marketing mix modeling and identify who is responding to your marketing activities
• These are all ways where you can put some qualitative metrics to determining how customers can be targeted more effectively than intuition or human behavior alone.

Important recommendation - involve the sales force in the decision-making or risk backlash after you've put a bunch of work into it.

But don't make it open ended. Give them a forced choice option...such as...here are three options...pick one.

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That's it for this week.

 — Your Friends at the M+M Team.

 
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