Laboratory Sales & Marketing

Making Marketing Pay Big Dividends for Hospital Lab Outreach Success

Dark Daily previously presented its readers with a case study of the top-notch sales program at Central DuPage Hospital in Winfield, Illinois, based upon the presentation of Gene Heidt, Director Laboratory Services at the May 2007 Executive War College in Miami, Florida.  The outreach laboratory's revenues are growing rapidly - Its total revenue was $33 million in 2005, $39 million in 2006, on track to exceed $50 million in 2007, and targeted for $65 million for 2008.  This increase is the product not only of an excellent sales force, but also of a quality marketing program.

Central DuPage Hospital's reference laboratory considers Quest Diagnostics Incorporated (NYSE:DXG) and Laboratory Corporation of America  (NYSE:LH) to be its primary competitors in its service area.  "Our marketing efforts are unique because we have created a branding strategy to differentiate ourselves from LabCorp and Quest by illustrating that smaller is better and by giving them direct access to our pathologists," said Heidt.  Given the advantages of scale and other attributes, Central DuPage Hospital's laboratory identified the following key sales and marketing benefits that set it apart from the competition:

• All clinical departments are directed by a pathologist
• Pathologists actively support development of the reference lab business
• Pathologists are easy to reach by phone
• Biopsy/pap correlations are done in the same laboratory
• There are no telephone answering machines
• Service is available 7 days per week

Many hospital laboratory outreach programs can offer similar benefits, even if they are not currently doing so, with negligible changes to their current processes.  The ability of hospital reference laboratories to deliver customized and personalized service to doctors cannot be matched by large national laboratories.  Many doctor's offices recognize this and prefer to work with smaller laboratories, but often have trouble locating smaller laboratories that can handle their workload.

Central DuPage Hospital's sales strategy is to look for large group practices, long term care, jails/prisons, IPA's, and infertility/donor centers.  These types of health care facilities are likely to produce a large amount of work, making it easier and faster to recover the sales/marketing costs expended to win their business.

Central DuPage Hospital's reference laboratory uses a lunch strategy similar to that of the pharmaceutical industry.  The hospital's sales representatives make cold calls in order to arrange to bring in lunch for an entire physicians office. This is usually an effective way to get 15 to 30 minutes of face time with the decision maker.  They schedule the lunches whenever the physician's office can accommodate them, sometimes one month out, sometimes as many as six months out.

In order to determine which physicians' offices should be highest priority for sales calls, the hospital purchases physician databases by sub-specialty for its marketing efforts.  These lists are not very expensive and they represent an up-to-date and targeted list of leads-far more valuable than the phone book.  A final key to Central DuPage Hospital's marketing plan is to monitor sales and prospecting performance on a weekly basis.  This enables the hospital to see the correlation between scheduled lunches, cold calls, and sales. 

Hospital laboratory outreach programs can gain a number of useful insights from the successes of Central DuPage Hospital laboratory's sales and marketing program.  In particular, it is an example of how a professionally designed and implemented marketing program can generate substantial benefits. A marketing program with appropriate resources and expenditure is a necessity for an increase in sales.  To view Gene Heidt's complete presentation, visit:  http://www.executivewarcollege.com/PDFs/03-Heidt.pdf.