Selling stem cell based biologics and salesforce alignment for the biomedical device industry

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to discover best practices for selling stem cell based biologics and ensuring proper sales force alignment in the biomedical device industry. Design/methodology/approach – This research is based on an immersion into the industry as well as several formal, semi-structured interviews and dozens of informal interviews of surgeons, medical staff and medical device salespersons and managers. Data were also collected and analyzed from wipricepoint.org. The factors analyzed were the number of discharges, average charge per procedure, median age, male/female patient ratio and total hospital charges per year. Findings – Secondary data can augment primary data collection to determine the most lucrative markets for salespersons to target their efforts. In addition, the data when combined with sales force specific data can help optimize sales force alignment. Insights into the industry are also given such as how to overcome objections to the use of stem cell based biologics for spinal surgeries. Research limitations/implications – Much of the findings are specific to only one industry (medical device sales). However, we do present a generalized process for analyzing a key source of secondary data that could be beneficial to any hospital-serving industry. Originality/value – Within the medical equipment industries, approximately 58 per cent of sales territories were either too large or too small (Zoltners and Lorimer, 2000). This paper shows how secondary data sources can be obtained and analyzed to better focus sales force effort.