What Sales Navigator Won't Tell You

What Sales Navigator Won't Tell You

What Sales Navigator Won't Tell You

Sales Navigator is a social selling platform by LinkedIn that provides an array of features, which focus on helping you find the right prospects to build trusted relationships.

With LinkedIn Sales Navigator, you can reach the right kind of prospects by using the search and filter features. Sales Navigator also provides actionable information and insights that can pave the way for a deeper understanding of leads and prospects. This way, you can engage with your prospects at a far more personal level by offering personalized content, customizations, discounts, and offers.

Sales Navigator can be a useful prospecting tool. However, knowing someone's job title in a certain industry is only one part of the sales funnel success equation. The other is the role they play in the ultimate decision to buy your products or services.

On average, there are 6.8 decision makers for every sale who have a say in whether a product is purchased. In sickcare, it is even more. These people make up what is called the “buying center.”

The roles are as follows (though it’s important to note some job titles might occupy more than one role):

  • Initiator: Starts the buying process or shows initial interest
  • User: Uses your product regularly
  • Influencer: Convinces others the product is needed
  • Decision maker: Gives final approval for the purchase
  • Buyer: Owns the budget
  • Approver: Final approver who pushes the initiative on a larger scale (typically someone in the C-suite)
  • Gatekeeper: Blocker in getting a product implemented or approved
  • Sabateur : Goes out of their way to prevent buying your product or service
  • Regulators: People who make the rules
  • Third parties: Intermediaries, like insurors, PBMs or others who play a role in the decision

One useful step in creating your go to market strategy is to determine the role a given target stakeholder plays in the process.

For example, if you have just created an AI driven algorithm to forecast the need for COVID related space, staff and stuff and are looking for health systems organization customers, you are likely to have several stakeholders involved in the decision who play one or multiple aforementioned roles, including not just those in the C-suite, but IT managers, healthcare providers,clinical leaders and champions/sabateurs, infrastructure managers, nursing staff, finance people and many more.

Your job is to define the persona or archetype of each member of the buying center, determine their roles, and create a strategy to craft a personalized value proposition describing the benefits, expected gains and pain relievers they demand. Think of it as a 2 x 2 job/role matrix that informs your value proposition design.

The same applies to gaining stakeholder engagement when you are trying to overcome not just external sales barriers, but internal organizational barriers to dissemination and implementation as well. Here is an engagement plan template.

The key to a successful product launch, go to market strategy or internal stakeholder engagement plan is a thorough understanding of what your buying center or stakeholders are willing and able to buy and the roles they play in the process. Sales Navigator won't tell you that. It will only point you in the right direction for a start. The hard part is up to you.

Arlen Meyers, MD, MBA is the President and CEO of the Society of Physician Entrepreneurs

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  • Richard Taylor

    Very helpful

  • Carl Edmonds

    It helped me so much, thank you!

  • Sandra Conway

    Thanks for this article, helped me a lot and an important piece of information in our social selling journey.

  • Romain Ranjith

    Awesome tips

  • Scott Andrews

    It was really great. Thank you.

  • Robert Mckenna

    Eye opening!

  • Joe Rogers

    Super helpful

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Arlen Meyers, MD, MBA

Former Contributor

Arlen Meyers, MD, MBA is a professor emeritus of otolaryngology, dentistry, and engineering at the University of Colorado School of Medicine and the Colorado School of Public Health and President and CEO of the Society of Physician Entrepreneurs at www.sopenet.org. He has created several medical device and digital health companies. His primary research centers around biomedical and health innovation and entrepreneurship and life science technology commercialization. He consults for and speaks to companies, governments, colleges and universities around the world who need his expertise and contacts in the areas of bio entrepreneurship, bioscience, healthcare, healthcare IT, medical tourism -- nationally and internationally, new product development, product design, and financing new ventures. He is a former Harvard-Macy fellow and In 2010, he completed a Fulbright at Kings Business, the commercialization office of technology transfer at Kings College in London. He recently published "Building the Case for Biotechnology." "Optical Detection of Cancer", and " The Life Science Innovation Roadmap". He is also an associate editor of the Journal of Commercial Biotechnology and Technology Transfer and Entrepreneurship and Editor-in-Chief of Medscape. In addition, He is a faculty member at the University of Colorado Denver Graduate School where he teaches Biomedical Entrepreneurship and is an iCorps participant, trainer and industry mentor. He is the Chief Medical Officer at www.bridgehealth.com and www.cliexa.com and Chairman of the Board at GlobalMindED at www.globalminded.org, a non-profit at risk student success network. He is honored to be named by Modern Healthcare as one of the 50 Most Influential Physician Executives of 2011 and nominated in 2012 and Best Doctors 2013.

   
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