Some of the common fears about outsourcing software lead generation include exploiting bad labor practices or people who really are not trained well enough to do the job for you. What these worries do not tell you is that expert lead generation companies have no trouble treating its recruits well but at the same time putting them to work in roles that already make real contribution to their process.
Pricing is not just an obstacle to software leads. It gets worse when it has been labeled unfair. It is like a scarlet letter on your company’s product to be called overpriced. If you are panicking, you are right to do so but it is much better for you to calm that panic by finding out why exactly has your pricing been judged that way. Who knows what could be happening to your sales leads if word like that starts to spread.
Your software lead generation tools may be simple but that simplicity could be all you need to see if you are going for a monopoly and assess it as good or bad news for your software firm. Monopolies have always existed in the world of business. Their role in history has been a mixed demonstration of both corporate greed as well as the human capacity to offer something unique. Lead generation is your means of sifting through that mix.
While developing new products to attract new software leads can be a good idea, it should not distract you if you also have plenty of software leads that were acquired due to interest in previous products. Unfortunately, it seems that even Apple is demonstrating this bad habit using something new to divert attention.
Qualifying software leads is not always the end of all your problems. In fact, it could even be the start of them when doing business with you means some people in a certain establishment will be replaced by mere tech. People had these fears long before computers (all the way back to the industrial revolution in fact) but they have lived on even today and even in industries like medical software.
If your medical software was like a magnifying glass, your software leads are the iconic private eyes who use them. How are medical professionals like crime-fiction detectives? Easy, they are also mystery solvers. So when looking for another trait to identify software leads, maybe you should also be on the look out for any mysteries to solve.
One well-known goal for lead generation is exposure to your target market. Once word gets out about your business, one can assume interested prospects will follow. However, there is a danger to asking for too much attention. Being too desperate for exposure can mess up your selection of lead generation tools.
In appointment setting, one will occasionally contend with the bad rep that salespeople have self-inflicted on themselves. And as an example, look to the hostility that some healthcare professionals exhibit towards IT vendors. As always, it illustrates the wide communication gap between IT experts and the rest of the world.
Closely behind cloud computing trend, you now also have software geared towards mobile. And according to a report by MobiHealth News, the number of medical software applications is just going to keep rising:
“Based on growth trends, by August 2012 there will be more than 13,000 iPhone health apps available for consumers.”
Take note, this not only includes medical software for patients and consumers but also for doctors and other medical professionals. This means that vendors in this new industry need to know who to target for medical software leads.
On the other hand, a popular criticism against this new trend is that it gives users a false sense of empowerment. As far as consumers go at least, some experts insist that no mobile application is a replacement for the care and expertise of certified medical professionals.
Logically, it makes sense. Reaching the level of a qualified physician is no mean feat. And while developers can create software that delivers accurate information like measurements and statistics, the advanced medical knowledge required to gain deeper insight from that data can take years of schooling and experience.
Instead of contesting the role of empowering patients, perhaps it would be best to focus on empowering the physicians first. Given that, vendors of B2B mobile medical applications need to execute proper B2B marketing strategies as well as adequate customer support in order attract enough interest from them.
Marketing
Customer Support
At this point, it should be noted that customer service and marketing are both interconnected. The mediums used in one is most often also used by the other. Marketing raises expectations for customer service while customer service will affect your image for future marketing. This means thatboth should be considered if you want to generate and maintain interest in the relatively new market of mobile medical technology.
Cutting costs for the generation of EMR leads is a must nowadays.
Last week, Businessweek published a report announcing that SAIC is to buy maxIT Healthcare Holdings Inc., a healthcare IT company that possesses a wide variety of medical technology and has served over 600 hospitals in the United States and Canada:
“SAIC, a scientific, engineering and technology applications company based in McLean, Va., said late Tuesday maxIT provides a wide variety of IT services to the health care industry including planning, electronic record implementation and management consulting.”
Seeing as how SAIC also has ties to several defense and security departments of the U.S. government, it only goes to show how much value there is in integrating healthcare with IT and other new forms of software technology. It also goes to show how it’s becoming more critical to use such technology in order to drive back the costs of healthcare:
“SAIC said the combination will allow it to provide better service to health care providers, by helping them cut costs, use their data better and improve patient care.”
Sadly, the only way such cuts in costs can be achieved is through maximized use of the technology. Today, many physicians and other institutions still have trouble figuring out just that: what it means to meaningfully use medical software.
Setting that aside for a moment, it’s easy to see that no matter drives up these costs, the costs of healthcare has been a major concern in American politics. If you’re a healthcare software vendor, there’s no doubt that you’ve already heard some of the ways to help drive those costs down:
As you can see, what all three have in common is that they can directly affect costs by cutting back on the factors which contribute to them. Educating prospects can help them save time and therefore money when they effectively use things like EMR. The EMR system itself should naturally support such meaningful use and speed up time-consuming processes. And finally, even while you’re still struggling to achieve the other two, you can at least cut costs for yourself and outsource non-core functions like software appointment setting. And the more costs are cut, the closer you are to achieving the goal of more affordable health care.
