The Future of Sales in Medtech | w/ Scott Carson

Joe Mullings  0:08  
Scott, thanks for joining me here at LSI 2022.

Scott Carson  0:12  
Joe, good to meet you.

Joe Mullings  0:13  
Yeah, same. So there's some fascinating dialogue going on right now you and I were just chatting about it beforehand. What does the sales function in med tech look like moving forward, and you had some pretty strong beliefs on that, and I tend to agree with you on some of them.

Scott Carson  0:29  
You know, over the last 10 years, we have all become accustomed in our consumer purchasing to having peer to peer reviews, transparent pricing, flat rate pricing, serviceability uptime. And whether it's consumer goods or real estate, or even booking a hotel. And in medical equipment, primarily, but even in farm and med surg, things are still sold. And I don't believe any more that we want to be sold. I think we want to work within the community. Purchasing is kind of a community decision now. We kind of look at the community and see where they're going and what they're doing. And then we make our purchasing decisions. And I think clinicians and administrators would make good decisions and wouldn't need a sales organization in a traditional sense if they had that information. And today, this information is delivered by sales reps in a very biased way. And I think that's going to change

Joe Mullings  1:32  
The commoditization of medtech devices, certainly on the lower tech side, right, there's no question that we're likely to going to be Amazoned out, right, whether it's gauze, whether it's syringes, whether it's drapes, primarily, you know, you're you're blocking and tackling. There's no clinical value with the presence of a doctor or somebody as a clinician. But having said that, what about the sales reps who add substantial clinical value who are bedside? And that there's an argument coming out now, two sided question, the bundling that's going on over years from the large strategics. There's some lawsuits percolating about that right now, about the bundling, and the over leveraging of bundles. So what about the super technical or mid cap to technical side? That won't be Amazoned out you see the change there? Maybe in a telepresence?

Scott Carson  2:29  
I think in both questions. Absolutely. And it's not just going to be tele, it'll be virtual augmented virtual demos. But if you think about it, from a regulatory standpoint, and a legal standpoint, technology can deliver sterile information much more effectively, and protect the organization's in the sales rep. Because that information is fixed and can't be modified. So I think we'll see a lot more movement to that type of delivery of information. As far as seeing experience reps thrive, we see these experience rep thriving today. In implants, for example, we're going to continue to need that kind of service relationship. And I think that's already evolved. When I think of the change in sales reps in the field, or currently that have morphed to zoom and Google Hangouts and other visual media, I just don't think they're gonna play a role even down to lidocaine and prescribed items. Today, it's still difficult for a clinician or a physician to actually get the kind of transparents pricing value pricing comparative products, that hospital has the same or has that ability to get clinicians don't have that.

Joe Mullings  3:43  
And the changing centers of care. So we're seeing more of health care come into the home setting. Yes, we're seeing more of health care, move to ambulatory surgical centers, yes, as well, or let's call them focus factories, whether it's an aesthetic center, or an ortho center, a women's health center. So do you see that as being more of a challenge, also, to the big strategic, so the big strategics are used to going into these large brick buildings, which we call hospitals in the middle of a city. And you know, you're way in there with the administrator now, you're suddenly going to have a more fragmented health care system to distribute to and market to digital makes sense with that in mind, from a cost perspective?

Scott Carson  4:24  
No question. I think the industry always speaks about the delivery of care cost, and it's almost always talking about the hospital systems and GPOs. But if you think about it, we go to clinicians and physicians much more frequently if we're lucky than we do hospitals, and the largest part of delivery of care is clinicians, what you're describing this fragmentation, this cottage component yet, they don't have any of that GPO kind of transparent pricing and comparative pricing or shopping that the hospital systems do. And technology is perfectly suited now to deliver one piece of information to many versus what we've seen is really one to one. And if you think about it this way is we're currently in web three and on our way to web four, and healthcare still operating in web one, we're still thinking that this is kind of the new internet, and we're going to create a Shopify store and something magical is going to happen. It doesn't work that way and we're gonna see this movement kind of happen underneath our feet, the next four to five years.

Joe Mullings  5:25  
Some of its going to be for cost as well. I mean, I think healthcare is 18 and a half percent of our GDP. And of that 18 and a half percent, I believe, 80% of that 18.5% is the management of chronic care. Yes, so hypertension, right, back mental health, you can go down the list on that. And typically, the chronic care has two of the five majors on that. And that's usually selling into the home. So are we going to look are we going to see more of marketing direct to consumer, from an ideation perspective, not necessarily the clinical sell to the patient. But what I've seen over the years, and you've got a strong practice, in the aesthetic space, is generally going DTC, and then driving demand back through the doctor, I see starting to become more and more present day practice,

Scott Carson  6:16  
No question we're gonna see. And we have seen this, this is to anything unique patients, taking more control over their care. And that's going to work very well in the tech stack environment that's coming our way. They're gonna work in parallel with their clinicians to decide what products and service they want deployed or engaged, similar the way they use kind of various web informational platforms that will couple with distribution platforms, where they can see what I'm talking about the virtual delivery of the care that they're getting, and not just aesthetics, but in every aspect of healthcare, med surg capital, equipment, Pharma.

Joe Mullings  6:52  
What did we not chat about, as we sat here right now that we should have as it applies to the sales pipeline, the marketing pipeline, and reducing cost of care, but increasing the value of outcomes.

Scott Carson  7:05  
If you think about the largest percentage of the sales, or the product, the cost of a product to a clinician or a hospital, once that product has been deployed, or designed and clear the FDA process, and it's to market, the largest percentage of sales and marketing, and sales, and marketing really has the great air control of many of these companies. And if you think about tech stacks, delivering peer to peer reviews, flat rate pricing, many of the things that I've just mentioned, sales reps, and sales and marketing will really be diminished. And that cost savings could be as much as 25. And in some cases 50% reduced, that really affects the quality, the access of the care that we all get. And there's a possibility if this kind of revolution continues the way I think it's going to, we'll see the largest biggest bite out of health care costs we've ever seen, because of the elimination of sales reps, sales and marketing, traditional trade shows and junkets that'll go away.

Joe Mullings  8:08  
It'd be fascinating over the next couple of years, and it'll be forced upon us. I think, a large part is you said, of the market outside of health tech already there. And why we're sort of lagging behind that is always a quandary to me in ourindustry, right?

Scott Carson  8:21  
I think I can explain that just briefly, if you think about it, if you take a 40 year old physician or clinician or administrator, they are not digitally native, they didn't grow up, kind of in the digital world. Take somebody like you and me, we adopted and adapted. But somebody's 35 that's now stepping into their own practice or stepping in as a lead administrator that's making purchasing decisions is digitally native. And they don't know any different. They only know what that phone and iPad kind of delivers to them. And so we're now in a place where I think this is going to happen really organically, that maybe 5-10 years ago was never going to happen.

Joe Mullings  8:57  
exciting to see how it'll disrupt the industry for sure. Thank you. Yeah, appreciate your time here today.

Scott Carson  9:02  
Thanks for having me. Appreciate it.

Joe Mullings  9:03  
Thanks. Joe Mullings from LSI 2020 to be well