Selling Under the Physician Sunshine Act Final Rule

Affordable Care Act
Physician Payment Sunshine Act Final Rule
The Rules, Their Impact, and How to Sell
in This New Environment
eBooklet
From
Buzzfile.com
Copyright © 2013 Buzzfile. All rights reserved.

Physician Payment Sunshine Act Final Rule
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Obamacare is being implemented in stages and, as
of August 2013, another piece of the legislation –
the Physician Payment Sunshine Act Final Rule –
has gone into effect. This rule is meant to eradicate
any appearance of a conflict of interest for the
physician in terms of prescribing medication or
medical devices, but it ends up greatly affecting
how anyone who sells to the medical industry can
interact with physicians.
The Affordable Care Act doesn’t so much focus on
prohibiting ways that sales people build
relationships with physicians but, instead, creates a
reporting burden on the part of the physicians that
will make them shy away from many types of
interactions with vendors.
of the interactions and exchanges with pharmaceutical
and medical device reps in the following categories:
 Consulting fee
 Compensation for services other than consulting,
including serving as faculty or as a speaker at an event
other than a continuing education program.
 Honoraria
 Gift
 Food and beverage
 Entertainment
 Travel and lodging
 Education
 Research Charitable Contribution
 Royalty or license
 Current or prospective ownership or investment
interest
 Compensation for serving as faculty or as a speaker for
an unaccredited and non-certified continuing
education program
 Compensation for serving as faculty or as a speaker for
an accredited or certified continuing education
program
 Grant
 Space rental or facility fees (teaching hospital only)
 Ownership or investment interest
Because of the Physician Payment Sunshine Act Final
Rule, physicians are now required to publically report all

How Does this Affect Companies Selling to Physicians?
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Although the reporting requirements are targeted
at the pharmaceutical industry and medical device
Every direct sales person – in practically any
industry – uses gifts, food and entertainment as
part of how they build a relationship. What sales
person doesn’t have a supply of pens, pay for coffee
at Starbucks, or gives tickets to a game?
Under this new rule, those simple actions will cause
apprehension, not delight, for your client.
However, challenges can make us rethink business-as-
usual, and often come up with fresh approaches. As a
small-to-medium business provider, the good news is
that the playing field is more level now that bigger
companies don’t have as many arrows in their quiver. You
have an opportunity to shine at what you do best,
directly relating to people.
manufacturers, in
reality, even if you are
a financial advisor, a
home health care
agency looking for
referrals, or someone
selling office supplies,
some very basic sales tools are going to be greeted
with caution by physicians and their gatekeepers.
If you are part of a large company, you probably have
a marketing staff creating new strategies for you, but,
if you are a small business that sells to the medical
industry, you are going to have to go it alone.

“New Rules” Selling – Getting Back to Basics
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A common saying goes: “Everything old is new
again.” Sales people may feel like the odds are
stacked against them with the stringent
requirements of the Physician Payment Sunshine
Act Final Rule, but small-to-medium businesses
have actually been given a level playing field that
favors their more person-to-person approach.
Get back to basics – with “New Rules” Selling.
1. Start by TARGETING your market, identifying their
location, number of employees and revenue range.
2. Build a schedule for contacting and INTERACTING
with your prospects by phone, mail, email or social
media.
It’s a good time to get basics with personal selling and
a low-key consultative selling plan that incorporates
some new ideas from one of the hottest trends –
content marketing.
3. Create useful materials that provide value and
4. And CURATE
content from
quality sources
and share with
your prospects.
EDUCATE your
prospects and
their patients.

“New Rules” Selling – Target Your Market
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Become more efficient and
effective at targeting your
market by using Buzzfile.
There are 18 Categories
under the “Health Services”
Sector, and just in the
“Offices and clinics of medical doctors” alone, there are
55 Industries listed.
Dental laboratories
General medical and surgical hospitals
Health and allied services
Home health care services
Intermediate care facilities
Kidney dialysis centers
Medical laboratories
Nursing and personal care
Offices and clinics of chiropractors
Offices and clinics of dentists
Offices and clinics of medical doctors
Offices and clinics of optometrists
Offices and clinics of osteopathic physicians
Offices and clinics of podiatrist
Psychiatric hospitals
Skilled nursing facilities
Specialty hospitals, except psychiatric
Specialty outpatient clinics
Health Services
Allergist
Anesthesiologist
Cardiologist and cardio vascular
specialist
Clinic, operated by physicians
Dermatologist
Diabetes specialist, physician/surgeon
Dispensary, operated by physicians
Ear, nose, and throat specialist
Endocrinologist
Ear, nose, and throat specialist
physician surgeon
Fertility specialist, physician
Freestanding emergency medical center
Gastronomist
Genera; and family practice,
physician/surgeon
Geriatric specialist, physician/surgeon
Group health association
Gynecologist
Health maintenance organization
Hematologist
Immunologist
Infectious disease specialist,
physician/surgeon
Internal medicine practitioners
Internal medicine, physicians/surgeons
Medical centers
Medical insurance associations
Medical insurance plan
Nephrologist
Neurologist
Neurosurgeon
Obstetrician
Occupational and industrial specialist,
physician/surgeon
Oculist
Oncologist
Ophthalmologist
Orthopedic physician
Pathologist
Pediatrician
Physical medicine, physician/surgeon
Physicians’ office, including specialists
Plastic surgeon
Primary care medical clinics
Proctologist
Psychiatric clinic
Psychiatrist
Psychiatrists and psychoanalysts
Psychoanalysts
Pulmonary specialist,
physician/surgeon
Radiologist
Rheumatology specialist,
physician/surgeon
Specialized medical practitioners,
except internal
Sports medicine specialist, physician
Surgeon
Thoracic physician
Urologist

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To search by industry, go to www.buzzfile.com, and click
Begin by entering
your state, city or zip
code so that you can
narrow your search
quickly.
You can narrow your
results by entering
values for Revenues
and number of
Employees.
Then, select the
Sector, Category,
and Industry (if
needed) to find
your target market.
You can even look
at the
demographic
make-up of the
neighborhood that
the practice is in.
Advanced Search
By smartly targeting your market you’ll
be sure to find all potential customers in
your geographic region.
The Sector / Category / Industry
filters will ensure that you are only
going after prospects that are high-
likely candidates to become
customers.
And using the Revenue and number
of Employee values as part of your
search, you can select only providers
or institutions of a specific size.
click on “Advanced Search.”

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Each Buzzfile “Company Page” has
contact information, a company
profile and a link to other
companies at the same location
Find prospects by LOCATION to make door-to-door prospecting more efficient. Buzzfile has two ways to
search by location.
Simply click on the link to see all
other businesses in that building.
At this location there are 21 other doctor’s practices.

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Go to the “Advanced Search” feature and search by
address OR simply enter an address on the Search Bar.
Find prospects by LOCATION to make door-to-door prospecting more efficient. Buzzfile has two ways to
search by location.
NOTE Buzzfile requires that
the use of street
abbreviations – Ave for
Avenue, St for
Street, Blvd for Boulevard,
etc. For example: 122 Main
St NW.

“New Rules” Selling – Interact with Potential Customers
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Organize the prospects
you have identified by
location or by their type
of practice. Organizing
by locations is great if
you want to schedule
face-to-face calls but
Set weekly or daily goals to make contact and set aside
time to get this done. There are lots of great contact
management tools to help you schedule appointments
and follow-up calls. Salesforce.com – one of the most
established and well-regarded sales tools is $25/month
for a single user, or simply search online for “free
contact management software” and read the reviews
and product descriptions to find one that works for you.
Interactions with
prospects can by phone,
mail or email, in-person
or through social media.
The goal is to find as
many touch points as
possible and build a successful relationship. Just as
importantly, you want to assess the likelihood of
closing a deal so you use your energies where they
will effect the best outcome.
The content that you create or curate will become
your “calling card” and encourage your prospects to
value your interactions with them
segmenting prospects by type of practice may make it
easier for you to hone your sales pitch for specific
audiences. Use your past experience to decide what
makes sense for you.
Develop and practice your 60-second “elevator pitch”
focused on your prospects’ needs and start calling and
meeting with people.
But first things first –
you need to start by
creating a plan and
setting aside the time
to contact the
prospects that you
have targeted.

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Look online for places where you can create your own,
search for “business greeting cards” to buy cards
customized with your company name or go to Buzzfile
With the Physician Payment Sunshine Act Final Rule
traditional means of contact don’t need to change, but
the “content” of the interaction needs to shift.
Connecting by phone, mail, email, or in-person is fine,
but gifts, entertainment events or taking your prospect
out for lunch and coffee become problematic for
physicians and their staff. This even extends to brining
in pizza or donuts for the office.
 New Years Day (January 1)
 St. Patrick’s Day (March 17)
 Administrative Professional’s Day (April)
 Fourth of July (July 4)
 Boss’s Day (October)
 Halloween (October 31)
 Thanksgiving (3rd Thursday of November)
This is where getting creative counts:
Rethink the holiday card. It’s not just Christmas or
Hanukah that keeps Hallmark revenues flowing.
Think of creating or buying cards for:
Did you know that –
according to the
Greeting Card
Association – there are
21 million Halloween
cards, 15 million
Thanksgiving cards and
7 million St. Patrick's
Day cards sold annually?
and click on the city or state column to find local
printers in your area.

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Direct mail and email campaigns
are still a good way to connect, and,
if you have identified your target
market, you’ll have a quality list to
contact. The Buzzfile Company Page
will give you a key contact name, a
phone number, street address, and link to a website if
available. Checking out the website should give you more
information and contact points so always take a look
before you make a call to your prospect.
However, if you want
to increase your
power to connect,
mastering social
media as a selling tool
can give you a big
competitive edge
If you are mailing more than a few hundred
direct mail pieces, a mail fulfillment house may
make sense. They add a little more cost but
should save time, and getting advice, in advance,
about the cost of mailing certain sized direct mail
pieces could save money in the long run.
THE FACTS:
 Top sales performers that sold to other
businesses were polled, and 88% of them
use LinkedIn as a selling tool.
 Krista Canfield, Public Relations Manager
for LinkedIn, also estimates that there are
over 130,000 medical professionals, mostly
medical doctors, plus about 23,000 nurses
in the US, who are registered on LinkedIn.
If you haven’t set up a Linkedin profile, now is the
time to do it. There is a free account package that
you can start with. Often this is enough for most
people.

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Once you have met a prospect, go online and see if they
are on LinkedIn and ask to connect to them. Take the time
to create a brief, personal message when you make your
connection request.
Go back and look at your existing customer list and ask
them to connect with you as well.
Then monitor your account on a regular basis and check
the updates on your LinkedIn home page. You’ll get the
opportunity to see updates from your connections and
any changes they have made to their LinkedIn profile.
GET STARTED:
GET CONNECTED:
Set up a professional LinkedIn profile
SEND OUT UPDATES:
As you start to curate content, you can send out a
brief update with a link to an article that you think
will interest your prospects and customers.
BUILD A REFERRAL NETWORK:
Reach out and connect with friends and business
colleagues from all kinds of backgrounds. You never
know where referrals can come from and it pays to
create a broad network of contacts.
LinkedIn has a concept called 1st, 2nd and 3rd degree
connections. The 1st degree connections are those
that you are directly connected to, but 2nd degree
connections are equally important. These are people
that you contacts are connected to on LinkedIn.
Take the time to check
out the 2nd degree
connections. If they
are of value to you,
then reach out and ask
for a referral.
1st
2nd
2nd
2nd
2nd
LinkedIn has really useful free online webinars
that can teach you how to set up an account
and how to use LinkedIn to your best advantage.

“New Rules” Selling – Educate Potential Customers
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Think about the physicians
you are targeting and what
would be of value to them,
their staff and their patients.
Each touch point is different
and should be considered
separately. There may be some information you could
provide that will cover one, two, or all three of these
groups, but first think about them as separate entities to
get the best results.
Doctor PatientStaff
For the physician and staff, simple 1 – 2 page
informative fact sheets may work well. Doctors may see
value in having high-level information for patients such
as “The 7 Signs of Dementia,” Drugs That Interact with
Blood Thinners,” etc.
If you work for a parent company or are a distributor or
franchisee, talk with the marketing department and tell
them what you are looking for. Give them a rough first
draft of your ideas and the reason why you think this
will help you sell.
If you are working on your own or for a small company
where you do your own marketing, then do some
research into getting the right resources to create the
materials that you need.
1. Consider about how the final piece will look and
feel before you get started:
 Will it be a glossy 2-sided piece on regular
paper weight?
 Will it be a 4 x 6 card on heavy cover stock
paper?
 Will it be a poster that can hang on a wall?
Local print shops as well as online digital printers
can show or mail you some samples of creative
ideas that will fit your budget

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2. Write a first draft of content you want to use.
 Make it simple and straightforward.
 Illustrations are useful to break copy and
communicate ideas
 For patients, make sure that the language is
clear, consistent, and uses layman’s terms.
Remember your goals
3. Take your copy and your ideas to a graphic
designer to bring it all together.
 If you don’t have the budget for a designer,
some easy pieces – for example, 8 ½ x 11
sheets – can be laid out in Microsoft Word
or Publisher using the free templates
provided.
 Look online for free or low-cost artwork
from places like Shutterstock or iStockphoto
to enhance the look and feel.
…and think of your target
reader when you write.
You can find local ad copy
writers, business writers,
technical writers and
designers on Buzzfile.
Resources
________
________
________
Click on the state or city column to find
suppliers in your area.

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Find great
ideas from
others.

“New Rules” Selling – Curate & Share with Potential Customers
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Let’s start with some
definitions of content curation,
and then get to how to curate
and how to disseminate the
content you find…
“The art of repurposing
content to find the right
ingredients for a perfect
content marketing mix.”
-- uberflip blog
“(Content curation is)
the process of
analyzing and sorting
Web content and
presenting it in a
meaningful and
organized way around a
specific theme.”
-- MacMillan Dictionary
“Thoughts, words and
ideas of others can be
helpful to establish
yourself as a value
added resource and a
destination for
information.”
-- Brian Solis, marketing
expert
You may wonder why finding and sharing the
content of others brings value back to you – there
is so much information out there on the internet.
The amount of information has reached the point
where it has become overwhelming and many
people, especially your busy prospects and
customers, simply don’t have the time to sift
through thousands of articles, blogs and research
reports to keep up with new trends.
If a friend shares a recommendation with you, you
consider it valuable. If you know someone who
understands home theater systems and can tell
you to look for, you are more confident you will
make the best purchase choice. You’ll probably tell
another friend to call him up and talk before he
buys. If that same expert just happened to run an
home electronics store, that would translate into
lots of repeat business.
This principal of being a “value added resource”
and a “destination for information” is – in a
nutshell – what content curation is about.

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So how do you go about finding content that you can
share that will be of value to your prospects and
customers?
Start by considering what types of articles or reports
support you value proposition or establish a need for
your product or service?
You may know of online publications, websites or blogs
that regularly cover topics that relate to your product or
services. You may know of research groups that often
substantiate the need for what you have to offer.
Sign up for their email newsletter or set up an “RSS” feed
if they have one so that you know when new content is
posted or cast a wider net by setting up Google Alerts.
 Begin by doing several searches to find which
combination of search terms gets the best result
for you.
 Enter those search terms in the Google Alerts
Search Query box.
 You can select the Result Type: News, Blogs, Video,
Discussion or Books, how often you receive the
alerts and if you everything or just those that
Google feels are the most relevant. All of this can
be delivered to your email address.
Give it a try; see what works best. Set up more
than one alert if you wish. Go back and refine
your search if you don’t like the results you get.

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Now, start sharing the
valuable content you have
curated.
 In person
 By mail
 By email
 On LinkedIn
You can print up the
information on nice quality
paper. Make sure to include the source of the information:
publication, blog name or website; author (if given), and
date (if given). Try to include the logo of the organization if
you can.
With online information you should be able to copy and
paste the content, including the pictures. Use a screen
grab tool for capturing data that doesn’t copy and past
easily.
Format the information in Word or a desktop publisher,
and include your company, your logo and your contact
information at the bottom of the page on the front or
back.

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As you build your relationship
with prospects, get their email
addresses and create an address
list of all prospects and clients so
that you can communicate
electronically. However, never
send out a group email exposing
all of your contacts. Either send
each email individually or use a
contact management tool that automates the process.
Make sure you include a subject line that draws in the
reader, and a short, personal note with a link to the
online article or video.
Sharing links to articles or videos is
a great way to reach out to your
LinkedIn Connections. Use the
“Share an update” box from your
personal profile page or Company
Page (if you set one up) on LinkedIn.
Your link to the article, along with your comments, will
appear on the home page of your connections.
Comments that
you entered in
the status bar.
Your name (or
company name).
Image from the
article or video (if
one is available).
Headline and first few
word of the article or
video description.

Selling Under the Physician Sunshine Act Final Rule

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