March 22, 2021
Dear Kinamed Agents & Reps,
The hits keep on coming! Two more reps recently capitalized on this VA health system capital sale opportunity:
Reed Roberts of Surgical Technologies in Arkansas: Sold two CarboJet instrument sets to a VA Hospital for $9,998. In this case, the VA was a longtime CarboJet user. During one of Reed’s regular sales calls, he learned of the VA initiative to have a safety stock of instruments available, and encouraged them to purchase backups for their CarboJet instrumentation.
AJ Lambo of Nextan Medical in Wisconsin: Sold two CarboJet instrument sets to a VA hospital for over $8,000. This started with a Surgeon replying to a CarboJet email campaign (described here). AJ handled the lead like the pro he is: He asked the surgeon for names of other VA surgeons who would be interested, sold those surgeons on the concept of CarboJet, and then, armed with the support of not one (1), but three (3) surgeons…AJ navigated his way through the VA approval process.
Key takeaways from these success stories:
- Offer Flexibility: VA hospitals have procedures and rules in place for every scenario. Once you know what those rules are, its easy to follow the necessary steps to reach your goal. In both of these success stories, the VA purchasing departments told the reps what their max PO spend was for Capital purchases. We then adjusted the quote accordingly to accommodate. Be sure to ask your VA to inform you of their budget constraints so that we can structure the price quote to work within those constraints.
- Persistence and patience are key. VA hospitals are even more bureaucratic than your typical hospital. This doesn’t make it more difficult to win approvals – it just means that you must follow up regularly and find out who is responsible for moving the project along at each step so you can follow up directly.
- CarboJet Accounts Keep on Giving: The set sale for AJ is just the beginning of a long and giving relationship. Once the in-service is complete, the hospital won’t need AJ on hand for cases. They’ll simply reorder CarboJet direct from Kinamed as needed. He will of course periodically check in to ensure all surgeons in the facility are using CarboJet and to ensure instruments are in good condition with fresh O-rings. That’s how Reed Roberts did it – good service led to increased usage, which led to the hospital ordering more instruments to keep up with demand.
Let me know if you have any questions about any of these sales tips. Or…Do you have a situation we haven’t addressed? Are you stumped on how to move forward in the sales cycle? Call me or your RM – chances are we’ve been there and found a workaround that could be the ticket to your next victory!
All the best,
Patrick Miller
Sales & Marketing Manager
Kinamed, Inc.
pmiller@kinamed.com
805-384-2748 x207