Ep. 2 - How GE Is Adapting Its B2B Marketing to the New Normal - with Simon Philip Rost

COVID hit GE Healthcare's marketing teams like a punch in the face: no warning, and overnight, the trade fairs that drove a third to 40% of the company's marketing budget were simply gone.

In this episode of LEADERS IN B2B MARKETING, host Sammy Gebele sits down with Simon Philip Rost, Marketing Executive, Digital Health & AI.

You'll learn:

1. How the COVID-19 pandemic affected GE's marketing strategy, and four key takeaways driving their future success
2. GE's formula for developing digital opinion leaders and creating successful social media content
3. What GE's sales strategy and cooking have in common, and how they built a standout sales training organization

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Get in touch with Simon on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/simonrost/

Simon's book recommendations:
If Disney Ran Your Hospital by Fred Lee | https://www.amazon.com/dp/0974386014
Virtual Selling by Jeb Blount | https://www.amazon.com/dp/1119742714

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Sammy Gebele and SAWOO offer a B2B community-building service that establishes you as a thought leader in your industry and helps you build genuine, human-to-human relationships with your dream clients.

Get in touch with Sammy on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sammygebele/
More episodes and insights: leadersinmarketing.io 

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Conversation originally aired on July 25, 2021, when Simon was Marketing Executive at GE Healthcare. He has since been promoted to Chief Marketing and Strategy Officer at the company.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Today I have Simon Philip Wost, marketing executive for GE Healthcare's digital health and AI portfolio as our guest. Simon, welcome to our show. Hi guys. Thanks for having me. Sure. So tell me about GE's digital health and AI division. What are you doing?

SPEAKER_01 0:24

I mean, look, uh, GE is a big medtech, but I'm also a digital player in the healthcare space. Um, and I'm in charge of what is called GE Healthcare Digital. Um, think about that, it's software with any kind of healthcare provider. If I would explain this to my grandmother, I always say we help our customers to unlock the intelligence, the data that they have in silos, and then um basically use this intelligence to put data to work for healthcare providers to at the end provide better care. That is what we do in a nutshell.

SPEAKER_00 0:55

Okay, can you give one hands-on example?

SPEAKER_01 0:59

I mean, for example, we have our so-called Venene Neutral archive, which is a large archive where you can store any kind of data at the end, right? What we do is we bring the data out of normally data is stored in silos, like in the pack system in the radiology department, in the cardiology department in the system. We unlock this data by bringing it together, and then we have tools to basically share the data um within the healthcare provider. So put it at the end where it's needed at the point of care.

SPEAKER_00 1:27

Okay, very good. And what is your job?

SPEAKER_01 1:30

Look, I'm in charge of marketing for um our cluster that we call Europe, Middle East, and Africa. And um I see marketing has at the end four roles, and my team and myself, we we play four roles within the company. One is we are a strategic partner, so we help to understand the customer, to understand the market, to do the strategic planning, but also we are leading like um the key opinion leaders and these kind of initiatives. Secondly, um, I always think of marketing as a differentiator. So here new product introductions play an important role in our case. Um, also the content marketing, so to create content that can be used by our commercial forces to differentiate our products and fall into this bucket. And the third important one is everything about um value proposition creation there. And the third big bucket I call marketing as Rose Engine. That's the classical lead generation aspect, um, coming from trade fairs, coming from digital campaigns, coming from webinars. So everything that helps to at the end generate funnel falls into that. And the last part is marketing as an enabler. Here we help at the end our customers, our um our internal customers, the commercial bosses to sell better and sell more. Why this is from the one that content marketing is the tool there, but also um sales enablement trainings and so forth. And that's at the end what um my team and I do um day to day.

SPEAKER_00 2:52

Um, and you already said you're you're basically in charge of IMIA. Yeah, you're open least in Africa is the region where we play. So I know that you just you have different product lines, but can you summarize um or or simplify a little bit your ideal customer profile?

SPEAKER_01 3:09

I mean, look, um at the end, these are project um purchasing decisions, right? We always have a so-called um stakeholder set we take her to a buying center. But if you um see where at the end we focus on which buying persona, that's the economical buyer at the end. It's um depends also um in which kind of institution you are. But it's normally the CEO, the CIO, and sometimes also a newer concept, which is the chief medical information officer, C M IO. These are the um the normal personas we um meet day to day.

SPEAKER_00 3:45

Okay, and who's the one um to basically break into a company? Is it like do we fly in through the CEO or is it somewhere else usually?

SPEAKER_01 3:55

It depends literally by um how the internal, let's say, um uh provider is set up. Normally, I would say CEO, CIO are the ones where we um where we enter and where we um start the conversation, as we normally look for an outcome and not sell a pure um IT device, right? We go in there and say, like, look, we want to help you to increase throughput by X or something like that. So it's normally the the CEO and also the CIO, these are the two ones that we normally enter, depending on the problem state, and also depending on the product line you are talking about.

SPEAKER_00 4:26

Of course, of course. Uh what what um ARR sales are usually talking about, like annual recruiting revenue, because I assume you have a subscription for most of your services.

SPEAKER_01 4:39

It depends. Starts um basically with if you talk about a normal, let's say, business intelligence solution, it's a smaller ticket sale. If you go into an empowered data management approach, it's um it's in the it's it's a larger amount, right? This depends really customer by customer. What we do is we cheer our customers, right? And um depends literally on what kind of project you have. These are normally larger um size IT projects which are in the millions.

SPEAKER_00 5:05

Okay, so media would be in the millions then. Okay, now it's it's just important so that everybody knows um in what context the next answers um have to be placed, you know. Okay, yeah, okay, very good. Um, so in the past, a majority um of the business was was very likely um produced by industry traders, and that was not possible in the last couple of uh months or even more than a year now, uh since COVID happened. Um so so what did you do to compensate?

SPEAKER_01 5:41

Tony, you you clearly um basically touch uh um a pain point here, right? I always um would like to say this kind of um to show this kind of photo where somebody punches in your face. That's how how it felt like when COVID came. Um I believe it's I'm not the only one who um who basically didn't see that coming in this kind of scope, right? And then you're right. We had roughly in the past um at least one third, if not um 40% of the um marketing spent going into the typical large trade fairs. Like the there are several trade fairs that we um always um basically are part of, like the HIMS is one, the RNA are other ones, depending on the specialty you go. But these were the major investments where we directly talk to um installed-based customers, but also to new customers. And um, as you also rightly said, this suddenly was not possible anymore. She is like a roller coaster where you get just stuck and then um it didn't go on. What we did is we doubled down on any kind of other activity that we could, right? It was also a fine line in marketing because you didn't want to be perceived as tone deaths out there, right? You um you could not just go like buy from me when you see that um basically people are um uh saving lives at this point in time. But um, if you ask me what we did um exactly, we doubled down on things like webinars, social media campaigns, um, digital marketing as such. These were the first tools where we um really deep dived and um and saw um how this was going. And on the other hand, we also engaged in this virtual trade fair out there, um, which were also a learning journey, I have to say, because um it uh they were used for different kinds of purposes. For demand generation, they were not that's fun. Um, but yeah, that's what we did on short notice, basically, doubling down on webinars, social media campaigns, um, videos, these kind of things.

SPEAKER_00 7:32

Okay, uh, what uh on what channels are you customers mainly when you talk about social media?

SPEAKER_01 7:40

Oh look, main it's all the typical suspected ones, you know. Um, but the ones we used um most is Twitter on the one hand and is also LinkedIn as main channel as um the CEOs um basically play there. We also have an um an Instagram account, we also have a Facebook account, but um, we didn't use them that that heavily for these kind of features. LinkedIn was for sure one of the main um platforms that we used and that we are still using at this point. Okay. Um so actually, we also engaged into into research. This may be an interesting fact for you as well, to see where um we all fall short, right, as industry. Um because the first trade fairs we had um virtually in so-called virtual experiences were moderately successful, right? So I mean we have to understand why that is, and um mainly two things came clearly out. One is that the content that is provided there is normally not that differentiated. This was one important fact. The other one, um, the biggest, let's say, miss was um that was stated was that you don't have this kind of networking opportunities you would have in a normal um, let's say, environment. And the good thing is, from a marketing standpoint, you can address both of them, right? In a virtual world, you can actually make more people accessible because you don't have the travel or the time schedule in them. And content um uh is the other one, which is clearly I stepped this in the beginning, under the marketing umbrella where we had to change quite a lot, but um, where we also did some things, and I can elaborate on this later, what we did there to basically find you that. But these were the two main things that they told us. Look, you don't differentiate in content, it's not that interesting. Um, what all of your providers um tell out there? The second one was this networking opportunities, um, which was basically um missed at this point in time. That's where we also put our focus um directly after we had this information.

SPEAKER_00 9:35

So, how about you take us on the journey from where um all the normal stuff that you were able to do and that worked wasn't possible anymore? You started the first online events, you saw oh, okay, um, doesn't work that good. So um just just walk us uh step by step through uh what what data you saw, uh why you said this doesn't work, and what you did next or the next few steps afterwards.

SPEAKER_01 10:02

I mean, the first thing which is interesting here is that you keep your your normal KPIs um uh as such, but you add new ones, right? That's what we did at least, and you increase also your kind of operating mechanism in reviewing those, right? So we went literally into uh in the past there was this typical quarterly review. We were at some point actually in bi-weekly, even weekly reviews where we went through the certain KPIs to see um how the normal KPIs behave, right? The first one for us is always leads generated that we looked into on a strategic level. We looked into the second one, is then our conversion rate, how do they convert, right? And the third one is um how much marketing generated funnel do we actually add to the general funnel of the of the sales team. So I think these were the ones that we also reviewed before.

SPEAKER_00 10:49

Um can we stop for a second? A marketing-generated funnel does this mean like a weighted um amount of money that is within the funnel, so people who became um how do you say opportunities usually, and you say, for example, three million could be revenue, 10% um the probability. So we have 300,000 in the funnel. Do you understand this correctly, or how do you do this?

SPEAKER_01 11:13

I mean, how we do that normally is whenever marketing generates the lead that comes not from the sales force, right? At the end, the opportunity that um this lead creates in value is created to the to the marketing funnel. And then there's also on top of that a funnel that um our sales force generates um themselves, right? Because they go out to the um usual suspect, they cater to existing customers. And at the end, um the marketing generated funnel is every funnel that comes from a purely marketing um activity. So that's how we define that. But these are the ones that we first, the first things that we changed is we looked at this now bi-weekly, even weekly, not just on a monthly or quarterly basis. And then we um defined for each of the activities more, let's say, leading indicators that we can actually um look into. How many people signed up, how many registered, how many took part, and how long did they um at the end uh engaged with the content. This is all new stuff that um gives you a wealth of information to then pivot and fine-tune and things afterwards. I take always the typical webinar as an example. You normally start with a registration list of that makes it up roughly a thousand people. Then um, on the day where the webinar happens, you actually only see therapy join, right? And out of these three 50, you see at some point in time also people dropping. You can measure that today, because um either the content is not appropriate for them, it's not the right topic, or so forth. And um, and there you have a lot of um information you can use um to basically find your activities. So for each of our typical marketing tactics, we generated more information and discussed this in the uh weekly marketing cuddles. And we saw for us that at the end, um let's think let's say four things work quite quite well throughout that. One is um we had to produce more what we call snackable content. Our content was normally too long, uh white paper, long um interactions, which um in today's work would maybe um work if you are somewhere waiting for something, but not in this digital fast-paced world. So we um we basically shortened our content into um into uh basically shorter videos, shorter white papers, infographics, all of these um kind of things, um uh what I would call stack content, things you can easily consume without um putting too much of an effort in there.

SPEAKER_00 13:36

How short did you get um with the content in terms of videos, for example?

SPEAKER_01 13:40

I mean it depends literally. The best engaged it depends on platform. If you are somewhere, for example, and in LinkedIn, um I would say not even a minute to engage people. If you have um these uh let's say more educational stuff, we had a series which was a 60 seconds radiologist, where a radiologist was um talking about um a certain kind of technique or um tool he or she uses within 60 seconds. So um uh these elevator pitches work quite well for us. Um, I would say, and there are other more educational formats which could go to five to seven minutes, right? But um but um that's one of the learnings we had. We also learned that there um is, for example, a good thing is a study that you can reuse, right? You can use a graph to teeth as neckable content and then have um the study with way more information behind that. These kind of things we tested, and then new formats like podcasts, for example, depends on your on your audience as well. Um, like this format here works for us very, very well as well, um, always depending on the decision maker or the subject matter expert you invite, right? But these were um were some of the things we learned that this selectable content um um has to be created and um where or the current um content has to be adapted um to watch this format. This was one thing. Um second thing that um was likely the most successful campaign we had in GE Healthcare as a whole, was um during the times of COVID, we turned our entire social media platforms into a news channel, right? Um so we we had um an individual called Mickey Kaye, who is a former um journalist who also um is uh is a um US veteran, and um he was traveling around the world in times of COVID, um basically um telling all the good things happening and not just um how people are addressing um basically um COVID, not just G in general, right? He was traveling to all of these different places, and we used um our social media channels to push this out on a frequent level. It was more like a we wouldn't call it Netflix approach, but it was like a little news channel and not like the typical um videos we did in the past. So this um turned out to be quite successful as well.

SPEAKER_00 15:54

A third thing why why did you like what KPI did you use to say this is successful? Because this is kind of unusual, and usually, I mean, you can put it into the bucket of brand awareness, but it doesn't have anything to do with any of your product. So sales could sometimes say, Well, okay, what are you doing, guys? I mean, uh so what kind of KPI did you align on that you said this was uh very successful?

SPEAKER_01 16:16

I mean, the first thing is you go for previews, right? How many people watch that? Then we did studies also in terms of sentiment out there and internal people, which increased that. Um, the first season reached like a positive sentiment, I think, of 98% or something. Um, we surveyed, as I said, our own um professionals um to see if they liked that. Um we had higher employer engagement as well as customer engagement with this content. And so these typical kind of KPIs that you would do on a media campaign applied here as well, right? Um uh the typical one is at the end the number of followers, right, um, that get used um or get added to your channels. And um, I think with the with the first um the first video series, because in these short videos, it was something around the the um 30,000 followers that were added already with the first one. We are now in the third episode. So these kind of um KPIs we we our social media team look quite quite deep into.

SPEAKER_00 17:17

Okay, so with channel, you you mean basically the company, for example, LinkedIn channel and the amount of followers that this channel has. Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 17:25

I mean LinkedIn YouTube rate was displayed, um uh and then um yeah, anything else, Facebook. I think we also had some shorter bits of that. But that's what we looked into.

SPEAKER_00 17:38

Okay. Do you also look at, because you already said engagement of employees, for example, on um Facebook or LinkedIn? Um, did you look a little bit deeper into that? Because in the hand, each of your, for example, salespeople has a network of potential customers, and if they share something, if they do something, that increases your reach, like I would say, uh much higher than a few thousand. Uh I want to oversimplify this, but adding 30,000 sounds nice, but uh leveraging your 100 uh salespeople, each one has 10,000 or let's even say a thousand people who are potential clients, and that is a number that is like crazy high then.

SPEAKER_01 18:17

When we worked in the past, this was actually points three and point four. I still want to elaborate. One is we created this kind of um digital opinion leader network, and we um we also uh um not just trained but also beefed up our corporate influencers, our CMO, and so on. Um, in that, and we used in the past the LinkedIn tool that was provided to basically um also um Paul Elevate, which is not a while anymore, to um to spread the word. This was um for sure within there as well, and um it worked out uh for us very much, as you just mentioned. On top of that, we trained our sales force in social selling and virtual selling, not just on LinkedIn, also um uh for these kind of um uh yeah virtual congresses out there, but we did this as well. These were two additional, I would say, success layers um that we were at the end used, right? And um, and um at the end, what we did is we um, as I said, we created this digital opinion leaders, which could be external and internal, and our own corporate influences. Um, and we we built them at the end uh a platform that it works like you said. If you bring them together frequently, they they start to also um uh develop their own kind of um channel strategy, what they post when, how they post, and so forth. And um, yeah, this was for sure one of the um success factors here as well. Um, and and there we also what is interesting is it is not the typical sub um suspect you would use, right? At the end, people follow people, but um we had also um um some let's say early adopters, uh younger generation um uh employees who were quite active, and we didn't always go went for the highest one in the org chart. We also um leveraged people who are um natively doing that as well, right? And that's something for sure, which I would recommend. Um look into uh who these uh corporate inferences could be. You sometimes don't expect um it to be the typical one you would would use, and then you have to train them, you have to provide them content, you have to um to also uh um have a content strategy behind that and so forth of us.

SPEAKER_00 20:17

How do you um provide content to to those people? And how is it basically do they like first question? How do you provide content? Do you use any tech technology, or is it simply like a Dropbox or whatever? And second, how do they choose the content that they post or change it, or is it pushed out?

SPEAKER_01 20:37

I mean, look, we have our own channels where we also push out created content, but that's normally you use existing um interviews, existing, I don't know, um panels um conferences. Um we train them themselves to provide their content. What you said it starts with a normal um, let's say training, how to set up your profile, right? And then who you should start to follow, um, what basically are the do's and don'ts, and um also what's against policy, what you should talk about, what not, where are the pitchfalls. Um, and then for our um, let's say for our so-called um digital opinion leaders, we we also provide content, right? We we have panels with them together where um where we film um, for example, podcasts, a typical one where we have um a good series with our CEO of our command center um business, who basically um is our star there. He pushes out frequent podcasts with decision makers, but um, it depends a little bit um where you're looking to, but uh, we we didn't use a um specific technology for that, and if you ask for this, um we basically did this um the the marketing departments developed that for your brands.

SPEAKER_00 21:45

Very good. And I mean, I assume I I know because I I was a like mentioned consultant at some point um and also had a um pharmaceutical company as a client, which is uh in the same space at least, where you um are in touch with medical uh people. And they're usually quite old school, um, and which is not bad. Um, it's absolutely fine, but this is like a very fast shift on how you operate. So, how did you get your people to adopt this new style of engaging with social, for example, which is probably something where most people usually always say, like, I know the phrase of yeah, I I've been in this business for 50 years. Um, I I know I have to get there, I have to build a personal relationship, they have to like me, I we have to talk about whatever, uh, go on the golf course sometimes. And and now you come in and say, No, no, no, you have to create content, you have to post, you have to engage. How did you do that?

SPEAKER_01 22:43

I mean, one thing is always first, there was not so much of an option in the last um month. So I but um I um you are right, there was this typical question, look, my customers are not digital, which um which at the end you can prove wrong if you get people on a meeting. If there's no other option at the end, um people will join. What we did is we actually helped in all of these kind of um, let's say, ramp up phase training. I just mentioned, education around how you have to position yourself, what um basically um how digital tools work and so forth, um, is one thing, right? But then um our team also helped to get these meetings into the agenda, provided the content for these meetings, provided um the backgrounds and all of these um things that you have that um it is kind of standardized. This was one factor. Um, then you have to celebrate your successes. So there were some meetings where actually um uh yeah, customers and we were in a virtual phase, and we are um um let's say the virtual meeting, and you saw people laughing, smiling, and it worked, right? We we celebrated this. The typical change management um applies as well here. Get your early adapters in and um and and tell them um to spread the word, right? Get also your leadership to um to um lift the talk here, right? So everybody had to use carows, everybody had to use the technology um around this. So we have not the meetings where um I mean you should use every virtual, let's say, tool you can. It's you can see people, you can hear people, right? You cannot touch people in a virtual environment yet, but um that's what we also made happen. That's one of the things. And um, look, that's about it. I think it's not um again, COVID helped with that because you you couldn't um you couldn't uh do it in another manner. What I believe uh will change is that there will not be a black or white. I think it will always be a kind of gray approach in the future. You will have virtual formals, um and you will have also um I'm still the the let's say the face-to-face engagement in the future. But how to balance this, this will be very important because both have pros and cons, I think.

SPEAKER_00 24:57

Yeah, absolutely. And I I mean I imagine um you also saved a lot in in travel costs and fares and all this. I mean, uh you don't have to blast it out, but still you have some room for some wiggle room, so to say, to test some things, to see if some things work and some things don't work, and uh then to decide also what you want to keep on doing and what you want to stop doing. Um how do you see basically uh this shift to going back to these fairs? Like let's assume old school was mainly fairs, uh, then COVID came, it all had to shift online, and now we go into the future again. If you would guess now, and of course nobody knows how it will be, but if you would guess, um, how much money would you put uh into each of these buckets?

SPEAKER_01 25:44

I mean, it's an interesting one because we are already starting to have this kind of hybrid formats wherever we we can have them, right? There was just recently in June um a big congress in the uh the Middle East called Arab Health happened in a so-called hybrid format. So we just decided to bring certain kind of um key customers under all of the um uh let's say regulations and security you can do um together and on the same on the GE side. So vaccinated, tested, these kind of things. Um and on the other hand, we had a fully virtual um uh uh let's say uh counterpart to that as well, where we streamed things live into the world. Um look, I believe that um people will go to conferences again because this networking part is difficult to achieve, right? This um even in a um in a virtual setting, you can start to do better networking by putting people together and having certain kinds of um workouts online um with technology, but it's still not the same as being in one room, right? So um I believe uh this will come back um like slowly again. Um but I always believe that there will be a hybrid component to these events. And I tell you why, because you can what I what we saw is that any virtual event was way more international than it would have been as in person, because people can now join. Time zones is maybe the only um the only um restriction here, but we saw, for example, in European online conferences people from Asia, people from UCAN, from US Canada joining. Um, so people uh will do this again, so you can connect even more people um if you use a virtual space. Where I would put my money, that's an interesting one. You were right. In the past, these let's say physical events were a big cost ticket to the marketing budget, and um not always fully, let's say, justified because um it was this kind of feeling the bigger, the better, the more I show, um, the more space I occupy, um, the better I'm perceived, um, which I believe is not the case anymore. I believe that uh still content, what you provide in terms of um is a is a key thing here. Being in the scientific program will be important, having symposia which are targeted with a certain amount of people, um, will be the future, and having then um this in person, right? Um uh where it becomes a little bit again also um uh a priority to get there, right? And then you will have um uh a virtual format or um this hybrid format that then is um basically streamed out for for a larger population. So I believe it comes back where I would put my money. That's a good question right now. Um if I um it will be hybrid, I know that. Um if I would put more on virtual, less on high uh less on in-person, this is I don't time will tell. It's quite like that.

SPEAKER_00 28:43

Okay, okay, fair enough. Um, we probably would have to have another conversation in one year, and then you uh you can give us some more data. Um let's do that.

SPEAKER_01 28:54

So I mean yeah, yeah, that's it. It's interesting. I mean, I myself, I'm um I sometimes you for sure feel the same. It's you are desperate to again engage in these kinds of activities, but this COVID um pandemic is not over, right? It's um it's still um that's a kind of fine line we will have to to um to basically address in the near future.

SPEAKER_00 29:16

But um yeah, and I mean in the end it opened up new chances, and if you are faster than the competition and you do things online better than the competition, it's all about um getting the eyeballs of your customer on on what you're doing and getting them engaged with you and getting into conversations. So um I mean it's it's a big chance too. Uh and if you're faster and better, you you will win market share in the end. I mean, I I assume you will.

SPEAKER_01 29:42

Well, as I said, for me, one my my big learnings here, the first thing was around the content and the format, how you provide it, right? This had um this was an important one that um that we addressed. Um uh yeah, this was one of the bigger ones. And this um so the second thing is at the end, coming back to the to the kind of um on front line on the front lines campaign, also the the storytelling you use, right? How you package your content is the second big the second big question um you have to uh to solve. And as you said, in a let's say more um in a very let's say um industry which is uh quite conservative, um you have to find a way. And then even in a crisis where you don't want to be perceived as stone death marketing to your to your target group. Um uh yeah, that's what I believe are the right things to do, to find the right content and package it so in in terms of storytelling, in terms of new formats like this, turning your social media channels into a news channel. Um uh this could work, right? Um and as you said, it's it's a learning curve as well. Right? You um you have maybe the right to experience, you should put that to experience and to to experiment, I want to say, more than ever, right? Because um, because yeah, the typical ways do not work in the cloud environment.

SPEAKER_00 31:03

Yeah, yeah, and I mean it's uh testament that uh, for example, social marketing and selling is something that even works in such an old school environment where most people would have thought, no, no, no, um, these uh medical professionals they are not on LinkedIn. Um but in the end, uh some some sub segments are, maybe some not, but but some are, and you have to be where your customers. And if he or she is on this channel, and maybe some others, you have to um attack those channels um in an efficient way. And and as you said, um also tailor the content in terms of length and maybe in terms of um the content itself so that it fits to the channel.

SPEAKER_01 31:45

Yeah, plus I would say that um don't underestimate also the change in the decision-making process that is happening right now, right? Um, so in the past, it was very much clinical driven. Everything you do right now, um hospitals um CEOs don't have to be doctors anymore. They are they are also um they are um coming from the let's say um business administration part of the house, and these individuals, yes, they are in LinkedIn, quite active, right? And also um the second um phase is that uh it's basically at the end uh a view of the entire working population in healthcare as well, which are all not um just um let's say all the decision makers. So there's also a shift happening, and um this applies for healthcare as well, maybe a little bit slower than it would be in other industries.

SPEAKER_00 32:34

Yeah. So um that shift uh totally new question now. Um, what does sales and cooking have in common for you?

SPEAKER_01 32:43

I mean, yeah, you are referring to a certain kind of um way of selling that we rolled out, um, what we call at the end sales place in our note. And um, this is basically um, I always sell this to to our internal stakeholders as easy as cooking. We give our sales force basically a recipe, we give them all the ingredients, um, all the cooking they have to do themselves. We show them how this would work, but they have to do that. And um, and um, how this looks like at the end, we provide your sales force basically with a clear description of the target, right? The CEO of the needs of this individual, what he or she is looking for. Then you also provide them with the questions they can ask to first basically um uh trigger the discussion about a certain solution you want to solve.

SPEAKER_00 33:31

Can you give an example maybe um of such a question or questions just so that you I mean, at the end, let's take um in our case, our artificial intelligence orchestration engine.

SPEAKER_01 33:44

This helps you to implement various algorithms um seamlessly into the workflow of a radiologist. There you have got basically various trigger questions that helps you to determine if um radiologists would need something like um a solution like that, right? It would be how many algorithms are you using today? Um is it if it's in the range of three, you can handle them. If it's in the range of 15, it gets more difficult, right? So this would be a question where you say, like, please go out there and ask um these kind of triggering questions. This was one um that we did, right? We said, look, how many algorithms are you using in your radiology um department today? Where in which specialty are you using them in like let's say difficult exams or in in let's say more standardized exams? These kind of questions we provided the list of um up to 10 that um salespeople could ask to basically have the first interaction point. Then when the answer was positive, we also showed them please use this collateral. It could be a study, could be um a video, it could be um uh to then engage further with the individual. And uh the next step would be sending this kind of outcome proof where we it would basically show that it's working, right? So we gave them step by step um uh a recipe of how to approach a cell for a certain kind of product line. And we add this to um um our main portfolio items. On the other hand, we expect that basically from our um sales reps that they are also following this kind of guidelines and put actively the steps into the CRM to understand um where we stay and what works and what doesn't work, to find jobs, right? And um, and um this is how we run that kind of um demand geneticity.

SPEAKER_00 35:29

Okay, um let me recap and you tell me if I understood it right. First part is discovery questions to find out if there is a problem or need. Second one, you give some value for free, some collateral, um, something that, and that's something where I didn't quite get what is this collateral exactly. Like, is it like something proprietary from from from GE where you say, hey, uh, see, here's a study that we created, um, or what is it? Can you give us an advance on examples?

SPEAKER_01 35:59

Could be could be anything, could be a white paper that we developed, it could be um a video where um one of our key opinion leaders talks about uh this kind of um uh product or solution, could be a training course that we have. So this is a wide range of things, but um but it's already about your products, it's already about our product.

SPEAKER_00 36:18

Okay, okay, so it's basically uh teaching uh teaching your potential customers about the value of your product already, and showing the outcome at the end, and showing the outcome, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 36:31

The only thing that um that um I didn't mention is we provide our sales force with um targets, right? With a targeted database that they go out somewhere where we tell them do that kind of activity, right? So this target exercise is also part of um of this, but it's not something where I didn't elaborate deeper on, right?

SPEAKER_00 36:48

So it yeah, um I just went to the recipe, but the ingredients are on the one hand the I like it's it's like uh first you have to, as a cook, you have to ask, are you vegetarian or do you eat meat or fish? It's basically segmenting your target group. Once you have the segment, you know this is a vegetarian, for example, someone who needs this kind of product, you go out there and ask these certain questions to determine what kind of need they have, then you send a collateral, as you said, which is providing value, but especially around your product.

SPEAKER_01 37:16

And the last step, next step then would be to uh basically engage in a demo and the regular follow-up, right? We literally followed up with the sales force in a frequent operating mechanism each week. Did you do that? Where do you stand? What did you learn to also say, like, look, for this kind of um uh um let's say sell white paper works for this, but if it doesn't, there we need more um uh educational video, whatever that is, right? But we also went um through this kind of which content works, which doesn't, in a frequent, let's say, um, iterative process with our sales force.

SPEAKER_00 37:49

Yeah, it's very data-driven. Uh, I like that a lot because uh what we also always tell our customers is we don't know what works, but we can help you test towards success. And in the end, you have a framework like you have, but you don't exactly know what kind of ingredients uh basically work at each step. And if you test it fast and efficiently, uh you you either learn that you're totally wrong with uh the target customer and the product, or um, if if that's not the case, which in your case for sure is not the case, um, then you you get better and better over time. Um one key thing that I so I learned when I was working in in this uh biotech or helping this biotech company, it was like basically a sales organization for for the Dart region, is that um it's kind of hard to uh to get salespeople um open up and and really put data into the CRM that is true. I mean, the one thing is in theory, you're absolutely right. Yeah, it's a perfect word. People put in exactly what they did. Uh you can see it, and then you can measure and tell them, okay, you have to change. In reality, salespeople are kind of yeah, always a little bit, hmm. They don't really trust, you know, because they have some bad experiences, uh, one must be fair, and then some crazy stuff happened because they put in the data and then they stopped. Um, so how did you address that?

SPEAKER_01 39:08

Look, there is for sure. Um, you're referring to this control, let's say, function of a CIM system, right? Which um, to be honest, it is also part of a CIM to do that, right? To um to look um how are things um evolving um and to track uh let's say sales performance. What um what helps to um to engage is that you um we put everything into one place, right? This kind of um guide I just went through, and our content um management system is part of our CIM. So you see it on the first view. You have everything in one place. This for sure helps. Um a second thing that helps is that you run your that helped us is that we run our operating mechanisms out of these tools. We don't um use PowerPoint or an additional, let's say, Exophile to go through things. We use um uh basically the CIM or um a call uh visualization engine on the CIM to measure these kind of things. This also helps for sure. Um, and anything that at the end is perceived value for the sales web in the um everything where you can make their life easier uh basically helps as well. So this includes again training, training, training is a big one here. Um also being hands-on yourself. So um I know perfectly as a marketer um how lead management works in Salesforce, how opportunity management works in Salesforce and so forth. But um look, the chances are um are similar, right? It's not um this far a commercial hygiene factor that you implement at the end, um, also screw kind of uh rigor um in the sales process, right? So our our sales leaders, they basically um work hand in hand with marketing here. Um and we have a third um uh component, which is our commercial excellence function, um, that helps to ensure that these systems are used and are at count, um, let's say set of the art in terms of data. But it's yeah, it's um I think it's a challenge everywhere, not just um not just in this um DAC uh biotech um company that you mentioned, right? What I always try to do is if you focus on the value add for the sales reps, and there is some as well, they have information about their customers, they have um the kind of collateral in one click, um, people get more collaboratives, but it's always a give and take. You have to show them where also value is in for them. But um, there is also this rigorous process where you have to say, if it's not in the system, it doesn't exist for us as a as a as a management function, right? That's a little bit this kind of back and forth you you um you do there. But um look, I'm not saying that our um our uh all of our sales reps are perfect there, but um it is a challenge you can for sure address if you also show the value that is in there. Um yeah, that's how I would respond to that question.

SPEAKER_00 41:53

Okay, perfect. Um, and out of curiosity, like if I were a sales web, how often do I get training in a quarter? And how often is someone maybe going on a like? I mean, now it's not possible, but I know from from experience in the spite company you get accompanied by your account executive or by someone else from time to time and get some feedback. So, how does it look like for you?

SPEAKER_01 42:16

Well, look, for me, we have um a so-called sales enablement function, right? And they are um they train basically two things. One is on products, trainings are quite frequently. Um, in our setting right now, these are virtual sessions, or um, in the tool that we use where you can do like self-paced learning, right? You can go in there and consume whenever you want to.

SPEAKER_00 42:37

That that's that's one thing on the product side, and then we have a second you you say quite often, is it like once a week, once a month? What is it?

SPEAKER_01 42:45

So depending on the product side, um, we have for sure once a month a training, um, easily, um, if not if not twice a month. Depends whenever look, we have a calendar throughout the year, like um educational calendar, where we um have uh each month for sure a training, then in front of the um kind of bigger trade fair this spells up. So um there it could even be um even be um weekly. What we um where the let's say the magic lights, what is optional and what is a must-have training, right? There you um, because um training is one thing, but um you also have to take into account that um a sales rep has to go on cell, has to the commercial item, the CRM. So um we distinguish between optional and and and and also must-haves, right? And that you have to do, which are also then tracked. Um, but we created this kind of self-serve tool as well, where you as a as a um sales rep can go in if you want to deep dive. And that's actually also a beauty of the virtual world, that it's not just once in a time and then the training is done. You can basically record everything and and distribute it and even put it into chunks and then make it more digestible, right? Um, so that's what we try to do. Um, we had also when the when it was still able, um COVID, we had um always a commercial week where we brought our people together once a year um to network but also to to train them. Um this everybody's desperate to retake this, but um yeah and then we have uh um a kind of Friday evening um power seller format which is for your own consumption where we um always train certain kind of things um which are not not mandatory you can join and and and and and join if you have the time and want to learn about these things so that's how I do we have a training house for the year where um mainly product trainings um we have twice a year we have this um this also sales trainings where we either do storytelling where or we or we do um social selling um these kind of things um yeah that's about it and we have uh um an opmac with a team with the entire sales team where we what we call a commercial community call which we um from time to time also use for um either training purposes or these kind of things it's more bringing them together every second week um to share best practices um and to address uh let's say topics for the entire sales course mean yeah awesome thanks a lot Simon so we are already at the end of our session um I have five rapid fire questions for you okay sure are you ready ready okay let's do this um what do you do to keep body and mind fit and sharp look um a big bike fan everything that has two wheels and doesn't run on on gasoline I appreciate so as often as I can um I go out to the either to drive my road race bike out there or um or in even to the mountains with a mountain bike that's what I enjoy most where I can completely disconnect.

SPEAKER_00 45:44

Awesome um is there a business book that you like a lot many there are many I mean one that as a healthcare market here I can only recommend to people is if Isne ran your hospital um Fredli a big one and currently I'm I'm reading virtual selling um from Jeblu which is uh maybe also important for today's conversation but these are the two ones that come to mind I mean there's so many um but these are the ones I I would recommend um is there a business leader that you follow Simon Sinek on the leadership side as such and Erik Toppol um in my sector in digital healthcare um he's like the godfather of digital health so um these are the two ones that come to mind okay very good um who should be our next podcast guest and why I mean if you can get somebody like like Eric Topol or Simon Sinek I would be interested in that but um look there are for sure some candidates I see um yep the battle of NESCO would be one with uh future western healthcare I would love to hear um these three yep okay cool and now I can directly have with our audience anything that we can help you with I mean look guys if you're interested in in uh healthcare innovation um feel free to reach out the best format is normally LinkedIn um yeah everything if you value a discussion about digital health or like to hear about that feel free to connect with me yeah so um you can find we we put your your link into the show notes but you can find Simon also by just looking for Simon Rost R O S T Rost. So that's it. Thank you so much for being on our show Simon. Thanks for having me