How to hire an outsourced SDR team for a medical device company

It runs the first part of the sale, the part your reps rarely have time for. It builds the target list with you, down to the role in each account that feels the problem your device solves. Then it researches, writes first-touch email and LinkedIn messages, follows up, qualifies replies and books meetings on your seller's calendar. In most device companies prospecting sits with reps who also run evaluations and train staff on the device, so it is the first thing to slip. An outsourced team makes it someone's whole job.

What it does not do

• Close. Demos, evaluations, pricing and contracts stay with your sellers.
• Replace the field. In-servicing, clinical support and key physician relationships need your own people.
• Make its own claims. Every product statement comes from claims your regulatory and marketing teams have approved.
• Fix a weak offer. If buyers do not want the device, more outreach only tells you sooner.

SDR, BDR or field rep: which does a device company need first?

SDR (sales development representative) and BDR (business development representative) name the same kind of job: finding buyers and booking first meetings for someone else to close. Some companies use SDR for inbound follow-up and BDR for outbound prospecting, and others use the titles interchangeably, so compare job descriptions. A field rep or account executive carries the sale from the first meeting to the purchase order. If your reps spend their week prospecting, SDR capacity comes first. If nobody has time to take meetings, add selling capacity first. The outbound glossary has the plain definitions.

Enough to know that a device is rarely bought by one person. In a hospital, the clinician who wants the product is often not the one who approves it. Many hospitals route new products through a value analysis process, where clinical and supply chain leaders weigh evidence, cost and fit. Many also buy through a group purchasing organization, which, as the US Government Accountability Office describes (opens in a new tab), negotiates with manufacturers, distributors and other vendors on behalf of hospitals and other providers, and hospitals inside an integrated delivery network may standardize products across every site.

So the team you hire should be able to say, for your device, who feels the problem, who has to agree (supply chain, value analysis, sometimes IT) and who signs. It should ask which group purchasing contracts you hold, because being on contract or off it changes the first message.

Physician practices, ambulatory surgery centers and imaging centers buy differently: the owner, a physician partner or the practice administrator often decides. Distributors and dealers are a third audience. Our guide on how to sell medical devices to hospitals, IDNs and GPOs covers the hospital side, and our pages on outbound for medical device manufacturers and for medical distributors and dealers cover what we build for each. Before you sign, ask any provider to walk you through the buying committee for one of your own products.

You should, and the contract should say so. It is the clearest line between a provider that builds you a capability and one that rents you its output. Ask for a written list of what transfers, and whether each item sits in your name from the start.

• Sending domains and inboxes. Warmed domains take weeks to build. If the provider owns them, you restart from zero.
• Contact data. The accounts, the contacts, the verification history and the suppression list.
• CRM records. Every conversation and meeting, in your CRM, rather than a spreadsheet sent over at the end.
• Sequences, playbook and dashboards. The copy that worked, how the program runs, and the reports your team keeps using.

A retainer provider can reasonably keep its own software and methods. Your market knowledge, your data and your sender reputation should stay with you. In a Build, Run, Own engagement the domains, data, CRM records, sequences, playbook and dashboards are handed over, along with the trained operator who runs it.

• A guaranteed number of meetings before anyone has studied your market, your buyers or your claims.
• Sending from your corporate domain, or no plan for warmup.
• No written claims review, or SDRs expected to answer clinical questions on their own.
• Data they cannot source, or any offer involving patient data.
• Domains, data and sequences that stay with the provider when you leave.
• A meeting fee with no definition of who counts, and no right to reject a meeting.
• Case studies from software companies only, and nobody who can explain how a hospital buys.

One red flag is not always fatal. Several together usually mean the proposal was built around the provider's economics rather than your market.

Build the unit once and own it. In a build-operate-transfer model, a partner stands up the outbound unit, runs it until it works, then transfers it to your team. ECG's version is Build, Run, Own: a fixed four-month engagement for US medical and pharma companies, one point of contact, and an optional managed service only if you would rather we stay on the tools.

For most device companies the weak point is narrow: reps prospecting by hand, a CRM nobody works, and growth that waits on the next trade show. So we scope narrowly, usually the market and data system, messaging built on your approved claims, the outbound engine across email and LinkedIn, and a GTM operator who is trained and transitioned to your team at handover. First conversations typically land in the first weeks of going live, because the build starts from warmed assets.

The easiest first step is the free Reachable Buyer Map: which channels you run, which are idle and what we would build first, whichever model you choose.