Lowering Sales Pressure
Medical instrument manufacturer Medwave is hoping a new Web-based tool will boost sales by at least 10% and lower the cost of its prospecting visits, which run about $150,000 a year.
The Danvers, MA-based firm, which sells products such as blood-pressure wrist gauges, is using Kaon Interactive’s Advisor system to do online product demonstrations, says Rich Niemczyk, Medwave’s vice president for support services.
The company believes the system will make it unnecessary for salespeople to travel overseas to demonstrate products for international distributors. Advisor will be featured on Medwave.com and employed in online newsletters to send product information to prospects and customers via interactive demos. In addition, the program can be replicated on CDs using Kaon technology and given out at trade shows.
Medwave is using Advisor to help launch Primo, a product intended to replace the traditional blood-pressure cuff used in doctor’s offices and hospitals. The $1,000 unit is designed for use on adults with wrist circumferences ranging from 11 to 22 centimeters, and is said to make it easier to get blood-pressure readings from historically difficult patients such as the elderly, the obese and those with cardiac arrhythmias.
Fifteen-year-old Medwave, with annual revenue of just under $1 million, gets response rates between 5% and 8% to lead-generation mailings for products like Vasetrax and Vasetrac. These blood-pressure monitors also work on the wrist and cost around $600.
The mailings go to directors of nursing and purchasing at the nation’s 5,000 hospitals, says Niemczyk. Once a lead is qualified, the selling process lasts from 90 days to six months, depending on budget cycles.
