Winning the Complex Medical Device Sale - How to Train Your Team to Act Strategically
Steve Gielda is President and Co-founder of Ignite Selling, a global sales training, simulation and consulting organization. He’s co-authored two books – Ignite Your Sales Strategy: A Field Guide to Accelerating Your Pipeline, and Premeditated Selling: Tools for Developing the Right Strategy for Every Opportunity. In this episode we discuss the changing medical device environment, why strategic planning is vital in today’s environment, what a sales simulation is and how it clarifies strategy and aligns your internal resources, tips for managers to make them more effective with their reps, and considerations in hiring your sales team.
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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! Mount Everest is something that some people aspire to conquer. And today, I'd like to take you on a little bit of a journey to to Mount Everest. So imagine that you've decided that you want to climb that great mountain? Would you just show up and start climbing? Probably not. It requires an extensive amount of planning. And your prep would include, you know, studying the mountain terrain, what are the weather patterns, what type of gear do you need, and then you probably study the experiences of others who successfully reached the summit. And once you do that, you assemble a team of experts to train guides, the Sherpas and also fellow climbers that are going to support you along the journey. And then you begin that climb. And once you start, you encounter some challenges, treacherous terrain, altitude sickness, and the ever changing weather. You rely on your teammates to help understand these changing situations and then you adjust your strategy. You set goals every day, and then you measure the progress. And as you get close to the summit, the fatigue that you feel both physically and mentally is significant. you question yourself, but you push ahead and persevere. Finally, after an exhausting and demanding effort, you reach the summit. Imagine the exhilaration and sense of accomplishment. Well, selling medical devices is not climbing Mount Everest, but there are very similar things. Regardless of what country you're in. Selling medical medical devices are a complex sale. That also requires extensive planning, a skilled team of experts the ability to communicate internally, as well as externally and adapt to changing situations. And you measure your progress along the way. And you have to have that perseverance to push through difficult situations. Our guest today is Steve Gielda, president and co founder of Ignite Selling a global sales training simulation and consulting organization. Steve had a successful sales and sales leadership career before dedicating the rest of his career to helping sales organizations become more impactful. He co authored two books, Ignite Your Sales Strategy: Your Field Guide to Accelerating Your Pipeline, and Premeditated Selling: Tools for Developing the Right Strategy for Every Opportunity. at Ignite, they work with some of the largest medical device companies including Medtronic, Smith and Nephew, Boston Scientific Teleflex, Siemens, Abbott, Cardinal Health and numerous others. In our conversation, we discussed the changing medical device environment. Why strategic planning is vital. What a sales simulation is and how it clarifies strategy and aligns your internal resources, tips for managers to make them more effective with their reps and considerations when hiring your sales team. Here's a conversation. Steve, welcome to the podcast.
Steve Gielda 04:01
Pat, thanks for having me. I really do appreciate it.
Patrick Kothe 04:04
Steve, Well, we're going to cover a subject that's near and dear to my heart. And that's that sales and sales, education, sales training, but to kind of get things started you've had a long career and dealing with with salespeople and sales management and things. So here's the age old question, are our sales reps born? Or are they bred?
Steve Gielda 04:28
Well, I think it's a great question to start with. And I think that it's probably a little bit of both. I do believe that people are born with a propensity to have those fundamental skills that lead to sales success, but just because they have some of those innate abilities to engage with others have a high level of adaptability those types of born innate traits doesn't necessarily mean that they're going to be successful in sales. So if I had to lean one way or the other I think that salespeople are probably More bread is how do you take those innate abilities that people were born with. And that might be to have to be easily gone, high level of adaptability, a high level of determination, those kinds of innate skills, and really turn them into, you know, successful salespeople. And I think there's so much that salespeople need to stay on top of it's, it's a journey that you can never say I've made it, I think it's a constant journey. So you have to be bred to be a successful salesperson. And I think you have to be constantly refining those skills over your entire career. Or you'll wake up one day, kind of look back and wonder what happened, and why are so many so many people passing me by in terms of my quota. So I think that I would lean that answer more towards effect their bread versus board,
Patrick Kothe 05:54
I always get a kick out of the hole, you talk so well, you mean you can really talk a lot, you should be a salesperson. And it's kind of the opposite. You listen so well, you should really be a salesperson, right? And the other thing is, you know, I've known extroverts who are great sales reps. I've known introverts that are great sales reps.
Steve Gielda 06:13
Yeah, me too. I think you hit it right on the head. I think introverts actually, probably listen better than the extroverts, you know, not the paint, I brought with a broad brush there. But I do know, some very successful salespeople that would classify themselves as kind of more of a classic introvert.
Patrick Kothe 06:31
Yeah, can you communication is a key and the best form of communication, it's not talking, it's communicating, it's understanding and it's, it's verifying if the information coming back is correct, and, and really getting on the same page with somebody else. So I wanted to kind of kick things off by talking about some trends in sales, we've just come through a very interesting period, in our in our history, we also over the past 10 or so years have have evolved and how we learn about things. with the, with the internet, and with all its available to us. So you've you've had the opportunity to be involved in several different industries, not only medical device, but farm on and see, you know, some of your clients include MasterCard, and, you know, large large companies from from other industries. So, in general, what are some of the trends that you're seeing relative to sales?
Steve Gielda 07:35
You know, Pat, I think I would answer that question, probably differently pre pandemic than post pandemic, I think that the pandemic has really kind of changed a lot in how salespeople are engaging with customers. And I think when you look at trends, you have to first of all, look at what's happening on the buyer side, and how are salespeople reacting to that. But I think that if I was to kind of categorize those things, I'd probably say there's probably three main trends that are impacting how salespeople engage in how they how they're successful today. Number one, I think, is the fact that it's the focus on successful salespeople today is about revenue acceleration. So it's not just about filling up the pipeline, but it's about filling up the pipeline with the right opportunities that don't lose momentum that don't stall, then we can get into that conversation about what causes opportunities to stall later. But I think the focus on successful people today is about engaging with clients and opportunities, where the opportunity is to drive accelerated revenue growth, further their quota, their company, whatever the case might be. And that requires them to do some things that are smarter. I think the other thing, that's another major trend that's happening is the fact that we all have to recognize that we have limited time with buyers today. We thought that in all industries, not just medical device, we we've seen this trend over 10 years where physicians and or directors and people, even in purchasing don't want to spend time with salespeople. I think post pandemic, it's probably exacerbated itself because they've recognized that I was able to make buying decisions as a buyer without having a sales representative in that case. And so, you know, they now recognize I don't need to have that salesperson, I don't need to speak with that person as often. So what that means on the other side of the table from the sales standpoint, is that every conversation you have must create value. Relationships are always going to be important. But if you're relying on that and relying on that alone thinking that's gonna sustain you. That's yesterday's news. You better be adding value because they just don't have time. I think the third trend, a number one we saw was acceleration number two is really about making sure that every sales call adds value. I think the third thing and again, this is probably nothing new. But again, the the pandemic has really exacerbated it. And that is, multiple people are involved in the decision making process. And that means that we not not only need to know who they are, but how do they perceive value value is positional. And if we're selling to somebody inside the hospital that has a financial responsibility, we can't be talking about the clinical value of our solution, we've got to be talking about the clinical capabilities of our product in terms of how it drives the financial metrics that they're trying to achieve. And so the third one I would say is, you know, value is positional. And we must speak to a broader set of influencers today. And that trend has been kind of happening even over the last 10 years. But I'd say that the pandemic is just even exacerbated even more.
Patrick Kothe 11:07
So that's a cross in general. And you've referenced some things within the medical space, are there some other things in medicine, in medicine and medical device, that are also some interesting trends when it comes to sales?
Steve Gielda 11:21
When you think about, I think any one of your listeners, if you would just ask yourself, when you take a look at your competitive landscape, you're seeing a lot more consolidation of competitors, people are being bought up swallowed up, new products are coming into the marketplace. And they're soon going to be acquired, but you have a lot more competition and different types of competition coming into the marketplace today. And that's clearly changing the landscape of how we sell. Just a quick little story, we are working with a medical device manufacturer, and this particular sales representative had this account for the last seven years, a conglomerate the company that came in acquire this other firm, put all the marketing and sales power behind this, this other product now came out of nowhere, and started really making an impact on them, and took this person's business they had they had a an 80% market share inside this hospital for the type of surgical products that were being used. And not only did they get displaced, but they are no longer on the shelf within 12 months. And you got to think about what the heck just happened. And Robert, who was the sales representative was just kind of dumbfounded as he saw this, this kind of this thing happened. And we can get into another story about the win loss analysis that took place there because we conducted this win loss analysis. But how can you be so blind to competitors that are in the marketplace. And I think that we have a tendency to get somewhat complacent, particularly when you have an 80% market share. And if you just open your eyes and look around you, you have a boatload of new competitors that are coming in coming into your space, whether you know it or not.
Patrick Kothe 13:09
And that competitor may be competing at a different level than you're competing. You may have 80% 80% of the market share and have great relationships with physicians that are using a product but they're no longer making the decision. So are you are you developing the relationships at the right level? And are you value propositions resonating with people at different levels?
Steve Gielda 13:31
You know, we have a tool called our competitive snapshot, one of my I'm sorry, the influencer snapshot. And one of my favorite questions is, is when we ask people kind of to map out what their who loves them. Who doesn't who's important. Who's not I asked the question after they kind of map all this out. Who would be on your competitors, influencer snapshot that's not on yours? In other words, Who's your competition speaking to that you're not? And they often don't know. And if they don't know, how at risk, are you? Kind of to your point? I think it's just such a big, big point.
Patrick Kothe 14:04
When I first got trained and in sales, we use Miller and Hymens book strategic selling. And one of the one of the concepts there is, you know, define who the economic buyer is, and the economic buyer is not the money person could be but it's the PERT you know, the economic buyer is, was defined as when everybody else says no, they could say yes, and when everybody else says yes, they could say no. So it's that linchpin person. A, you mean if you don't know who that is, you're in deep trouble.
Steve Gielda 14:36
There's no doubt about it. I mean, as a former distributor myself, I've Miller Heiman products. It became very apparent over the six years that I supported Miller Heiman, particularly around the blue sheet. That sales representatives were merely just going through the motions of filling out that blue sheet and identifying by name and title who those influencers are. And then man To just pat him on the back and say, Hey, Pat, nice job. And I would say nice job for what simply finding out who the influencers are, what role they play in the decision making process and what their title is. I mean, those are table stakes. So today's you talk about trends in today's marketplace. That doesn't even that's not nowhere near enough. Now, the question is, is, first of all, somebody needs to be asking, you're challenging your critical thinking and your assumptions by simply saying, how do you know that list is right? What's been said or done to make you believe that economic buyer is truly the economic buyer, it changes, it changes constantly, doesn't it? And there's often sometimes more than one.
Patrick Kothe 15:41
And it changes based on not only what's happening within the hospital, but who's happening within that hospital, and and how the power structure is changed within there. So being embedded within the total system is, is one of the things that is, is to me a real change in our industry. Because 1015 years ago, the sales representative was, in essence, a one on one seller. They were not responsible for a wider variety of customers, they may sneak down into purchasing to talk to talk to the purchasing people who administer it, but weren't really making decisions. But it was really more of a educational sell or benefit sell to the clinician who's using the product that's changed, obviously, over the past 20 years, 10 years specifically. And now, what we're asking of sales reps is a little bit different. When we think about the sales function, the first step really is who are we putting in the positions? So who is who is appropriate for that. And every business is different. Some you know, you got capital, capital equipment sales, you got disposables, you got high end stuff, you got low end stuff. So let's just talk in general, regardless of what type of company how do you approach the sales hiring process to make sure that you've got somebody who's appropriate for your business?
Steve Gielda 17:17
That's a great question. I think that it's a question that's not asked often enough. I think that there is an assumption to some degree that if somebody comes from a capital background, from Company A, that they're going to be successful in Company B, selling capital equipment. Now on the surface, sure, that might seem like a good hire, because they have they understand the operational budgets or capital budgets inside of a hospital, and the budgetary process and who's typically involved from a VAC committee standpoint, however, it's really no longer enough. I think that what's really important is when organizations or sales managers are looking to hire sales people, not only do they need to look at what those functions are, in other words, who are the who do they need to engage? I think they need to take it to the next step and ask themselves, can my people get involved into a business conversation around the critical metrics, clinical operational, financial metrics, that those customers need to improve in the next 12 months? Now, if they can do that, because their product is more of an implantable device, disposable device, lower costs about a longer term contract, and they can talk about the business metrics, the clinical operational financial metrics that that company is trying to improve over the next 1212 months in that space. And that's probably a pretty good hire. But they need to you need to ask yourself, how does that question about art? What is their ability to drive the clinical operational financial metrics? Can they talk about the value in a meaningful way in a capital, it's going to be a little bit different? I think that's a higher business level conversation. One of the things that I have really turned my clients over to over the last, gosh, 24, maybe 36 months, is don't rely on your own accord to decide whether or not they have those skills. There's so much technology that's out there right now, Pat, that really does kind of help weed through one's ability and propensity to be successful at talking about the quantitative value of a capital purchase, as opposed to the inability to do so. So I encourage my clients, I won't promote any any one particular partner out there right now. But there are so many technology companies out there that can help you that out one's ability to be successful in a capital sale as it relates to their ability to to quantify value for you The business metrics of a department or hospital or whatever it might be,
Patrick Kothe 20:04
but even your example of somebody that has capital experience, your company's gonna be different than the last company that they went to, or that they were at. So they may have been responsible for just the presentation portion of it, and may have been very good at that, but not the prospecting portion. And now you're in a startup company that doesn't have a, you know, an inside sales force that can do that. Now, you're going to ask that person to do something that they may or may not have done before? It's a skill that they don't have?
Steve Gielda 20:35
Absolutely, I think that that's a great point, Pat, I think that if you're looking at wanting to hire somebody that comes from a large medical device company that has all of that support around them, and you're hiring for one of those people out of these, say, a Medtronic or Boston Scientific and you're hiring him into a new, a brand new product that's just hitting the marketplace. Yeah, you both can be in for a rude awakening. Because the assumption is that I have these, you know, the support around me from a salesperson standpoint. And the company says, No, you don't.
Patrick Kothe 21:08
One of the things that we do when we hire people is we put a job description together. And sometimes people look at that as just, you know, check that box to do it. But you've got to understand who you are in order to figure out who you're going to bring in. And that self reflection of what exactly are we? And what are the skills that are going to need need to be it? It can't just be as we just talked about somebody with experience in that industry know, what skills do you need to bring your product your company further ahead. And it's different in a startup than it is in a existing multinational where you know, the product is five years old. That's, that's a different, it's a different animal. And, you know, I've been in big companies, I've been in startups, different mindsets. And a lot of lot of startup companies, what they'll do is say, Okay, we're gonna, we're gonna launch our new product into urological surgery. And I'm gonna find somebody that that's in a big company in urology, well, guess what, those skills aren't exactly the same. A startup skill is not exactly the same as somebody who's, you know, the market leader? No doubt, it's not, it's not to say that that person can't learn. It's that it's not a plug and play. Right?
Steve Gielda 22:35
Yeah, you may very well bring that person over, that has a urology background into this new product launch. And they just may have, you know, tenacity to make it all happen, however, to assume that that is your hiring profile. It's a very dangerous assumption. So there's just so much more that needs to be done, particularly in this startup world.
Patrick Kothe 22:55
So I think in general, when we're hiring people, it's understanding who we are, what skills you actually need, really get, get down and look at yourself in the mirror and say, This is exactly what I am and what I'm not. And I need to have skills to do. I'll tell you one of the biggest mistakes that I made as a sales leader is I was we were launching a product into the cardiac cath lab, and we wanted people with cardiac cath lab experience, but we weren't able to pay for it. So we didn't, you know, we weren't paying enough to pull the top salespeople. So what did we end up doing is we ended up hiring bad salespeople with cath lab experience. Yeah, okay. valuable lesson that I learned. I learned that one, it was very, it was painful. But it's something that you learn is Who Am I? What exactly am I trying to trying to do? What are my strengths and weaknesses, and then kind of bring the people in that match that,
Steve Gielda 23:54
you know, you bring up a point that just using that example, takes me to a client that we're working with right now that they're bringing a new diagnostic out to the marketplace, just received FDA approval, going to be actually commercializing that product in July? And one of the things that we did that help them decide, what does the sales profile look like, is that we sat down with them and we built out their sales process. Now we're talking about sales process. That's not what happens on a sales call. We're talking about more of that longer term sales process, that pipeline process. What are the things that we're asking our salespeople to do? From the early middle to late stages, from targeting to prospecting, qualifying to demoing to negotiating to closing to adopting whatever those stages might be for, for their for them, but what are the things that we help them do was kind of identify critical milestones and others? What are the strategic actions we're asking the salespeople to take? And along that journey and each stage. And once we kind of flush that out, we identified the critical milestones, we then kind of began to say, Okay, so now, we need to hire people to do who, who know how to do this, and be put together an onboarding program to support those, even if they can, just so that we can sharpen their abilities to do it the way that we needed to have it done.
Patrick Kothe 25:23
Assess and sharpen absolutely, yeah, absolutely. And it's kind of like, we've heard this analogy a million times. But you know, you go out to the driving range, and you spend all your day and the driving range. If you haven't had a lesson, you're, you're basically grooving a bad swing. And it's the same thing here, you can hire the salespeople, but you have to know where you're going. You have to know what is the best process to enable them to be successful. So some people have done audits of their of their salespeople say, these are the top salespeople, we're going to do an analysis of what they do, and how they do it, to kind of help define what that process looks like it what's your experience with with that type of thing?
Steve Gielda 26:10
You know, there was a study that was done a long time ago, I must have read this over a decade ago. It's called the Bear Bryant effect, you know, Bear Bryant, the old Alabama coach, there was some PhD students that wanted to do a study that simply says, coach Brian, what is it that makes you so darn good at what you do? He said, Son, there are five things and he went through those five things that makes him so so dang. good at what he does. They said, well, coach, we like to watch you all season long in terms of how you identify, implement, and adopt all of those characteristics and skills that you think make you a great coach. So they sat there, they watched them all year long. And what they end up come to find out is that what made him successful or not those five things, but there were five other things. And that's where he'd be you know, that whole phraseology become where somebody is, if somebody is unconsciously competent at what they do. Bear Bryant was an unconsciously competent individual, nothing against him. But what he thought made him successful isn't what made him successful. And what we want to try to do when we're working with salespeople is how do you make people more consciously competent, so that they can adapt at the time that's necessary. And so that's what training you know, good training really does. It helps expose the things that we need to do better at and hold us accountable for the things that we were not, we're not very good at doing right now. We know we need to do better say at quantifying value, or winning against competition or negotiating whatever whatever that skill set might be. And I think I'm pretty daggone good at it. However, I'm getting by right now, not because of my negotiation skills, because of my ability to quantify value in a meaningful way, which leads to the opportunity that I don't have to negotiate. What I think made me successful is I'm just such a darn good negotiator. No, I'm not a good negotiator. But I'm very good at aligning our capabilities to the business metrics client wants to achieve. So they simply just say, Okay, and so that's just an example, I think, where people are often unconsciously competent. And what we want to do is help salespeople become more consciously aware of what makes them successful.
Patrick Kothe 28:21
So like night selling, that is your company. Yeah. You're but you've been involved in sales, education, sales training for a long period of time. Tell me about this. Tell me, tell me about ignite selling, and how it's how you how you approach sales education,
Steve Gielda 28:42
I think the best way to do that is by backing up and kind of talk a little bit about how I got into this whole sales enablement, sales education space. And as a vice president of sales heading up a sales organization for linear worldwide I was, was hired away by a gentleman by the name of Neil Rackham. Some of your listeners may be familiar with his, his researches book that came out in the 80s in the 90s, called SPIN Selling, and several other books that he had written and I was kind of I was hired away to go work for Neil, and primarily heading up his his health care, his health care business. And I learned a lot from Neil, I learned a lot about sales, education, the adoption of skills, the challenges of reinforcement, the roles of managers, all of those kinds of things. When Neal sold, the company provided me an opportunity to go off on my own or stick with the new owners. And Neil kind of encouraged me to start my own company. And so I did, I became a distributor of several different types of learning programs with an organization called the advantage performance group. And that's where I became a distributor of the of Miller Heiman that we talked about earlier. But I also became a distributor of a lot of other types of learning solutions around business acumen and leadership and team building. And after spending six years there, I kind of started realizing that there's something missing in the world of sales training, most sales training to even to this day, even though I left there in 2010. But even in this day, 13 years later, it's still taught in a very traditional manner, as it was taught back in the early 2000s, almost 20 years ago. And that is, let's put you down into an a seat. Let's give you a workbook. Let's turn on the PowerPoint projector, let's go ahead and have an expert in front of the room, start telling people what they need to stop doing or start doing. Let's do some exercises. And remember, we got to do role plays, because role plays are always good for all sales training. And it's just this rote, traditional form of sales training that I just said, something's got to change. And so I took some of my experience from working with these other learning partners and said, Hey, we're going to do a different we're ditching PowerPoint, we're ditching traditional role plays. And what we're going to do is we're going to bring us a classroom simulation based learning experience a peer to peer learning experience on how do you learn those fundamental selling skills? How do you learn the strategy and negotiation skills? How do you learn the coaching skills necessary, but we're going to do it around in a gamified way. And so every solution that we bring to our clients is customized around a fictitious account that looks and feels just like their hospital, their physician office, their cancer center, their long term care facility, we create the websites, the characters, so that we teach people how to think critically, think more strategically, before you just go act. And we provide them a series of tools. Unlike some, some training that's out there, we have to fill out a form. We don't think a form teaches people how to think. So we said, let's stop getting sick, giving salespeople more paperwork. I haven't met a salesperson yet that says, boy can't wait to fill out that form in Bikash. Please, let's be sure we have a lot of roleplay involved here because I love that. So
Patrick Kothe 31:58
quick, quick aside, I can remember being up on stage role playing at a sales training meeting on stage instead of in front of 500 of my closest friends, and people who are going to critique me. Not a fun deal.
Steve Gielda 32:11
That's the ultimate fishbowl, isn't it? Yeah, yeah, that's it. Those are tough situations. And obviously, you were selected for your national sales meeting, because you're good at what you did, because I don't think whoever was setting that up, probably wanted you to fail. So they, they probably picked you because you're pretty good at what you did. But I'm not saying roleplays are bad for salespeople they are. But let's use them at the time and in the manner to which brings realism to to the to the job. And so everything we do is a is a simulation based learning experience, and where we drive peer to peer learning. And we just think that salespeople learn better through their peers, as opposed to flipping through PowerPoint.
Patrick Kothe 32:51
It's also different between, you know, as we talked about, it used to be one on one selling now it's more complex, multi headed customer type of selling. So it's a little bit different. The role plays for the one on one ice, I think you're still valuable, you need to be able to verbalize in customer's language, the things that are important. So I think that I think that that's still a valuable piece. But when we start talking about a strategic sell, and that kind of what you described, multi headed customer complex sale, how do you think through that, before you start going and talking to somebody?
Steve Gielda 33:32
Well, exactly right. And I think that where and I agree with your role plays, and we still do role plays in hours, there's still a component of that done. However, unlike traditional role plays, where it's often prescriptive, hey, Pat, it's now time for you to go talk to Mike. And now you prepare for the meeting with Mike, you go conduct that meeting with Mike and when it's over you, thank God that it's all done. You brush yourself off, you lick your wounds, and it's done. So of course, you never want to do it again. Where where we talked about kind of sort of role placed or looking at real plays, the differences, the fact that you have to first of all decide why Mike, why are you going to go see that person as opposed to this person? So it's important for us to give some consideration to your point, particularly with this multi headed customer, that we have to decide who do we want to be with first. And if you're doing it in a classroom environment, some people are going to choose Mike some people might choose Sally, other people might choose Sarah. But we have that's a learning opportunity for us all to decide, why did we go choose that person? And then when it's done? We don't we don't end it by simply saying, okay, that's done. No, no. Just like in real life. There are consequences to what just happened? Positive or negative. So where do we go from here? We can't just act like it never happened. If it didn't go well. We can't just celebrate the fact we had a good sales call and not leverage that success to go to the next step.
Patrick Kothe 34:57
The next step may be I just thought act a surgeon a, who is a mortal enemy enemy a surgeon B. So now, you know, I've got to choose one of them. I chose one of them. There's negative repercussions there. How are how am I going to prevent him from sabotaging? So it's, it's a chess game.
Steve Gielda 35:18
That's it's a chess game. That's exactly right. And I think sales today, any kind of complex sale. And I believe that most medical device salespeople are in a complex sale, not all, but most meaning that they have to engage with typically two or three people, maybe somebody in supply chain, maybe somebody that's in risk management, maybe it's somebody in pharmacy, or whatever the case might be. And therefore they have to be smart. And somebody has to challenge their critical thinking, which really kind of gets into this role of what's the role of the manager and all of this. You know, when we're talking about thinking strategically, it's great when you have peers to help you bounce ideas off of should we go to surgeon B or surgeon a right now, and you have somebody else kind of thing, I wouldn't go to surgeon B and they will tell me why because that's exactly who I was gonna go see, it's good to kind of have that somebody bouncing those ideas off of, but when that person is not always available, that manager needs to be there for that for that salesperson. And we have found some of the best sales managers today are what we call excellent strategic coaches. Because they ask the questions that challenge the assumptions, and the critical thinking of those individuals and the strategies and the direction that they're gonna go, as opposed to, hey, Pat, I like that you're fat, you're gonna go see a surgeon a, you know, tell me a little bit what are you going to talk about? You know, what are you going to ask him? Hey, good job, let me know how it goes. Instead, managers challenging even the vision or the thought of even going to see surgeon A?
Patrick Kothe 36:59
Well, it kind of leads me into kind of a different thought, too, is that sales reps have traditionally been lone wolves. Okay, I'm going to go out, and I'm going to do things myself. But in today's environment, there's fewer lone wolves out there, you need to involve your manager, your managers, manager, strategic accounts, contracting, pricing, there's all of these different areas that help to bring this sales process together. So now you're not only selling externally, but you're selling internally. Can you talk to me a little bit about the process that you're talking about in terms of a strategic process? And where it's led? Who's leading it? Who should be leading
Steve Gielda 37:49
it? You know, I'll answer your question by giving an example. But I'll keep the client name out of it. But they were a medical device clients selling in the cardiovascular marketplace. And a lot of products company brought at least four different therapeutic areas, let alone probably a dozen product under each therapeutic area just to cardiovascular. And so there were four or five people that carried the title of sales person that were calling on the cardiovascular parts of the hospital. In addition to that, you had kind of, we'll just use some generic terms, some presale and post sales support for each one of those groups individually. So quickly, we had eight different potential people touching that customer from this one manufacturer, that doesn't even include marketing yet. These are people that just see and visit with the customer over the phone or face to face eight different people. So we created a simulation that simply said, here's the hospital. Oh, by the way, we also include national accounts involved in that. And those are the people who are selling at that IDN level. And so there were there were a couple of folks that focused on the different therapeutic areas that that ID and level. And we included all these people at the meeting. And when we create a simulation, and we introduced them to our influence or snapshot, which is a tool that simply says, Hey, map out who has high influence, low influence, who do you deem as an advocate or an adversary based upon the limited information that we've just given you? Now, we taught them how to do that. And then after we taught them how to do that, we said, let's do this for your own account. Everybody who touches this account, what we want to know is who do you see as your strongest advocates, your strongest adversaries, and what's the level of influence they have for your therapeutic area? All calling on cardiovascular? Now, they all think they have the same names and the same people in on their on their influencer snapshot. I would guess that absolutely not but they're all calling into cardiovascular. They all knew who the award director was. They all knew who The Chief of Surgery was who the truth of cardiac surgery was, they all knew who the risk manager was they all knew supply chain was the VP of Finance was. But do they all have them as an advocate or an adversary at the same level of influencer? No. So who's right? One in this kind of complex world, if you're not turning inward, and talking to your peers, about who they see as an advocate, or an adversary inside account, you're missing a great opportunity, because your strongest adversary might be a huge advocate for your counterpart. So if you don't know that you're missing the game here, I mean, you need to be leveraging that. Now that's just this is an example of people that just all touched the customer, you brought up a whole nother litany of individuals that that's inside the client organization, field reimbursement, marketing, pricing, clinical support, clinical education, you have all these other, you know, medical liaison specialists, you have all of these other types of individuals that you have to engage as well. Now, do you think they might have an opinion about your strategy? Have you ever asked them about it? Why not. And so we really believe that if you're not tapping all of your resources to help you think through strategically about what you should do, you're missing a great opportunity here. And guess what, you might also have some adversaries inside your own organization that says, This is bad business, or that we do not want to bring this opportunity to this account, because it's only going to be headaches for us in the future. Wow. I sure would love to know that now. And why that individual thinks that way. So we're not reaching out internally, particularly for these large kind of multi headed enterprise type accounts. We're really missing the boat.
Patrick Kothe 41:58
Most of us who have been in the sales side of businesses have been trained on different sales programs, SPIN Selling, or challenger sale are all kinds of different different programs throughout the years. Are you replacing those programs? Are you building on those programs? How do you describe what you guys do?
Steve Gielda 42:22
Yeah, we do not replace them unless the client really feels a strong desire and need to do it. But that's not our go to market strategy. Our strategy is what we call a wrap and reinforcer. So we wrap around, say challenger, or wrap around integrity selling, and we help reinforce it. Because when an organization wants to switch it, where they want to leave challenger or leave Richardson, or whatever the methodology might be, it's often not because it wasn't they weren't teaching the right things. Because everything out there it for the most part 80% of it's going to be exactly the same thing, just repackaged in a different way. So we try to help organizations realize that replacing it with from Company A to Company B isn't going to solve your problem. Your problem is systemic. And it often comes from a lack of coaching or reinforcement or how the content was originally taught. So our strategy is to bring in what we call a capstone simulation. Our Capstone simulations don't teach anything new. They take the existing sales methodology, the process, the tools, the competitive knowledge, the product knowledge, all the stuff that the individuals have already been taught, and saying, let's see how well we can apply all of that information to today's market. So the first thing somebody calls up and say, Hey, listen, we'd like to, we're looking for a new strategy program. We're doing Miller Heiman. That's okay. Well, let's talk a little bit about that. How long has it been since you've implemented Miller Heiman? Strategic selling? Oh, it's only been four years? Well, let's talk a little bit about that. What's changed in your market in the last four years, we've got these new competitors come in. And we've launched some new products. You know, we've had some pricing strategies, our hospitals have consolidated, we have fewer customers, whatever it might be saying, terrific. What if we help your team do a better job of applying those fundamentals to which they've already been taught to today's market? So can you do that? Absolutely. So we've come in with a capstone simulation, and we don't have to replace the entire methodology, particularly if they did a good job building it into the DNA of the organization.
Patrick Kothe 44:38
That's so important because when you're dealing with that old, grizzled salesperson who has been through all of these things, and ah, here comes another, another sales sales program I've already been through and 90% of it is the same as what I got in the last one, but they want me to do get trained on use terminology different. Building building off of off the knowledge is much easier sell to them. But I wanted to ask you about your customers. So your customers who are picking up the phone to give you a call, why are they picking up the phone? What is it? Is something broken? Are they looking for an accelerator? Why are they picking up the phone?
Steve Gielda 45:31
Yeah, I think it's for a couple of different reasons. I just came back from a conference called L 10. In the life sciences Technology Conference, it's a it's a sales training conference for folks in the life sciences, space, pharmaceutical, biotech, medical device, and peep. The biggest thing that we heard last week, why people are wanting to engage with us now is typically not because something is broken, what they're however, what they're looking for is a new way to introduce a new product to the marketplace, I mean to their sales team. So they're launching new products could be one thing, you hit it, you use a term that is real popular right now. And I used this as an example when I set an accelerator, okay, that people are looking to accelerate revenue. So that doesn't necessarily mean that something is broken, but they're seeing too many stalled opportunities. And when we talk to sales leaders today, 74% of all opportunities are stalling. And in our research, when you go interview those those same salespeople that give you the data around, what percentage of their opportunities are stalling in the early to middle stages of their sales pipeline? 92% of the responses they blame the customer? The customers lack a budget, the customers changing the customer is merging the customer, the customer the customer
Patrick Kothe 46:54
is is this a sales leaders or the sales representative sales representatives
Steve Gielda 46:58
are given us that answer. Okay. But when we go back, we tell the sales leaders. So we said let's look at the data as to what percentage of opportunities are stalling in your sales pipeline to that that data? We can we can pull them we know exactly at what stage this is for how long our opportunity is staying there. Now we go back and we interview why. And what what we find out is that the salespeople are blaming the customers the reasons why But yet, when we go back, we start asking some of those questions that we talked about earlier. So let me give you an example. We'll say Mr. Customer, Mr. Sales Rep, this opportunity has been stalled in stage three of your pipeline process for five months, I got a simple question for you. What is the decision criteria other than price that this customer is using to compare you against competition? What's the decision criteria this customers using to compare you against the competition? salespeople don't know. Now, let me ask you some if you had a better idea of what's driving this customer's decision. And what's the urgency behind that criteria? Could you potentially get this thing? unstuck? Yes. Why has this been sitting here for five months? It's not because the customer did something it's because your of your inability to effectively identify what's driving the sense of urgency and what's the decision criteria behind this decision. And so what we come to find out, that's the mean that something's broken to simply means that they're not thinking critically. And so therefore, we can come in with a single tool. Okay, so let's just suppose they've done challenger. They've done Richardson. They've done Miller, Heiman, we might come in with a two hour module that teaches them how do you better analyze customers decision criteria. And we'll we'll overlay that that's our wrap around and reinforce strategy. So let's just kind of wrap around what you're already doing. Let's not throw the whole baby out with the bathwater. But let's just take a two hour module and drill down really deep on this particular challenge that's causing opportunities to stall.
Patrick Kothe 48:54
There's another another concept out there. And sometimes we launch a product and it's wildly successful. We think it's, you know, it's it's blowing away our own expectations. But is it really, I think it was Bill Parcells, who said, You know what, winning is a great deodorant. And we've got the same thing within our businesses. If we deem ourselves to be successful, we may not have put the right processes in place to make it reproducible the next time around when you don't have a huge gap in customer expert expectations of what you can deliver. So I think that that's kind of another thing I'd like to dig into even when you're successful. Understanding why you've got that success.
Steve Gielda 49:47
I don't know if you've ever read the book Crossing the Chasm. Oh, yeah, yeah, definitely a popular book. And I think that people get this false sense of security when they're bringing a new product to market and their sales reps. Animals have great success with those early adopters. And then all of a sudden you start getting to the early majority late majority start wondering, wow, my salespeople can't sell. But your salespeople couldn't sell to start with. They just happen to be hitting the right set of customers. Thank you marketing, for pointing us in the right direction to identify those early adopters, people that wanted to test out new technology, well, that that market has now been tapped. Now we are crossing the chasm. And now we need to start looking at this other set of buyers, this other set of influencers, and all of a sudden, we can't be successful. And I think that that often happens, and we fall on this false sense of success, that guy goes on, we're crushing it. And there's a there's like an example again, keep the client name out of it. If anybody are listening to this podcast, I'll just say they're in the urological space, and they'll know exactly who I'm talking about. But their managers have this false sense of security, that their sales reps are some of the best in the market today. Well, it came to prove out not only after they crossed the chasm, but new competition came into the marketplace, and it's now destroying them, where they once had an 85% market share, they're now down below 40, in less than 24 months. Now, why? Because they thought that their salespeople were outstanding, and the managers believed it themselves, that they didn't have to worry about coaching their people, all they had to do is worry about supporting their people making helping them close sales. And I'm saying Guys, it's gonna bite you in the butt, you're gonna cross that chasm, you're gonna find out a different set of buyers out there a different set of influencers, because these people don't feel the need to have to make the change new technology. And even when new competition came on board, now all of a sudden, they have two or three different companies that are selling this technology coming into these late majority going, Okay, I think I'll give it a shot. Well, now they're given a shot, and all of a sudden, they like your competitive product better, you missed your window. Now you have to really hard learn how to sell competitively, where in fact, if you were smarter, and got in front of that curve, and not relied on your own ego, you would have been much more successful in today's marketplace, versus watching the competition, enter the same marketplace that you're in and watch your market share being destroyed.
Patrick Kothe 52:22
You can get lucky, you can get lucky. But But But long term success is in my estimation, it's always building on process. It's always built on understanding and putting process in place to replicate. And that's kind of with within startups. It's you know, your startup is a temporary organization looking for a reproducible process, and the same thing and sales, it's, you know, you're launching something, and you're trying to get a reproducible process that will help as we talked about accelerate, what you're what you're doing, make you more efficient, to enable you to accelerate and accelerate those sales. Yeah, yeah. Without a doubt. We talked about the one on one sale, the enterprise sale. One of the other things I'd like to talk about is management. And, you know, we just talked a little bit about why somebody would would choose you. But sales training as a go back to one of the trends that I see in in our industry is probably about 10 years or so ago, sales training became more about product training than sales skills training. And it seems like sales training, true sales, you know, sales training, is starting to get a little bit more love. Is that something that you've noticed as well.
Steve Gielda 53:49
I think that trend has ebbed and flowed over the two and a half decades I've been in this business. You know, I came in this marketplace in the mid 1990s. And sales training, not product training was kind of making its making its, you know, still surviving pretty well. They were thriving in the industry. You had Miller Heiman entering the marketplace. You had Wilson learning, you had health weight with SPIN Selling, and they were all focused just on skills training and doing very, very well. And you have seen this pendulum swing between if you're moving to the right hand side, it's all focused on product, product knowledge, clinical knowledge, competitive knowledge. It's and that's how you need that's what you need to be successful. And then the only other left hand side would be it's really all about what do you do with that knowledge? It's about the skills, it's about the application of that knowledge in an effective way. It's about quantifying value. And I think that pendulum swings back and forth even in in companies, desires to bring on sales training. There's a couple of manufacturers out there that has simply said we don't train other than product We hire talent, we don't train talent. And that's their, that's their modality. That's their mindset. Well, I'm never going to be able to convince somebody who simply says we don't train talent, we hire talent, we don't develop a sales, sales reps are born failed reps to born. That's exactly right. And I'm never going to be able to convince those guys. However, I would say the majority of the market still believes that there's a role for ongoing sales effectiveness, sales development, because they recognize that the market changes every year. They recognize that regulations change, new competitors are launching new product technology is changing. Buyers are changing consolidations, trends in the industry that all cause organizations to hit the pause button simply saying, am I providing the needed support for my sales team to be successful? And so what we're really kind of seeing is I think, sales training is probably today, we're probably at a midway point, maybe even a little bit more on that right hand side, where we're dominating the importance of product training. Because I do believe what organizations are seeing today is that they need to help their team do a better job of applying those skills. And there that's where sales managers come in, not sales, training, sales training can teach people about what the methodology, what the tools are, what the processes are. But how's it used out in the field, you have to ask yourself, who's the one out there watching? Who's the one out there listening? It's not sales training, you only got four or five people in sales training, you got 200 reps out in the field. But guess what, you got 20 sales managers out there who are spending a couple of days, you know, every week out in the field with sales reps, what are they doing on the field to help drive application? Some of the best managers that I know today, not just observe, but they follow this kind of mindset where they ask more than they tell. And they listen more than they speak.
Patrick Kothe 57:08
Their true salespeople their sales professional, correct,
Steve Gielda 57:10
but they're taking those good sales best practices and applying it into their coaching job.
Patrick Kothe 57:18
We talked about, you know, somebody comes in does a sales training program, another one comes in does the sales training program, and they become events, and not a sustained way that you do business. So talk to me about the correct way to embed a system within your company, that it's not only the sales reps, do it and the frontline managers do it? I mean, that's, that's kind of like, you know, one on one. But when we talk about this multi headed customer that has all of these touch points within our organization, how do you embed it when you embed this within an organization and not just the sales organization?
Steve Gielda 58:03
I love that question, Pat. And I think that it's it's, it's think it's something that most people don't even think about. They when they think about adopting a new sales methodology for their organization. They merely think about what do I need to do to reinforce and get managers to coach to it out in the field? And as you said, that's one on one. I think those organizations that have the best success of ingraining, and embedding a, a learning mindset into their organizations are those organizations that have both sales enablement or sales, training, and sales leadership together at the same table, talking about what are the strategies that my sales team needs to be proficient in this year to drive those sales goals. We have a process which we call our strategic learning alignment process. It's a free consulting process that we offer our existing customers as well as new customers. And all we're doing there is we are bringing together sales training, and the VP of sales. And then also in that meeting, we have the area directors area vice presidents. And what we're trying to do is do to
Patrick Kothe 59:15
bring in marketing, marketing and
Steve Gielda 59:17
marketing was involved in that as well. So it's sales, marketing, and training are the three groups. Sometimes you have sales operations involved as well. But it's not a cast of 20 people. It's a cast of probably six to eight. And what we do is we take the sales goals, those have come down from Mount Sinai on written on tablets, those are non negotiable, we simply say, okay, these are the sales goals for the year. And where we spend our time is in the next two areas, we simply say, what are the sales strategies that we need to develop this year and execute this year in order to achieve those sales goals? And I'm shocked at the organization's when I asked that question. What are the strategies that we need to implement this year to achieve our sales goals? They're kind of stuck there. They're stumped. And what I get from sales leaders often is that we need our salespeople selling at the C suite. Well, that's not a strategy. That's the behavior that you want them doing out in the field. It's not a strategy. I need them to sell more product X. Okay, that's, that could be a strategy. But how? Let's quantify that. And so we sit down, and we'll create two or three strategies. And if they want them, they think that part of strategy needs to be having C suite relationships will be successful to the businesses long term growth, then we'll say fine. Under what conditions do you want your salespeople having C suite relationships, and they may come back with, we want our people to have a C suite quantifiable value conversation with everybody that's currently spending greater than $1.7 million with our company. Okay, that's a strategy is that we want them to target every company that's spending greater than $1.7 million with us, we want our salespeople to have a quantitative C suite conversation to make sure they understand the quantitative value of the partnership that they have. Great. Let's go have that. And when do we want it done by oral say we're trying to improve margins by 4%. This year? That's a sales goal. I'll say great. Let's talk a little bit how we do that. And one of the things I'll ask them is, which of your products do you think has the highest product margin? They'll say it's product a great, what percentage is product A of your total portfolio? It's 20%. So let's do a little bit of math here that if we were to go ahead and increase Product A by 10%, and revenue, how much additional profitability but we have on the bottom line? And they'll say, Okay, so now let's develop a strategy for how do we get the company? How do we get the salespeople to focus more on product day? And we'll say, well, they need to go into every competitive account that's currently has a product that's greater than seven years old, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So we build out those strategies. And this is where marketing and sales training comes in. Now that we have those written down, we simply say, what are the critical on the job behaviors? Does the sales team and the management team need to be proficient in to execute those strategies? So don't just tell me they need to ask better questions, or they need to think more strategically align that for me, as a result of asking better questions. How does it drive, this better selling a product day, we need them to ask better questions around the competitive landscape of what they're currently doing in these types of cases. There you go. That's an on the job behavior, they need to explore deeper and broader with these particular individuals around these particular challenges, to see if we're a better fit. So what we create here is this learning alignment, that's the first thing that we do when we're able to tie sales, behaviors, to business outcomes. All of a sudden, we start getting a little bit more buy in. And now this frontline, this vice president sales, his directors, their frontline sales managers, their sales representatives, their marketing team, their sales support team, all have a roadmap, that simple says we're trying to grow revenues by 13% and margins by 7%, market share by x. And what we need to do is achieve execute these three sales strategies this year, and the on the job behaviors that we're all going to be supporting and coaching are these critical on the job behaviors. And when we can get that kind of acceptance and buy in and roadmap, all of a sudden, that simple step right up front starts simply saying, Ah, now I know how to develop the training that's going to drive the outcome. I now know what my role managers need to do. Yes, of course, you need to reinforce it. Yes, of course, we need to measure the outcomes. Yes, we need to make sure we're looking at all the metrics. But you're looking at all the right stuff at once you have that alignment upfront.
Patrick Kothe 1:03:47
Steve, how does a company measure the success of your program?
Steve Gielda 1:03:53
The easiest way to measure the success of our programs did identify what those critical metrics are that we're trying to improve. So go back to that example, what we'll do is simply saying, if in fact, we need to sell more product A, okay. And we know that if we sell more product A we're likely to hit our sales outcomes. And we identified with the critical selling behaviors and on the job behaviors need to be in order to sell more product day. Let's go out let's go back, let's teach those skills reinforce and coach those skills. And let's monitor how well we're executing that strategy. What percentage of sales representative the end of q2? Did we have having meetings with these particular individuals in these competitive accounts where they got the opportunity to demo product day, if only 30% of the sales team at the end of q2 is executing upon that, we know that we have a problem. So therefore, we have to make that adjustment, have that coaching conversation, and then move forward. But the way that they measure success of our training is by first of all asking themselves, what are the needles that we're trying to move? And then what we'll do is we'll tie our training to those particular business metrics. It's not a skill metric, we can raise proficiency level and understanding know what the difference is between a dissect and a developed question by 40%. Therefore, they're smarter, they're more successful. No, that just means they have more knowledge. You know, if you've seen me swing a golf club, I can tell you how to swing a golf club. And you would think that I have mastered the game of golf based on the power I tell you to hold and swing a golf club. However, if you watch me execute how I swing golf club, it's a very different thing. So we don't want to just measure knowledge, we want to measure application of knowledge on in the game. And so that can we move the needle? So that's kind of how we measure ROI.
Patrick Kothe 1:05:36
Great, great conversation, really appreciate. And this this last section on management, and measurement, I think is extremely important because some education programs are measured, just as you said, it's measured by how proficient somebody is, you're you've moved beyond a consultant in selling into a consultant in the strategy of the business. So that's a completely different level of education.
Steve Gielda 1:06:08
Which, by the way, is what we want salespeople doing, right? I mean, I don't care what you're selling. If you can't tell me what the critical business metrics are, that your customers trying to improve in the next 12 months? How are you going to be able to align your capabilities to that success? Top salespeople need to know what their customers are trying to achieve as as a result of operating their business. And then they have to ask themselves, can I help do that? If you can't help do that you don't have a purpose or a need to be in that company. But you can't answer that question is, can I help this company until I understand what are they trying to do?
Patrick Kothe 1:06:51
And it's also comes back to qualification, you may not have the product that they need today, it doesn't mean that it won't be there tomorrow. But if somebody is rolling out a completely, you know, three new technologies in that hospital and you're going to be the fourth, well, it's probably not going to be a good time for you to engage the timing is off, understanding what that is, so that you're in the queue for the next product rollout. That's, that's more more important for understanding customer. See, if you've got a lot of resources on your website, tell us a little bit about what what you've got on on your website.
Steve Gielda 1:07:30
You know, if you, we provide so much free support for people that are just looking for guidance, and if they just go to ignite selling.com. And under the resources tab, there are white papers, there are studies, there are videos, there are interviews, there are podcasts like this, that they can all go check out. But there's also access to a book, we published our Ignite your sales strategy book last July, which became an Amazon top 10 seller last summer, we're really excited about it in the back of that book, our five to 10 questions that challenge salespeople thinking around different stages of the of the pipeline process. So go to Amazon, pick up the book, ignite your sales strategy, if you're looking for things that you need to be testing your own understanding. It's all over our website, go into the book, you know, a lot of resources out there.
Patrick Kothe 1:08:30
Steve, thanks so much for the conversation I want to kind of end up with with with the following question. If there's a sales leader out there today, who's trying to be as effective as they can possibly be for today and prepare for tomorrow? What types of advice would you give that person?
Steve Gielda 1:08:56
First thing I would ask them to do is to adopt a process that you can coach to not talking about a coaching process, but adopt a sales process that you can hold your salespeople accountable to? Then the way the best way to hold them accountable, is by developing a set of questions that challenges the assumptions that they're making around each one of those stages. We talked about it earlier. top managers today know how to challenge the thinking of their salesperson. Stop asking who are the influencers that are involved in the decision making process? Start asking, which are the key influencers that are involved in this decision making process? Do you think it was better aligned to our competitor? Same answer, you're likely to get a similar answer, I should say. But the answer to question number two is going to be more meaningful to you as a manager and as a coach, because now you know that your sales representative knows which of those key influencers is better. are aligned to their competitor. Now you can help develop a plan to help neutralize those people that are supporting the competition. If you were just to ask the question, so who are the key influencers involved? you're eventually going to have to ask two or three more questions to get to the question that I just asked anyway. So my advice is, have a process that you want your salespeople to follow. And then develop a series of questions that challenge the assumptions around your team's ability to accomplish those things.
Patrick Kothe 1:10:31
But a fun conversation, I love speaking with experts who take a broad view of a particular subject, and then develop solutions to make the subject more effective. I also like the fact that they're building off a base of existing knowledge and not trying to recreate the wheel. A few of my takeaways. First, medical device sales is complex. And when you're dealing with something complex, you need a system to plan and prepare for is successful. Implementation. You need to identify the right people, you need to identify the right sales process. And then you need to train your team to give them all the right skills. The second thing is when he talked about asking different questions, and who are your customers talking to that you aren't. And what that'll do is that will prevent you from being blindsided with somebody who's who you don't routinely interface with and you don't know. So finding out who that is, will allow you to proactively neutralize situations and proactively neutralize the different different people that are not on your side today. Finally, the whole organization needs to buy into a sales methodology, and a sales system, not just sales. It's the whole organization that will allow the whole organization to be aligned with their priorities. It prevents the internal backbiting and pushback. And ultimately what it leads to is accelerated success. 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
