Generally speaking, how sophisticated are medical device manufacturers in implementing sales force automation tools?
Miller: I’ve been with small-, medium-, and large-sized companies, and it seems to me that medtech companies of all three sizes want to adopt some kind of sales force automation or CRM tool. But their success in doing so is based largely on how easily the sales force is able to adopt or adapt to the tool. A number of factors contribute to the success of a company in getting its sales reps to use a new tool. Some of the keys factors include whether the tool is easy to use; whether reps can readily navigate around in the tool; and whether the reps can access the system wherever they happen to be inside a hospital, on the road, at home, or wherever. We’ve invested in a product that gives us quite a bit of flexibility and enables our sales reps to manage all of their accounts. It stores all the information the reps need to know about each account. And it includes a quoting tool and a forecasting tool, so that the reps can prepare their 30-, 60-, and 90-day forecasts. As far as which CRM sy
