Why You Should Implement a Direct to Consumer Strategy and How You Can Help Patients
Zach Champeau is Sr. Director of Operations at Saleytics, an inside sales organization that has a program focused on DTC strategy. In this episode he shares the objectives companies have with DTC, where DTC activities have the most influence, types of programs that can help with lead generation, the main reasons why patients who need care drop out before receiving it, and how to measure the success of your program.
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Zach Champeau LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/zach-champeau-50441264/
Saleytics https://www.salelytics.com/
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Episode Transcript
This transcript was generated using an automated transcription service and is minimally edited. Please forgive the mistakes contained within it.
Patrick Kothe 00:31
Welcome! In a recent episode, we discussed how Teleflex, a market leader in interventional urology, how they're using a direct to consumer or DTC strategy to expand the market. If you haven't listened to my conversation with Kevin Hardage, I'd suggest you do. Combined with this episode, you'll get a well rounded view of DTC strategy and implementation. This episode deals with the practical aspects of how a DTC program is implemented. Our guest today is Zack Champbeau, Senior Director of Operations at Salelytics an inside sales organization that has a program that's focused on DTC strategy and implementation. In our conversation, we discuss company objectives, where DTC activities have the most influence types of programs that can help with lead generation. The main reasons why patients who need care drop out before receiving it, and how to measure the success of your own program. By the way, towards the end of this episode, Zack mentions that only 15% of medical device companies have adopted a DTC strategy. So that means there's still a lot of blue ocean out there for you to take advantage of. Here's our conversation. Zach, inside sales, when we see it on the screen, and TV shows or in Hollywood, it's it's a sweatshop and people making phone calls over and over again and trying to, you know, use questionable practices to keep people on the phone. But we know that Hollywood doesn't always get things right. So what's it really like being an inside sales?
Zach Chambeau 02:25
There's some degree of truth to that. And obviously, pre COVID Things looked a lot different than they do today, where now it's, you know, we used to have the cubicle. It's not quite, it's not a sweatshop. But it was, you know, standard office cubicle looking workspace. And, you know, since COVID, we've really gone remote, I think that's pretty common within the industry. It's not just unique to our organization, where I think things have evolved considerably. And I mean, there's a divergent path, right, there still call centers out there, where that's what it is, it's, you know, person sitting in a chair taking, you know, 200 calls a day for 20 Different companies working through 20 different scripts, there's a lot more specialization, especially in the healthcare space, where if you're talking about med device, pharma, if you're working with healthcare professionals or with with patients, you can't really do that to a really high level, if somebody's is supporting, you know, multiple products or clients. So it's very much one to one now, where within our organization, we don't we everybody has their client and their product, that they're supporting their patient population that they're supporting. And that's their, their universe. They're not worried about, you know, script jumping, or jumping between the cultures, or the brands of multiple clients, so much more specialized real data that allows people to achieve much greater levels of expertise and improve patient or customer experience point quite considerably.
Patrick Kothe 03:59
So Zach, how did you get into inside sales?
Zach Chambeau 04:02
I studied anthropology in college so that that's a real that's one where you come home, and mom and dad are
Patrick Kothe 04:10
a lot of jobs there. I couldn't make a living.
Zach Chambeau 04:13
I am pretty sure that if you have an anthropology major, you're either going to teach anthropology or maybe you host a show on National Geographic. I had a marketing startup towards the end of college and I was thinking like, oh, marketing is kind of where I want to be. And every year there's a whole new wave of startups and marketing groups and students that are doing this as a side hustle. And I went and was doing some of the creative social media stuff with the forefront of when companies were just starting to use it as a business tool. And eventually I was thinking this is kind of a grind I want to get you said no one ever I want to get more into a normal nine to five. So I came back and thinking long term I've always had a sales personality. So I wanted to go and get into, you know, healthcare field sales was ultimately, you know, 10 years ago, that's what my vision was. So I had I studied anthropology, I'm not going to get a position with, you know, one of the big med device or pharma companies with with the resume that I had at that point in time. So I was like, You know what, I'm going to go into an inside sales environment, I'm going to have five years worth of conversations or sales calls in a two year period. And then I'm going to go out and I'm going to try to get into in the field sales with that background. And eventually, you coming into the sale addicts organization, one of the things that I wasn't looking for, but ultimately, it really resonated with me was that we work with so many different clients, the challenges that we're solving, day to day, week to week, month to month, is really diverse and adapt was really something that that intrigued me. So ultimately, I did my frontline time. And when it was alright, are you gonna go and try and do this in the field? Are you going to move into leadership, I was really drawn to what we did, and I love the diversity of the the challenges and the clientele and the disease states. So it eventually it was a job and it pretty quickly turned into a career.
Patrick Kothe 06:24
So we're going to talk a little bit more specialized solutions inside sales. And what what we're gonna talk about today is something that we touched on in a previous episode, and that's direct to consumer or DTC marketing, what are the types of things that people are trying to accomplish?
Zach Chambeau 06:44
From my perspective, there's two real primary objectives. And there's a couple different paths that people take to get there. The first one is senior leadership always needs to sign off or give the double thumbs up is generating revenue. It's creating incremental procedures, incremental patient starts. So generating revenue is one of the goals. And then the other in the way that we talk about it is it's almost a marketing halo effect or an inside halo effect, where it's, it's harder to quantify, but it's making an impact beyond just the patients that you're interacting with. And I think that Halo impact, it starts with capturing data and creating actionable next steps from data that is been to this point, otherwise uncaptured. So when you think about building a valuable data set, that's indicative of your entire patient population or customer population, and then creating incremental revenue from patients starts procedures. Companies that are developing their DTC are they're normally focused on one of two spots within the funnel, and the first one is filling the top of the funnel, that's lead gen. So you go out to most med device websites that are patient or customer focused, and you'll find a survey, right? Am I a candidate some sort of form submission request a consult with a physician? And what's interesting? Is there a way more companies than you would think that they're capturing patients going through the survey, and that they're being told, am I a candidate digital marketing is pushing them towards the next step. But it is very common. For those surveys to go nowhere, or the data from those surveys to go nowhere, it just informs the next step. And then it's done. It's not connected to that patient, it's not really being captured for to be leveraged in future analytics. That's it. And so we're an organization like ours steps in is we get those surveys or those leads fed to us. And then our teams will make outbound calls, emails, text messages, to educate the patient, help address any concerns that they have with the patient journey. And it's really that balance of education and advocacy. At the end of the day. The goal for those programs is really to empower the patient to be an active and informed participant in their own care, which is always connected to positive outcomes. So that's the the lead gen model, right? It's connect with a patient at their most engaged, capture the data, help them along the path to make the best decision for them have the right conversation for themselves. At the other end, it's way further down the funnel. It's jumping in when patients are ready to schedule appointments, and they want to, again, another thing that's very common on most med device websites for patients that physician finder, in a lot of times, you can go in there and you can schedule them appointment you call directly to the office. Not all offices are staffed equally, a lot of times one of the barriers that patients get hit with is, you know, my schedule doesn't align with theirs, when I can call they can't answer. And for multitude of reasons, there's no, there's no follow up either from the patient or the office, it's not necessarily anybody's doing anything wrong. It's just the nature of the beast. So where what we do for for clients that are focused there is those calls that are going into the physician's office, get routed to an advisor, or an educator, if you will. And, again, working with the patient to capture data, provide some preliminary education for them. So they're not going into the office with your very product specific questions they're going in, and they, you know, they have the right questions to ask the physician. Again, it's not about making a medical decision or giving medical device obviously, any 20 companies compliance officers gonna jump in with a very quick email to us if we're even, you know, putting a toe over that line. But it is about helping them go in educated. So again, it's capturing the data, and then it's connecting them with the office and helping them schedule the appointment. If that outreach happens, in that that connection can occur, it's okay, we have this patient's phone number, we have them on the line and engaged with us, let's work with them to make sure that they're going to try and take this step again, and we'll help them so it's instead of, alright, here's the number for Dr. Jones, good luck, hope you that I hope you can get an appointment scheduled, it's keeping them in the loop. And, you know, being an active participant in that so that, you know, it's captured, the patient has a, you know, a completed experience, it's not just leaving them out there in wishing them best luck. So those are the two primary directions, kind of some of the stuff that's happening adjacent to that really has to do with the development of the community. So I can tell you from going over dozens and dozens of scripts over the years that one of the best ways to get a patient or a customer talking, is to ask them their story, if they're pursuing treatment options, and a lot of times they've been talked at through the majority of their journey. So now it's somebody's gonna listen to them, you probably wouldn't be shocked to hear how many times that conversation starter is used in 45 minutes later, we have one of our agents that's getting off the phone, and they know all about this person, like they just had their dogs had a birthday party or their niece had a birthday party, what have you. So it's getting their story to create that trust in that relationship. When we have programs where we're you know that involved in there's a relationship with the patient, right? It's not just a one and done touch. It's alright, you've had your first consultation, were there any barriers, like let's get you to that next appointment in the referral process. When there is that relationship, a lot of times it continues beyond patient's treatment, right? If it was a one time device procedure, they still have that relationship with that educator. So a lot of times, what we end up doing is, is alerting clients to hey, this individual has a you know, they're well spoken, they have a really good story to tell. And they're really energetic about wanting to tell their story. So it's kind of the feeding the cycle of creating an ambassador community, I have not seen a lot of numbers put in front of me, that show anything more impactful than a one to one conversation with another patient, like an unpaid. Like, this is not somebody that is a part of any med device company, this is a peer This is somebody who's has gone through the same treatment journey as you and those conversations are just so valuable. So we identify people that can do that. Client develops them, and then we end up sending people who gets stuck right in their journey to that same team to hopefully unstick them and and keep them moving towards treatment for themselves. And then I think the last one and really the smallest one. And it's not so much med device. Although there is some application of med device. It's more of a pharma thing, but it's the idea of patient compliance. So if you have a recurring therapy that you need to go into an infusion clinic for every six weeks, it's keeping a connection to the patient so that you can understand any barriers that they have. Because if there's a hiccup and continuing the process there, that is you know, it's lost revenue. It's also More importantly, it's not great for the patient normally, so if there are things that seem outside of their control such as their their infusion clinic shut down. Those are barriers that can be addressed. It's just somebody needs to shed a light on.
Patrick Kothe 15:16
We're talking about efficiency of the system, somebody who has interest, and they drop out at some point in time. So you're, you're just kind of keeping them on the path. They're coming in, they've searched, they see something on a website, they're a candidate for it. And if at any point during their, during that initial time, to the time where they would have surgery, if at any point they fall out, it's a lost opportunity for the company.
Zach Chambeau 15:44
And I think the other thing to think about there is, we're all consumers in this space. So we think about how we go about procuring and pursuing our own, our own our own treatment and care for various conditions, meant just because I am motivated Monday, to go through and fill out a survey to check if something is a good situation for me, it doesn't mean that I'm ever going to be that motivated. Again, if it's now left up to me to pursue that next step. It's just not going to happen. Now, if I have somebody that's educating and advocating for me, now I got a shot to continue down it, the big motif is capturing a patient at their their most engaged, most interested and then helping them stay there and go through or fallout if it's appropriate
Patrick Kothe 16:31
now. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So let's, let's kind of go back and, and get a little bit more deep with the areas that you talked about. So let's, let's talk about lead gen. And kind of that, that top of the funnel, we talked about, you know, kind of a survey thing at the front of front end on on a website, what other what other things are being done to help with the lead generation portion of it? And how do you how specifically, do you work work through that?
Zach Chambeau 17:03
There's a couple of different approaches that we've seen clients experiment with over the last few years. And I think the question that needs to be asked and answered with every unique patient population is, what are the different thresholds from engagement? Right? When you, you talk about a survey, anybody that's working in marketing is going to understand the fallout as somebody progresses through a survey, right, every additional question, every additional piece of information, you're asking for it, it's going to have an effect on how many people are going to continue to proceed through the survey. So you do have surveys and for from my opinion, that's really, I mean, it's so valuable, you get data capture, you, that patient gets on the phone with somebody. And it's a very personal conversation, right? It's the educator that's going into it is already going to know the most appropriate questions to ask that patient and they can cut through a lot of the the formalities of early conversation. So I love the survey, because I think it gives what gives my operational teams, some, you know, some marching orders going into conversations. And from a marketing perspective, it also helps us segment what, where we're spending our time, which is tremendously valuable when you're talking about some of the massive amounts of leads that are generated in these campaigns. Because, you know, a lot of times you're gonna go in and you're gonna see 20% of patients that fill this out that are eligible are immediately eligible, like they can go and they can start the referral path like process today, and they can get through on whatever the normal patient journey timeline is there, and then there's going to be a significant majority who just aren't, they're not eligible. Today, they need to go and they need to check a box, they need to have some sort of diagnostic testing done or their, their BMI is not aligned with what the indications are for this device. So there's they haven't aged into it yet. There's just so many different things that could move somebody out today. But that doesn't mean six months from now, as you know, your company pursues additional indications, or that person's life changes their their BMI change as they age into it, there are just so many factors that will allow somebody to go from eligible to or ineligible to eligible. And if we're doing a good job with data capture, re engaging them strategically, which becomes financially responsibly is very, very doable. When you have that data, which you get from a survey. Now, it can be a big ask right? A survey it can be intrusive There's a lot of other companies that kind of take a step back, try to cast the nets a little bit wider, and they'll do something as simple of requests more info. Right? That's very, doesn't seem quite as invasive that can be opting into an SMS campaign email, maybe it includes the phone, maybe it doesn't. And then the other one that I think is very interesting, and it needs to be paired in tandem with the creating inbound calls for scheduling is a request an appointment form, where it's just a, I want an appointment, but I don't want to talk to anybody right now, which is an interesting stance, but it gets a lot of traction. And if you put all of those different options in close proximity to a patient, well, now you're giving them the option with how much time how much energy, how much do you want to invest in this because we're willing to meet you at whatever stage you're at. So if you're willing to fill out a survey, great, we can work with you through that, if you don't want to give us any info, and you just want us to call, we can do that, too. If you are ready to schedule an appointment today and want to talk to somebody and pick up the phone, we'll catch you there as well. So it really is about meeting them where they're at with the time and emotional investment that they're willing to make.
Patrick Kothe 21:18
Yeah, and it could be other things like a health fair, capturing names and names and phone numbers there. It could be a an online seminar for somebody with cardiothoracic disease or high blood pressure or, you know, pick that up, they may they may watch a watch something and when they sign up, they sign up with the with their email address. So bottom line for you is you're not making phone calls out to the general public saying, hey, dia have cardiovascular disease, you know, not, you know, we're gonna get you into our thing. Some, the patient has to make some request, more or less into the company for them to come to you. And now it's your responsibility to qualify the lead and to get it into the funnel.
Zach Chambeau 22:07
Yes, if we were casting that wide net of trying to find cardiac disease in the gym, in Gen pop, I think I would have a lot of employees that were very frustrated with me, because that doesn't seem like a super, doesn't seem like a super fun job.
Patrick Kothe 22:23
Well, that's the thing is you would find a whole bunch of the Gen pop, but they're not already for any interventional devices. Yeah, who are you?
Zach Chambeau 22:34
How did you get my number? Why are you calling me? Yeah, the opt in, you got to opt in for everything. Like we don't talk to anybody if they haven't raised their hand and opted in like two or three times what it seems like based on legal and compliance conversations we have.
Patrick Kothe 22:49
So when we're talking about sales funnel, we're talking about sales. And you know, the sales reps are used to dealing with sales rep at a medical device company used to deal with the top of the funnel, prospecting, qualification and kind of moving moving down down the funnel. You're not working with sales organizations, are you? Are you working more with marketing organizations who will who will help the sales organization how have have more more, more patients coming into into the clinicians,
Zach Chambeau 23:25
this 99% marketing is our most common liaison for for some clients their like episodic overlap with, with sales, because the data that we're, you know, we're generating is actionable, when you're capturing massive amounts of patient data. And you have a nationwide approach or a large scale geographic approach. One of the data points that becomes very easy to see very, very early in the process is where there's big deltas in your conversion rate. So you can see what average is, where are patients going and just, you know, not being not being advanced in the referral network, or just aren't getting treatment that they were educated on? Because for sales leadership, that's an obvious the answer isn't obvious. But the need to ask a question is, is what's going on at this office? Or in this, you know, this territory, this geography? Is this a, you know, is the competition in here? Like, is there a relationship there? Or is it a new physician is an education thing like I need to deploy my sales team or my field person to go in and figure out you know, what's going on? Why is this conversion rates so much different than the rest of the country?
Patrick Kothe 24:46
So you talked about getting it down to scheduling appointments, and you also talked about on websites, people say, you know, refer to this physician or to kind of moving people into people who, you know, it's a company that has has a relationship with a physician who uses their product. And it may be a product that is only available for one company, but sometimes it's available for multiple companies. So I'm curious to see about who you work with, you're working with the device company, but are you also working with the physician practices? Do they know that you're you're doing this? And is there any interaction that you have with them as well,
Zach Chambeau 25:34
whenever we onboard a new client, or start working with a new client, there's always a pretty robust conversation about if we're intercepting calls, if we're playing middle person to a call that was intended to go to a physician's office, they're always in the know, that doesn't just happen. And they're like, Hey, where did these call? Where did my calls from my patients go? So we always, we always spend time talking with new clients about collaborating with them. What do you hope to get out of this? Like, what are the challenges that we're addressing? With this? Like, what when a patient goes into an office? Why does this? Why is this initiative necessary, so that we can help them you know, in their field, go back to the clock back to the the physician's offices to convey it as a value add as opposed to a nuisance? Right changes change, whether it's good or bad. So it's changes change, it can be tough. So what are they? What are they getting from this change, and where we regularly go back to is, patients are coming in educated and informed, and they're not, you know, they're not gumming up the your phone lines, asking questions that would have them fall out before they even get there. So it really is the informed patient that has been, you know, pre qualified, if you will, and is able to have productive appointments once they get into the offices, so and then one of the other things that we can do for, for some clients, there's some setup involved in it, but it's, we can help clinic see what their patient experience is just by some, you know, with some survey work, it's a great tool for a field rep to go into an office, it kind of ties into the Hey, what's going on with the conversion rate, conversation, but it can be a really, a good excuse to go in and talk with an office is Oh, yeah, we ran the quarterly numbers for, you know, patient satisfaction. And this is great, like you're 20%, higher, essentially a kind of a roundabout NPS score, you're 20 points higher than the average in the geography or the flip side, you're lower. What? Yeah, does that make sense to you, or I'm giving you something that could be valuable to address within your own practice?
Patrick Kothe 27:59
So you talked about barriers a little bit ago? What are what are some of the barriers that you wouldn't think that people would know about? But it's something that you run into all the time? Yes, somebody somebody's got, you know, they raise their hand, hey, I've got I've got this, but at some point in time, they're falling out? What are some of the main reasons that they are?
Zach Chambeau 28:20
I mean, the main reasons it goes back to insurance can be one comorbidities, you know, a lot of our clock, a lot of our patients are the disease states, we work with a potentially medically complex patients so that their condition X is being prioritized. And we'll come back to why once X is under control. That's the idea of reengagement and data capture is you don't, you don't know that that patient was there, unless you had something deployed, where you're capturing some of that information. So some of the, I guess, more hidden in the weeds, ones are patients aren't always willing to drive as far to seek treatment, as you think transportation is, is one of the it's so in my mind, it's so solvable, right? It's, it's onboard more clinics to do the procedure. It's look at your geography and find out where your leads are coming in from and then overlay that with where your training facilities are. And it becomes pretty obvious where you need to onboard new clinics. So that's a conversation we have with with the, with a lot of clients, especially clients that are not endeavoring for their product to be deployed across every specialist in the country. Like there's a little bit more control if their content to have you know, 500 physicians who are really good at it or 500 clinics, as opposed to everybody that's an exercise that they need to be doing regularly to make sure that they're covering as much of the country as they possibly can. So you have the I don't want to drive that far. The other one, that's the saddest to me is apathy. Patients will be so de motivated by their, their journey to this point, whether it you know, it's all encompassing of healthcare. And I think anybody that's gone through anything that's moderately complex, like you can commiserate with it, where you get jerked around, you have insurance calls, you have, you know, appointments that get moved around, or issues with referrals. So we have patients that fall out, because they are, you know, they're apathetic to the whole thing, they just, they don't have the energy to proceed, they don't have the expertise or the knowledge to navigate the system or advocate for themselves. So it doesn't solve for every case of this, but having an advisor or an educator, that's, you know, essentially your your partner riding shotgun with you through the process, you can solve some of those just by virtue of having, you know, an empathetic person, that's, that's there to talk to you and ask that goes back to the Hey, what's your story? Question?
Patrick Kothe 31:07
So I'm curious for your people, because I'm assuming you as you said, you could be on the phone and tell me your story. You're on there for 45 minutes, I'm assuming at some some of these conversations, you're you're getting to be their friend, and it becomes difficult to get off the phone. Because you're you're you're in this deep conversation with them. And and it's taking up time. And that's kind of that balancing act of how do you bring that person along versus move them along? So how do you deal with that?
Zach Chambeau 31:43
Ah, it's, every situation is a little bit different. But we have so much we have we have so much data at our fingertips that it's not I mean, we're looking at things on every team where it's, you know, how much time is an average call taking for each individual on the team? And what are the big discrepancies with it? I mean, we're Midwesterners, up here are the most the majority of our folks are Midwesterners like we're based in Wisconsin. And we also have San Antonio bass folks as well. In Texas. So, talkers, we have talkers, and people that will listen. So you know, sometimes when you come across that rapid, what I would call like the mother in law, the mother in law call training where it's you need to learn how to exit a conversation great gracefully and not stumble over the, I'll talk to you next week, or just get to it. So we don't, we never want to go there. Because it's so we come in every day. And what we're here to do is to make the patient experience for our clients better to make navigating the healthcare landscape easier to just make, make it a little bit easier for a patient to get what they need. And so we don't necessarily want to pull back from
Patrick Kothe 33:06
let's move on a little bit to the community piece guy, I found that to be kind of a really interesting thing, because when you're building that community, it could be around you know, disease state, here's what I've got, I've got other people have got to tell me about your rheumatism. Tell me, tell me about your your knee replacement. It's not only you know, people that have it, but it's also, you know, other people within their community. Because it's, you know, hey, I had a knee replacement, who did it? You know, how they do it? What do you get? You know, I was in a heart valve industry for years. And it was always, you know, Hey, did you get a pig valve? Did you get one, you know, one of those mechanical valves, which one did you get, which doc did it and there's a lot of that goes that goes on. So tell me a little bit more about building community. And how you can help device companies can use you guys to, to help to do that.
Zach Chambeau 34:06
This one pad is, is really central to how I got and why I got to where I am within this space that inside sales was in our organization's DNA. We've always done this patient centric education and advisory work. COVID kind of accelerated our growth in this area because all of a sudden it became that much more critical to give patients and consumers information where they were at rather than in the traditional places they were getting it. So telemedicine took off and the need for remote educator. It's really exploded overnight. And before. Before I was working in this space, I was working in rare and ultra rare disease and with one of my clients, I had the opportunity to really integrate myself with one of those patient communities. He did a lot of community events and met people from all over, all over the country. And it was, it was a lot of the conversations were very similar. And it was in a market where there was a significant amount of parity between products. And so they were, they were kind of labeled, like, Oh, you were this patient, and based on the the manufacturer, and there was, there was just a lot of stress and anxiety at various times when, you know, Company X would have a shortage, and that would send all those patients, you know, running around, and then they would all get together whether they were patient for company X, Y, or Z, and they kind of commiserate it together. And I saw, so how important that was for them to have that that connection. And so in the med device space, it's it's not that dissimilar, we're here, it's not so much a ongoing relationship, right? It's not necessarily a, you see each other every, every year, every couple months, because you go to the conferences, we're here. And it really is about conveying that that knowledge in the journey, giving patients confidence. So it's, it's creating the ambassador, communities, it's identifying people that have really good stories to tell it. And then on the flip side, when a client has that Ambassador community, and they've spent the time and the energy to build it up, and they have something that's really valuable, then it goes to our agents to identify which patients that are earlier in their journey would really benefit from those conversations. Because like I said before, there aren't too many things you can do that impact a patient's conversion to the positive effect as much as a, you know, a one to one conversation with another patient. But you need to, you can't just throw everybody like, oh, yeah, you don't know what you want to do go talk to an ambassador, like, it's got to be a little bit more nuanced than that. So it really goes back to identifying who would benefit from those conversations.
Patrick Kothe 37:18
You talked about compliance a little bit ago, too, and said it was more of a farmer thing. But at the same time, a lot of our devices need some post op care, in order to have great outcomes for for your product. So I'm curious if you're working, if you've worked with any device companies on that post procedure or post up, follow up, I could see, you know, great benefit, if you're doing a clinical trial, and just having some fun, you know, continued follow up with that patient, make sure are you doing the things that you're supposed to be doing in terms of your rehab, because that leads to outcomes, and especially on a clinical study, you're gonna live with that forever? So are you dealing with with medical device companies in this follow up period as well,
Zach Chambeau 38:17
it's very, very common for our teams to do follow up our calls to try to capture a, you know, a treatment, right is your journey complete, right? A lot of times, patients will go through, and they will view their relationship with an educator and advisors, very transactional. So once they've gotten their treatment, they're good to go. We're still making those calls, because we want, like, we want to close the loop on it or make sure that everything is completed there, and we can't be of any further support. So that's happening for most clients to check and see what's been done. You know, the next most common thing is, now you've had this procedure, right, here are some tips for living with your your new implant or with you know, your your new post procedure part or, you know, whatever you had treated, what you're talking about is really almost like a concierge type program, which we've, we've done in pilot it out and I'm with you, I think this is a tremendous opportunity for a lot of different organizations. Patients don't necessarily want to I don't think anybody wants to spend a ton of time in a physician's in a doctor's office. So what you know, we've, we've piloted out with a handful of clients, and I think that there's a lot more room to apply. This is okay, you just had a procedure. The standard of care for this procedure is that you're going to come back into the office at weeks to and one of the office nurses is going to ask ask you 10 templated questions. And from those answers, like if everything is normal, you're coming back in in four weeks, and we're going to run some actual tests to get information that will kind of inform our next step. But everybody's getting appointments at two and six. That second appointment for so many for so many different treatment plans. It's a questionnaire it's an interview. And it really is just Are there any pink flags here? Are there red flags? Do we do we need to deploy a clinical response? Or do we need to ask another question? So the vast majority of these patients, they don't need to be in an office that can be done remotely? And if offices if physicians are telling us like what their standard of care is for those questions, you know, we deploy, we have clinical personnel on staff we have, we have registered dietitians, various various nursing certifications, diabetes instructors, so if, if you tell us the questions, right, it's kind of like sales or patient support, we're not ad libbing things like, that is not how healthcare works, we are going off of approved marketing content, like box labels. If we get the questions that the office wants, we can do that appointment for them. And a lot of times that doesn't represent any sort of, you know, bump in revenue for those clients, they don't need that patient there, if they can keep them out and see somebody else. And the patient's still getting the same quality of care that represents an improvement for for everybody involved. So that's something that it's not, it's not out there a ton yet, at least we're not involved with it. But I do think that there's just a lot. There's a lot of potential there. And it just kind of, it's a strategy that really meets where we're at in time, and what consumer preferences.
Patrick Kothe 41:57
So you're working for the medical device company, and you're interfacing and doing things with the clinicians. So you're kind of in that in that space. And we're talking about, you know, follow up patient follow up? Well, it's the physician's office is going to have follow up as well. So do patients get confused? And who's calling who and why? Why is this person calling me and tell me about how you can prevent that? And what at what level? Does the physician's office say, Yes, I want you involved in here or not?
Zach Chambeau 42:33
And honestly, it hasn't been something that we've had to we've had to deal with this conversation, how do we position ourselves whether we're making an outbound call to the patient or an inbound call, so that they understand very clearly that this is not, you're not talking to somebody at Dr. Jones's office, you're talking to somebody with, you know, this med device where you filled out this survey, or you were navigated through their website. So that doesn't, that doesn't happen very frequently, when it comes to like the interfacing with the physician offices and making sure that we're not stepping on toes and that everybody is, feels good about the partnership, that's mostly governed by by our clients and the field reps, which I think is something that they they wouldn't ever want to pass off as it's very, anybody that's been in sales, understand some of the, the territorial feelings that a lot of field reps have, and it's part of what makes them good at their job normally, so they don't necessarily want that in there. But for some clients, if, if you are posted their policies, if you are posted on their physician finder, you are opted into this, this is what this is how their finder works. So if you want to be there, this is how it's going to work right?
Patrick Kothe 43:53
So a sales representative would you would use this as a value added to their customer say, hey, you know, we've got this program, it's helping to, to get patients educated and to funnel them towards you for review and diagnosis and care. So let's talk about sale attics, and the, the employees that you have, who's taken who's taken and making these phone calls.
Zach Chambeau 44:22
It is such a diverse employee group it we've talked about inside sales that's been in our DNA, that's where a lot of our historical healthcare associates have been is in healthcare sales. So we do have some of those sales minded individuals that migrate over to patient education. Because at the end of the day, you know, we talked about it really has to do with with educating and empowering and so in doing that, you know, very, very often what we're looking for is to get a patient to go Go to a consultation appointment, or to seek out a second opinion, there is a soft sale that's involved in that, right? Like we we're not making the decision for the patient, but we're asking them to, to make an investment of their time in continuing their pursuit of care. So we do see folks that have a sales background or sales experience succeed here. But it's very much a secondary skill. Empathy is the number one thing that we're looking for empathy and motivational interviewing, it's getting that patient to trust very quickly, and getting them to feel comfortable sharing their story, and trust that you're going to help them, you're going to educate them, you're going to help them navigate this complex place. So the sales piece does add value sometimes, but not if you don't have the empathy. And the, you know, the motivational interviewing the listening skills. So that's, that that's really where it comes from. And it comes from a very wide variety of backgrounds. Obviously, the most common is people that are coming from some sort of nursing medical associate that type, that's the majority of our population.
Patrick Kothe 46:22
Are you communications with patients? Are they only phone? Are they phone and video? What are they?
Zach Chambeau 46:28
It's everything, it's all channels, phone is the vast majority of it, there is our video components for select programs there are email and SMS are, are big for us, one of the big transformations in the last, I would say two years has really been it's you don't have a call, email tech strategy. Like you have a contact strategy where all of those different channels are fit into a flowchart, if you will. So it's every action informs the next next best action. And depending upon what patient preferences, it can switch channels, so that somebody wants to talk via if somebody starts out and they respond to a text and the conversation is moving in a complex direction, we're going to try to bring them to the phone, because it's easier to have complex conversations like that. Yeah, it really is, whatever channel it goes back to meet the Meet the patient's where they're at in the journey, but also where they're at for what type of technology they're most comfortable with,
Patrick Kothe 47:37
are using a customer relationship management like Salesforce or one of those, yeah, we
Zach Chambeau 47:43
custom build, we custom build CRMs for every potentially, for every client that we work with, that's something that we've always done going back for as long as I've been here. Within the patient centric space, what we find is that half the time, our clients who already have a CRM that they're operating from, and it is better for their team, that if we operate within that as well, so that all of the data exists in one place. So there, there really are, there's not a right or wrong way to go about it. It is really whatever works for the client, and what type of information they want to house in their CRM, what they want to keep out of it. So for clients that have nothing great, we build a CRM for clients that have a very fluid fluid, flexible, CRM, great, we'll put some of our data points in but we'll keep some of the stuff in our world and for clients that have very robust, highly developed CRMs that they don't want anybody operating in. It's great. We have our CRM over here. And you know, we will, we'll kind of use ours like a sandbox will play with grab another data point so that we're all across the board, we build it out, we operate entirely from ours. We don't build anything we operate from the clients and it's really based on where that clients at with their own their own CRM process or their you know, their marketing database that they're working through.
Patrick Kothe 49:19
So you talked early on about you know, two main things generating revenue and marketing halo effect, the halo effect is really difficult to measure. It's like a marketing campaign. How do you you know, is it awareness you know, what exactly are you doing and how does that translate into success? Revenue is a different thing but you're at the front end of the revenue thing. So you don't really know whether the patient would have come down the down the funnel or not. So how to companies measure your success.
Zach Chambeau 49:52
The revenue went is so easy and so complicated at the same time because connecting marketing data at the top of the funnel all the At the end that's challenging in and of itself, anybody that works in device is going to, is going to relate to that idea. And if they don't, I want them to reach out to me because if somebody is solved that perfectly, like I need to know, I have a bunch of clients that I need to know to. But you're beyond the revenue, we have conversations about cost per lead acquisition, or cost per cost per appointment. That's something that is still kind of along the revenue, like we know how many consults it takes to get to two implants. So we have that type of conversation with clients and their senior leaders are interested in that. You one of the other places that we go pretty regularly is looking at the overall usage or deployment of a product in a given geography, where we are versus where we're not are looking at a time when we weren't there versus when we were so really, we don't necessarily have that patient from point A to point Z, to say it was an incremental. Yeah, it was an incremental procedure. But we can't say that performance is up in a given area by X percentage. So that goes into it. And then one of the, the other points that is simultaneously simple and complex is this idea of what's the patient experience right there plenty of clients that we have, where they just their leadership buys into the idea that this is the right thing to do for patients like their the ROI is they want to talk about it, because obviously, that's going to inform efficiencies and getting better. But they just feel like it's the right thing to do for patients to help them navigate a tricky spot. So what they care most about is what our patients saying when they they come out of this when they complete their journey, what did they think of our brand? What did they think of our product? What do they think about how we supported them through this? And so you see companies that are starting to capture NPS scores, which I think for med device companies that aren't in, like chronic disease management, that's kind of a newer concept, because they haven't necessarily thought of it. They're their customer. You know, three years ago was the physician who was making was making the decision. Now, it really is this this 5050 balance, and you can see it in our charts, you know, physician marketing, you have patient marketing, we care about both of those things. So companies are interested in what's there. And what are the patients saying about the product.
Patrick Kothe 52:43
It's more important for somebody who's who's in a glucose monitoring business, as you said, it's as a chronic thing than it is for a replacement of a joint which is a one time type of situation. So this has really been enlightening. Zach, thanks so much for for leading us through this discussion. If somebody is considering doing a DTC campaign or supporting direct to consumer, what are a few of the first things that they should start to consider, as they're as they're contemplating this?
Zach Chambeau 53:22
Well, first up, I would say that you're still early to the game in a lot of ways, but you're not behind. Every year that goes by more companies are jumping on this and investing in this but we met with Zs associates, I think it was like 20, the end of 2021. And at that point in time, their findings were that only 15% of companies in the device space had a solidified or a dedicated DTC marketing strategy. So companies you're not behind yet, there's still plenty of time to be out front and part of the part of the trendsetting group. So I think, what don't feel behind your first steps really should be, why are we doing this? Why are we marketing the patients? Yes, like, let's set the dollar sign off to the side. That's why we do the majority of the things we do we have to keep the lights on for the organization to continue innovating and supporting customers and patients. But for this specific device, why are we doing this? What is the need? Is it we don't know anything about our patients? And we want to learn more about our patients and their journey so that we can support them? Is it because we feel like we have this blind spot with physician adoption? So question number one is why are you doing this? What what are the big questions that your organization is trying to answer? It because if we design it based around that question, we're going to create value just by virtue of executing, how would we answer that question? And then the next thing I think is what is your current strategy, right? You may not have a dedicated direct to consumer marketing strategy. But you're on the internet, you have a website. So when if a patient goes out, are you visible? When they go to your website? What are they? What's there for them? What's the value, the user experience? And what ideally, what would it be? And how are you going to get them there? Like is your goal? Are you trying to get everybody to go to your website? Are you trying to get people to fill out a survey so that you can capture a lead and follow up with them? So figuring out what you're doing today? And where you want to go? Where are the biggest challenges for your patients? Are you going to benefit from filling the funnel, and capturing a bunch of lead data so that you can, you know, 18 months from now, realize the additional you know, incremental starts, if that's how long the patient journey is? Or do you want to get patients to call in to schedule an appointment? So think about what the various call to actions are that you want patients to execute? And then, you know, once you once you to know that, once you know how you're going to tackle or how you want to come at this, then it's figuring out, do we have the people internally to do this? What kind of how much? How many dollars? Are we going to throw at this? What type of value are we going to have? Because I can tell you that it doesn't take long to create enough inbound call volume, to burn out somebody internally, like if somebody is doing anything and taking on calls that can be that can be pretty burdensome really quickly. And you do not want to short sure the people that are calling it those are your customers, those are your patients, there should be the greatest priority.
Patrick Kothe 56:58
As we just heard, a DTC strategy can be important to us, if implemented correctly, I hope this conversation gave you some things to consider as you evaluate if it's going to be helpful for you and your business. A few my takeaways. First, where patients fall out on their journey. Zach talked about insurance, comorbidities, confusing choices, and patients becoming overwhelmed. scheduling issues, transportation, and it just so many things that you wouldn't quite think of that are important to patients and reasons why, you know, they would drop out. So how can how can you help with your company, and for your entrepreneurs out there? Is this is their business opportunity there. The second thing is using this as a value added program with your physician customers. It's not always about what's in it for us with these DTC, DTC strategies, but what's in it for your customers? What can we provide to help your customers be more successful in managing their patient load and bringing more patients into their practice? Finally, I really enjoyed the conversation on what what it takes to be a good DTC representative inside a company like like Zacks. The objective is to educate and empower patients. And you don't do that by hard sales techniques. As he said, It's empathy. It's listening. Yeah, there's some sales component to it, but it comes back to who's the most empathetic? Are you listening? Are you getting that patient to trust you? We all want to tell our story, having someone on the other end of that line. being empathetic understanding and helping us through a complex situation can be of great benefit to our patient customer. Thank you for listening. Make sure you get episodes downloaded to your device automatically by liking or subscribing to the mastering medical device podcast wherever you get your podcasts. Also, please spread the word and tell a friend or two to listen to the mastering medical device podcast as interviews like today's can help you become a more effective medical device leader. Work hard. Be kind
