Unlocking Profitable Revenue Growth Through Talent Management

Unlocking sustainable revenue growth in health care now requires more than a well-defined business strategy, new product developments and a robust commercial engagement model. It demands a holistic talent management approach. Just as a skilled surgeon’s precision can transform lives, nurturing and empowering commercial teams can pave the way for accelerating revenue growth and improved margins.

Health care organizations are driving revenue growth through talent management strategies. Alexander Group conducts studies to determine the benefits of talent management strategies and develops ways for health care companies to form a talent management infrastructure.

What Is Talent Management?

Talent management is a company’s process for recruiting and retaining effective employees. A talent management strategy articulates information about company roles, describes how to fill them and establishes ways to measure success. Companies across industries use talent management strategies to establish a succinct sales team identity and implement policies and procedures that uphold it. This drives revenue, making sellers and sales methods more efficient and effective.

In the health care industry, sales teams use talent management strategies to create a unified sales force structure. The strategies include methods that facilitate and reward high performance when selling medical products and services to clients. Health care sales teams also use talent management to streamline the hiring process, encouraging growth and reducing the impact of turnover.

The Talent Management Process

Effective talent management strategies rely on carefully curated processes for building and maintaining a productive sales team:

1. Recruitment: Posting job listings and fielding candidates
2. Selection: Narrowing the candidate field down to qualified individuals who align with the company’s values
3. Onboarding: Training new employees to carry out the company’s values and use sales methods effectively
4. Engagement: Interacting with sales employees to reinforce the company culture, determine top performers and note retention risks
5. Assessment: Evaluating seller performance to highlight top performers and assess the traits that create success
6. Acknowledgment: Rewarding top performers for the results they produce to build engagement
7. Succession planning: Offering career development opportunities and establishing a transparent progression path for career advancement

The Importance of Talent Management

Implementing a talent management strategy breeds profound results for health care businesses. Alexander Group conducted a 2023 Commercial Talent Survey where over 250 companies across industries, including over 60 health care organizations, shared their talent management practices. The study analyzed what is prevalent in the market and how leading companies are differentiating themselves.

Overall, profitable growth leaders have more productive and efficient workforces with:

• +9% more revenue growth
• +13pts higher EBIDTA margin
• +15pts more sellers achieving quota
• +5pts likelihood of exceeding 2023 revenue goals
• +7 pts higher net revenue retention
• 32% lower cost of turnover

Creating an Effective Talent Management Strategy

These five core functions are the cornerstones of effective talent management:

1. Employee Experience
2. Talent Acquisition
3. Strategic Talent Architecture
4. Compensation & Total Rewards
5. Coaching & Recognition

Employee Experience

Healthcare companies with strong employee engagement have more satisfied customers with an over 7% increase in customer satisfaction. There are two key pillars empowering these organizations―workplace flexibility and culture and cohesion.

Workplace flexibility acknowledges that the traditional 9-to-5 model no longer caters to the diverse needs of modern sales teams. Embracing flexible work arrangements such as remote work options, flexible hours and leave of absence policies, helps recognize individuals’ responsibilities outside of work and nurtures a sense of trust and autonomy. All of this then leads to higher levels of job satisfaction and engagement.

Culture and cohesion are the intangible threads that weave an organization’s identity, values and purpose into the fabric of daily operations. Healthcare organizations must solicit voice-of-field (VOF) feedback, create well-defined career paths and implement DEI initiatives and training opportunities. The overall focus of these programs is transforming HR from a cost center into a strategic revenue growth function.

Talent Acquisition

Hiring the right talent is critical to any health care sales force. Talent management strategies include processes for evaluating candidates and training new hires to succeed.

Talent management also enhances the talent acquisition process by transforming the organization into a desirable place to work and marketing those qualities. Traits like high employee retention show talented candidates that the organization is worth their investment, expediting the hiring process.

High-performing healthcare companies with formal programs to communicate advancement opportunities to employees fill open positions two weeks faster and train sellers to full productivity two months faster. This all starts with a meticulous process on how to attract and retain the right talent.

Strategic Talent Architecture

Profitable healthcare leaders focus on competencies. These organizations improve both employee and customer satisfaction through formal and well-documented programs around measuring employees’ skills and competencies, using skill assessment to drive advancement and clearly defining what skills are necessary to execute the job.

Frequent and more scientific skill measurement also naturally helps promote movement within the company in a transparent way. In fact, profitable growth leaders are much more likely to formally use skill assessments in career progression decisions.

Compensation and Total Rewards

Pay is the number one reason why candidates accept offers (57%) and why employees leave their current companies (48%). The war for talent has subsided over the past year, but healthcare organizations should continue sourcing and analyzing the market pay data annually. The best practice is to put the data into action and make compensation strategy changes reflective of market dynamics.

To supplement market competitiveness, organizations must continuously review their sales compensation program and plan effectiveness. For talent prioritization, focus on ensuring plan mechanics (e.g., thresholds, accelerators, no caps) are competitive and sales teams have equitable sales quotas.

Coaching and Recognition

Profitable growth health care organizations have a tighter span of control, with approximately one fewer seller per manager. High performers are also not afraid to push out poor performers, seeing eight points higher in involuntary turnover. These organizations believe in a similar mindset—performance evaluation goes beyond quota attainment.

Leaders are differentiating evaluation metrics across individual contributors and first-line sales managers. For individual contributors, teams are looking at share of wallet, competencies, cultural fit, forecasting accuracy and time in the role. Sales managers’ evaluation metrics include company bookings percentage, team turnover (involuntary, voluntary), balanced team performance and net revenue retention.

Another key program to champion coaching is supportive sales management cadences. This includes a codified approach for sales managers to execute the appropriate people development activities on a weekly, monthly, quarterly and bi-annual cadence.

Benefits of Effective Talent Management

There are numerous ways a health care sales department can benefit from a succinct talent management strategy:

• Recruit top talent: Talent management describes the traits of a top performer to narrow the hiring team’s search. The strategy also boosts employee engagement, resulting in an improved external workplace reputation.
• Establish a positive culture: Talent management aligns the employee experience to create a culture that produces high seller performance. The sales force unites under common values and a common goal.
• Boost productivity and performance: Talent management strategies establish clear policies, procedures and goals for sales departments. Employees align with the organization’s mission and use proven sales strategies the talent management strategy reinforces.
• Retain top performers: Talent management boosts employee engagement and encourages top performers to stay on board. High performers stay with an organization that values their efforts and commits to their development.
• Reduce turnover’s impact: Talent management navigates common turnover issues. Constantly turning over sales team members after two years of training significantly increases the overall cost, impacting the bottom line. Organizations that cultivate a culture of continuous learning and professional development improve overall productivity and reduce the cost of turnover.
• Enhance organizational agility: Talent management helps health care sales teams adapt to the evolving market by dictating how recruitment teams can find talent that meet present and future needs. Adding new personnel to an engaged sales team helps companies meet demand and drive innovation.

Alexander Group Will Help You Attract and Retain Talent

Alexander Group leverages research and experience to develop talent management strategies for health care sales departments. Alexander Group’s consultants have worked with numerous health care organizations and provide industry-specific insight to drive results.

Through talent management services, Alexander Group creates strategies that encompass three areas—forming a structure, training the management team and motivating sellers.

• Forming a structure: Aligns sales talent around common goals and establishes clear responsibilities for each role
• Training management: Ensures the management team reinforces the company culture and objectives from the top down
• Motivating sellers: Establishes pay levels, sales incentives and progression paths that encourage employee engagement

Manage Your Health Care Talent With Alexander Group

Effective talent management is crucial for healthcare organizations to achieve profitable revenue growth. By harnessing the power of the five talent management functions, companies can create a symbiotic relationship between commercial strategy, external customer engagement and internal talent enablement.

It is essential for health care organizations to review each function and ensure they are building upon each to unlock incremental profitable growth. Alexander Group can facilitate effective healthcare talent management.

Alexander Group’s experience in the healthcare segment allows us to provide proven ways to improve sales compensation plans that yield improved results. By applying best practices and industry insights, Alexander Group helps you improve your performance and profitability by designing and implementing effective sales compensation plans. Consultants help you recognize and adopt best practices while keeping you informed about industry trends, insights and frameworks.

Contact Alexander Group today to discuss talent management capabilities and receive a complimentary briefing on the Five Principles of Effective Talent Management report.