1. How was the Hill Rom sales force organized prior to the reorganization?

Multiple-specialty sales forces called on different people within the same medical facility, selling individual products without communicating a big-picture approach.

2. How did Hill Rom segment their customers before the reorganization?

Before the reorganization, Hill Rom segmented their customers essentially based on the size of the health care facility, determined by attributes like the number of staffed beds and medical care specialties. Also, Hill Rom considered other characteristics which included financial metrics such as the customer’s capital spending and profit margins, operating metrics such as occupancy rate, and even a facility’s mix of insurance payers.

3. What disconnect did the project team discover in sales resource allocation?

A time and cost analysis revealed that the company was making a significant effort to sell to and serve both Key and Prime customers segments in the same manner, resulting in high overall sales costs. Salespeople typically were expected to cover all facilities in a given geography and felt compelled to make regular calls on each account. So some sales teams were taking a highly consultative approach when the account’s profile and purchase behavior warranted another approach. The cost of sales for prime customers was four to five times higher than it was for key customers. The sales force had basically been treating all customers the same way and trying to sell prime customers a level of service and innovation that they did not value or could not afford.

4. How did they segment their customers as a result of their study?

Based on regression analysis of existing customer data, the project team sorted Hill-Rom’s hospital customers into five segments, drew profiles of those segments, and further hypothesized the future dollar value of