Personal Contribution Blog #2- Evyn Magenbauer

This week interning at Ashlawn Medical consisted of me assisting in cold calling techniques in order to sell Game Ready icing equipment to Physical Therapy offices and other medical clinics throughout the Richmond Area. Although using sales techniques is how our company gains new accounts and makes money, cold calling is what I have seen very little of throughout my internship. The biggest part of my role has consisted of me managing our preexisting accounts through paperwork and brace fittings, so I have heavily excited about this week to learn more about HOW we get accounts. What I did specifically was research physical therapy units throughout the Richmond and Petersburg areas and call each one asking them whether or not they had Game Ready icing units. If a clinic says yes, then we would mark them down on a list and then pay each one a visit asking if they have had any problems, questions, etc. with their unit or need any repairs. GameReady also came out with a brand new patient rental program where a person can rent a unit for $300 per 2 weeks. This is an extremely attractive deal for patients because each unit costs approximately $5,000. If a clinic says no, then we put them on a list and go in to ask them if they would be interested in purchasing a GameReady unit. Ashlawn recently gained the PIVOT physical therapy account at the end of June for GameReady which includes 70 different PIVOT locations throughout the state and approxiamelty half of them being within the Richmond region. I took this into consideration when making my calls so on the phone  with PIVOT offices I tried to ask the secretary if I could talk to the “person in charge” directly. This experience really pushed me out of my comfort zone and has taught me to be bold whenever speaking to individuals. The worst anybody can do is say “no”. Something I also picked up during this experience was the importance of remembering names, especially whenever we went into the clinics to talk to individuals. Marlene took a business card from every clinic and wrote very specific notes in the car immediately after with precise names, mannerisms, and descriptions of the individuals we interacted with that way when we go into the clinics next week, we can be as thorough and specific as possible in order to make a sale.  We only went into clinics to introduce ourselves, provide information, and to start becoming familiar with the people working in them this week. After we give them some time too consider our product, we intend on completing the same rounds but asking more specific questions around purchasing a unit. I considered this week a success and I learned a lot about the first cold calling stage of “sales”. I cannot wait to see what potential business comes from my research in the near future 🙂