How to negotiate with medical vendors.

How should we negotiate with Medical Vendors. When you have your own medical practice and you will have to buy medical equipments and or Medical Services, you will find salesmen and coming in droves to your medical office to sell you almost anything under the sun.

Any time that you have to buy an equipment or service, you will have to do your homework. Just because one salesman gives you a price for a product, does not mean that is the market value of that product. People in the business community are well aware that physicians lack of training in the business aspect of anything. They use that to their full advantage by inflating the prices, selling unnecessary services, and even to the extent nickling and diming the doctors.

Always be paranoid and when dealing with business people. Even if it saves man appears to be your friend, he may not be so. Salesmen and are trained to develop a relationship with their customers on a friendly basis. And that is how they get their stuff sold.

Be aware of common sales techniques. It is important. For it will give you better handle on negotiations. Here are some of the commonly used sales techniques:

Upselling: It is a technique by which a salesman will sell you something more than what you initially asked for. For example when you go to buy food at a fast food restaurant, they ask you if you need French fries and Coke with it. Even though you did not initially plan to, there is a good chance you will say yes to the offer. This is Upselling.

Management fees: Somehow seems like all the doctors get charged management fees. Whenever we tried to buy a product or service, the salesman would tag on a management fee to the whole deal. If you look closely they charge anywhere between $100 to $200 management fee per hour. That is ridiculous. Even Physicians do not make that much for an hour anymore.

Inflating price then giving discount: Many times salesman will give you a very high price. Then he or she will deeply discount it for you for a limited period of time. It will make you feel you are getting a deal. You will be surprised, if you did some research, that even the deeply discounted price is much more than that product or service is available for elsewhere.

Deadlines: One of the favorite ways for the salesman to close a deal is by telling you that the offer is good until end of the week. In my opinion, if they can give you a product for X price this week, they should be able to give you the same product for X price next week.

Charging extra for various modules: Companies love to nickel and dime Physicians. This is especially true in the case of Electronic Medical records. The Electronic Medical records software is sold in various modules. Many of these modules are mandatory. This way they can bulk up on the total price without making the Physician realize it.

Appearing desperate: salesman may try to invoke your sympathy to be able to make a sale.

So once you know the common tactics the sales personnel uses, it will become easier for you to read in between the lines and continue to negotiate better through these gimmicks.
How do you make sure you’re getting a good price? Here are some pointers. Keep one practicing with every purchase you make and every time you will get better at it.

Get offers from three or four companies for a medical product or services. Never rely on bid from a single company or salesman only.

Go online, Google it, search and see how much the product or service is available online for.

Let the companies bidding for the purchase know that you have researched the price. Then ask them to beat the price.

Go for the lowest offer with the most reliable post sales service.

5) If two companies offer you the same price, go with the one which has been honest with the dealing during the process.

You can find medical vendors at directories such as VendorMD.com