In preparation for contacting a community based business about a medical group’s new industrial medicine program for employers, the following possible members of the buying center can be identified: the initiator—the person who might know there is a need; the decider—the actual purchasing decision maker; the buyer—the person who handles vendor selection; the influencer—the person who determines service specifications; the user—representing actual service users; and the gatekeeper—the person who controls the company’s information flow.
Certain environmental factors account for the success of suburban health care satellite facilities. Because a primary target market is white collar workers in the high tech sector, spanning from Boomers to N-Gen, serious consideration should be given to community based medical clinics, and after-hours and urgent care offerings. To the extent that there is a high concentration of workers in any one company facility, an in-office facility, even if just 1-2 days per week, may make business sense, while offering employers and their employees, efficiency, convenience, and a reduction in potential lost productivity. To the extent that the practice group can offer accessible health care such as in office, after hours or urgent care offerings, the result may be reduced sick time, a better return to work rate and reduced loss and a genuine benefit from more readily available preventative health care. After-hours and urgent care, the necessary advent of dual working families, shift work, and multiple obligations including school, make evening and weekend facilities a more attractive and accessible health care option. There would be less difficulty securing time off of work and school for appointments, and acute issues might be dealt with in a timely manner, leading to better patient outcomes.

Based upon the stated call volume among the Class A, B, and C providers, the tertiary care center can likely service the market with between one and three sales representatives, depending on certain geographic considerations unstated at this time. Hours-wise, there appears to be demand for 1,328 hours per year in physician contact calls amongst the Class A, B, and C providers. The average salesperson works approximately 1920 hours per year, and if 80% of his or her time is spent selling as stated in the hypothetical, that would yield 1536 hours available to sell, per salesperson. While in theory, this could service the call demand forecast by the center, there is also the issue of efficiency and how quickly the salesperson can move from one contact to the next, particularly over the medical center’s three state region. Taking into account travel and moving from one provider to the next, it would appear that additional man hours would probably be necessary, although the straight line hourly demand calculations are somewhat less generous.