Field Sales Leadership Guide

7. Account Segmentation and the Educational Sales Cycle with Robbie Lunt from Biodesix

• Map My Customers • Episode 7

Share episode

When a new medical product challenges old ways of diagnosing cancer, sales and marketing teams must collaborate to proliferate the message to many key purchasing influencers in the sales cycle. For lung disease diagnostic company Biodesix, it’s an educational marketing and sales process that asks oncologists and pulmonologists to take a new approach that leads to early diagnosis. Learn how they are deploying teams to spread the word and how segmenting their accounts helps them tackle these untapped markets.


“So that's really one of the main reasons that we partnered with Map My Customers is that we have this treasure trove of data in Salesforce.com, but we hadn't found a way that we could really translate that into something that the sales team could use while they're on the go,” explains Robbie Lunt, Senior Director of Marketing at Biodesix. “And I'll note that some of our sales reps have fairly big geographies and are visiting different cities in sequence. So, putting that data in a way that they can easily pull it up and get the insights they need to be efficient was really important.”

Follow JT Rimbey on LinkedIn or send a message


Follow Robbie Lunt on LinkedIn or send a message


About the Podcast

We've lined up for you some of the smartest movers and shakers in sales leadership to share their formulas for success and the tricks of the trade. The Field Sales Leadership Guide podcast discusses with experienced and successful sales leaders what works and what doesn't in the sales profession. Listen in as we tap into high performing sales leaders and their passion for field sales. Join us as we pull back the curtain giving you actionable insights and strategies that you can use with your sales team.



About the Sponsor

Traditional CRM aren’t designed with outside sales reps in mind. They're too cumbersome, complex and time consuming and lack mobile-friendly options. Use Map My Customers as the CRM of record or as the tip of the spear for your existing CRM. Designed specifically for outside sales reps, Map My Customers is a mobile-first platform that strategically segments accounts, provides optimized routing and mapping tools, activity logging and much more. Get a free hands-on tour at https://smarturl.it/mmc-trial. 


Follow Map My Customers

https://twitter.com/mapmycustomers 

https://www.facebook.com/mapmycustomers 

https://www.linkedin.com/company/map-my-customers 


Level-up your field sales strategy at mapmycustomers.com


JT Rimbey  00:02

Welcome to the Field Sales Leadership Guide podcast where we discuss with experienced and successful sales leaders what works and what doesn't in the sales professionals. Join us as we tap into high performing sales leaders and their passion for field sales. We've lined up for you some of the smartest movers and shakers in sales leadership to share their formulas for success and the tricks of the trade. Join us as we pull back the curtain, giving you actionable insights and strategies that you can use with your sales team. 


Hello, everyone. Welcome back to the Field Sales Leadership Guide podcast. We've got another great episode for you today. Today we get to go to the marketing side of the house, where we get to focus around providing color around how critical it is to have an account segmentation strategy in place and deployable in a fast, easy way. Robbie Lunt from the lung disease diagnostic company by Biodesix is here to join us. Robbie is the Senior Director of Marketing, and I absolutely admire his passion for improving patient outcomes. It's central to what they do day in and day out. And making a difference is exactly what they continue to do. They've secured CMS reimbursement for many of their diagnostic tests. And they have a tremendous success and track record at helping physicians to identify lung cancer earlier, while also reducing unnecessary procedures. Robbie, I absolutely love hanging out with you. excited that you're with us today. Welcome to the podcast.


Robbie Lunt  01:47

Thanks JT excited to be here. Thanks for having me.


JT Rimbey  01:50

Absolutely. I honestly I'm really excited for this episode, because as you're well versed, my normal day consists of speaking with RSMS, directors of sales, VPs of sales, CROs, everybody on the sales side. So I'm really excited to hang out with you on the marketing side. So as we dive in here, give us a little bit of background, how long you've been at Biodesixs and how did you get into the marketing side of the business? 


Robbie Lunt  02:17

Sure. So I've been with Biodesix going on four years. It's been a really exciting time to be a part of the company as we've been growing really rapidly and went through an IPO a couple of years ago. And so the marketing function has continued to grow. My background in marketing really started in my first job out of undergraduate. So I did my bachelor's degree in biotechnology. And my first job was actually with the startup diagnostics company, where I was doing data analysis and spent most of my days looking at this software that measured small molecules, mostly for biopharma companies and their drug development process. And our sales and marketing team would bring our customers into our headquarters to demonstrate what our core competencies were around that technology. And they would come to my desk and say, Hey, can you explain what makes our company special, what makes our technology special. And that's really where I fell in love with the concept of understanding customer needs, and then developing and delivering products and services that would address those needs. So after a few years in that role, I went on to get my master's in business. And the rest of that is history.


JT Rimbey  03:29

That's awesome. So data driven at heart and I know you've become a really great data driven marketer as well. As we dive in just a little bit more background around Biodesix, Biodesix is unique because of the focused disease state. Speak a little bit to what that is for our listeners.


Robbie Lunt  03:46

So one of the things that that really drew me to Biodesix in the first place was our approach to how we develop diagnostic tests. It's really driven by the clinical need, rather than having a technology and going and finding a place that that technology fits. So the way we do that is we first speak with all the stakeholders in the healthcare system, patients, providers, administrators, payers, and other industry partners to understand the standard of care and where those gaps exist, ultimately, with the goal of improving patient care through personalized medicine. Then we develop a strategy for how we can address that gap. And through that approach, we've developed capabilities in a range of different technologies because there's really no single technology that can answer all of the different questions that we have. The way that's materialized into our commercial portfolio is around lung cancer. So lung cancer represents more cancer deaths than breast, prostate and colon cancer all combined. And so we have five different clinical diagnostic tests in this space and several more in the pipeline that are all addressing different clinical needs around the diagnosis and the treatment of lung cancer. The first part of our portfolio is called Nodify Lung. And that's to help address indeterminant lung nodules and help identify the very small percentage of the approximately 2 million lung nodules discovered annually in the US that have a high likelihood of being cancer. The second part is called IQ Lung. And the last time I looked, there's about 60 different treatment regimens that a patient with lung cancer can receive. An IQ lung is all about determining what's going to be the optimal treatment pathway for each patient. 


JT Rimbey  5:35

I'm still standing in awe that lung cancer causes more deaths each year than breast, prostate, and colon combined. My oh my goodness, that is terrifying to think about. 


Robbie Lunt  05:45

Yeah, it's a really, it's an awful statistic. And we're making a lot of progress, but still a lot of progress yet to be made. 


JT Rimbey  5:59

That's gonna feel good, Robbie being in a purpose driven organization, what you guys do and deliver it, it matters. So keep up the great work, and it lends a bunch of credence to your data background as to why you'd be so attracted to making an impact with all of these improvements in in diagnostic testing. From here, you mentioned that you're serving across the healthcare organization, who is your main buyer? And and what are they looking to solve? Who are you guys targeting? 


Robbie Lunt  06:19

It's a really interesting question, JT, because in the diagnostics industry, it's a little bit of a different business model than some other parts of health care. The health care providers are the primary users of our tests. They're the ones that determine which patients are eligible and may benefit from the information that our tests provide. So really, the target that we're focusing on from a commercial perspective is how do we go out and educate healthcare providers on the value of our tests, how they can be implemented into their clinical practice, and ultimately how it's going to help improve patient care. 


JT Rimbey 0 6:55

So what would be your method of profiling or approach to the market to find these specific health care providers? How do you go after them? 


Robbie Lunt  07:03

Yes, so in the clinical landscape of lung cancer, it really all starts with lung cancer screening and lung nodule management. Like any cancer out there, early detection is key to the prognosis of the patient. And so there's a lot of different providers that are out there trying to diagnose this lung cancer early and lung nodule management is one of those starting points. So lung nodules are found everywhere in the healthcare system. But if there's something suspicious, they often get referred on to a pulmonologist. So pulmonology is one of the specialties that we work most closely with across our portfolio, because they're doing the evaluation and the diagnosis of lung cancer. Now, there's a lot of pulmonologists out there. So what we're really looking for are those that are seeing a high volume of patients that are going to be able to use our tests. So oncologists also play a key role in the clinical landscape. Because after that lung cancer diagnosis, those patients get referred on to the oncologist. So what we're really trying to do is identify the pulmonologist and oncologists that are diagnosing and treating a lot of lung cancer because that's where our tests will have the most impact on patient care. 


JT Rimbey  08:10

So let's dive into that a little bit more. Discuss high level the sales process that the sales consultants go through with the pulmonologists and oncologists. 


Robbie Lunt  08:20

Right. So with the wide distributed target market, like we have with pulmonologist and oncologists, we want to be very deliberate about where our sales team spends their time. And that's one of the places that we've really gotten a lot of value out of the Map My Customers tool is in looking across all the specialists in the US, and determining which are those doctors that are seeing the patient population where our test is going to be most impactful. So the targeting and qualification steps are really important, where it's a marketing and sales combined approach to say, who are those doctors that are most likely to get the value out of our tests? And that it really takes some discussion with each individual provider to qualify them and say, Are you seeing the right patient population? Do you see the clinical utility that our tests could provide for your staff and your patients. And then ultimately work towards implementation of our tests and how they're going to ultimately use them in their clinical practice. So all of our tests are blood based tests. So there are some unique challenges to deploying, deploying the tests into a clinical practice. And really what we want to demonstrate to all of our customers is the impact that they're having. So the last step of the sales process is, once somebody has started to use our tests, we actually go back and present data back to them, showing in aggregate the results of our tests and have a really robust discussion around how has that changed the way that you think about lung cancer and the different patients that are coming into your practice? 

JT Rimbey  09:55

So Robbie, this is obviously a very informational relationship building educational processed sale to providers? These are not one meeting closes by any stretch. So as you establish credibility in these different practices with these providers, how do you measure success? Give me some examples of whether these processes are working.


Robbie Lunt  10:20

Yeah, you're right, JT. So it's definitely a team approach to building the clinical education that comes from sales and marketing, but also our excellent medical affairs team, to help educate the physicians on the data that we have, and how other physicians around the country are using our tests. And so the way we measure success, or some of the ways that we measure success, are in the number of pulmonologists, and oncologists around the country that are using our tests. So really looking at new customer acquisition, and our overall adoption curve, because this is a new product category. So looking at that adoption curve is really important. We also want to understand, are they using the tests and all of the eligible patients that could be receiving the tests? So we have this total addressable market? But if doctors are only using the tests and a certain patient population? Why is that? What could we do to show the value of the tests and other patients that are eligible for it? And then finally, making sure that they continue using the tests and in customer retention, that if they stop using the tests, then clearly they've had an experience? Or aren't seeing the value in the test? So how can we go back? And and have that conversation to understand how we can better demonstrate the value? 


JT Rimbey  11:38

So, Robbie, you've got this total addressable market? And it seems that you're being very deliberate with where you go, how do you think about segmenting that market? And ensuring that the sales team is set up for success?


Robbie Lunt  11:51

Yeah, great question, JT. So we combine a number of different factors in an integrated way. We kind of start with a traditional look at the market through demographic variables and other data that helps us get a base level understanding of what our target customers are doing, what types of patients they might be seeing, and see if they could be a good fit for our products. But ultimately, that's an imperfect way to approach it. And so there has to be some face to face interaction for us to really qualify those targets and confirm that, yes, this is a good account. So when we have some base level segmentation, from a marketing standpoint, it's really that continued learning from those sales interactions that we're looking to make sure that we continue to pursue and educate our customers in the right way.


JT Rimbey  12:44

Okay, Robbie. So how do you bring all of that data in a way that's actionable for the sales team to leverage?


Robbie Lunt  12:52

So that's really one of the main reasons that we partnered with Map My Customers is that we have this treasure trove of data in Salesforce.com. But we hadn't found a way that we could really translate that into something that the sales team could use while they're on the go. And I'll note that some of our sales team have fairly big geographies and are visiting different cities in sequence. So putting that data in a way that they can easily pull it up and get the insights they need to be efficient, was really important. So Map My Customers, the way we've set that up, is that there's certain pieces of information that come out of Salesforce, and determine a pin color of how they show up in Map My Customers. And that brings together a lot of the information that we just discussed, and a way that they can be, again, very deliberate about their approach. So some pin colors represent a target customer that falls into a segment. So if the sales consultant is out prospecting, one day, they'll know which customers they can approach with what different parts of our portfolio and plan accordingly. Alternatively, a different set of pin colors represents current customers. So they know if they're going out to check in on existing customers and figure out how implementation is going. Or if they're seeing the true value of our products, that again, they can plan ahead and know which customers in a certain geography fall into that category. That's fantastic.


JT Rimbey  14:18

We hear all the time. People invest so much money in training and onboarding and value propositions and understanding markets and industry and product lines. And then they hand them an excel document looking list of here's your target accounts, and they're outside field reps or outside sales consultants. And it's just so difficult to go and actually attack the territory to know who to see and when to see them when you're actually out on the road. We always like hearing those success stories. So when they're dealing with pulmonologists and specifically oncologists or are your sales consultants doing cold knocks, are they all scheduled appointments?


Robbie Lunt  14:58

Yeah, it's a combination of both So we try and schedule meetings as much as possible, but especially in the current healthcare environment, it can be hard to get those meetings. So we do have a healthy amount of cold calling. And so again, Map My Customers with the pin color setup that we have, can help them manage their time appropriately. So depending on the territory there, it may be a more mature territory with established business, or it may be a more immature territory where we need to develop that business. And so the sales team can use those pin colors to say, I'm going to go out and prospect I have an anchor meeting set up in this part of the city. And by the way, there's several other targets in the same vicinity that I've never spoken to before. So I'm gonna go see if they're allowing sales consultants in and if I can set up a meeting. Alternatively, if it's a mature territory, it may be more of going and calling on our existing accounts and seeing what we can do to continue the success there.


JT Rimbey  15:56

Awesome. Transitioning slightly. The big, never ending debate. How do you define MQLs versus SQLs? Is there any distinction within Biodesix?


Robbie Lunt  16:12

For us there absolutely is. And I mentioned this a little bit when we were talking about segmentation before, but to develop our list of MQLs, we're using that aggregate data approach trying to look at the total addressable market, and then narrow down which segments are going to resonate best with our offering. But ultimately, it's not until we have that sales interaction that we really know if they're a qualified lead or not. And the way we're using Map My Customers to that is all of our MQLs show up in the system as a black pin. And then as our sales team works through those targets, they're making a decision of whether that's somebody that they're going to continue interacting with, and try to move through the sales cycle. And they can actually set a field and Map My Customers to either qualified or not qualified, which changes the pin color. And so by doing that, they're identifying what are the SQLs? Which are those customers, we're having to invest my time, and which are the ones that are maybe a second priority?


JT Rimbey  17:13

That's a really easy way for a sales consultant to have a quick glance at their territory patch of what's my account penetration look like? Where should I be spending my time on new business? So that's great. Thanks for the example. Two more questions for two more topics, any coaching around synergies between marketing teams and sales teams? What works best in your experience? And how do you make the engine run in Biodesix so well?


Robbie Lunt  17:40

Yeah, I honestly think the formula is pretty simple. It's communication and collaboration, and at Biodesix, I think we've really figured out how to make that work between the sales and marketing team, where we have open dialogue about what's working and what's not working. And there's an openness to feedback, bi-directionally. And by doing that, we've built this trusting commercial organization, where we all have the same goal of getting better and educating customers and impacting patients' lives. And that's really working well for us. I think it's that passion. It's that purpose, because my personal belief is that if we impact patients' lives, the business will do well. So it is something that we really keep at the center of everything we do. Because I can only imagine how scary it would be to find out you have a lung nodule, and a doctor tell you that you might have cancer, but we're going to wait six months to find out or on, you know, even scarier to find out, you have lung cancer, but that we need to wait for these test results before we can start you on the right treatment. So if we keep that at the center of everything we do, then the business will follow. And that's something we look for not just in sales, but across our entire organization. You know, another attribute of sales leaders that we look for are people that are willing to learn on the go. We are developing markets for these products, and we need that continuous feedback cycle. And that's something that fuels that sales and marketing collaboration too.


JT Rimbey  19:13

Talk about having motivation to act with urgency and purpose. Wake up every morning knowing that the better education for pulmonologists and oncologists for these testing grounds can literally save lives. That's awesome. A big thank you, Robbie for joining us today. It's been a pleasure chatting with you.


Robbie Lunt  19:33

Always a pleasure speaking with you to JT.


JT Rimbey  19:38

Thank you again for listening today. Thank you to our sponsor, Map My Customers. Remember traditional CRMs were never designed with outside sales reps in mind. SAP, Oracle, Microsoft Dynamics, Salesforce HubSpot. Pega. The list goes on. They're too cumbersome. They're too complex and too time consuming, along with a glaring lack over mobile friendly options. Half of our customers use Map My Customers as the CRM of record. And the other half use Map My Customers as the tip of the spear for their existing CRM, or even their existing ERP. Designed specifically for outside sales reps. We're a mobile first platform, helping to strategically segment accounts, routing and mapping, activity logging, and much more. Remember that ease of use drives adoption, adoption delivers data, data delivers insights. Visit MapMyCustomers.me for more info. Be sure to subscribe to the Field Sales Leadership Guide podcast. Share with your friends, colleagues, and your family members. If you do have additional questions or comments for Robbie or myself, please send us a message we'd love to hear from you. We'd love to answer any questions you have. And certainly learn about what you think of the episode. Tune into the next episode as we bring on Brian Schauer from Novastep. Thanks again for listening today.


Podcasts we love

Check out these other fine podcasts recommended by us, not an algorithm.