Össur was founded in 1971 and specializes in non-invasive mobility solutions. They are advocates of “Life Without Limitations,” and focus on Prosthetic, Osteoarthritis and Injury Solutions. Their team works with individuals, clinicians, and diverse communities to support a better quality of life for millions of people around the world. Össur Americas’ main operations center is located in southern California, with its service network extending across North America, from Mexico to Canada. 
To gain greater visibility into their market and better understand their customers’ challenges, Össur became a Trella Health customer in September 2022, now integrating Marketscape Insights data intelligence in their day to day operations.
Össur’s Director of National Accounts, Brian Keller, shared how he and his team leverage the Marketscape Insights data to better understand their customer needs and expand their business.
Can you talk about your background and current role at Össur?
“I’ve been with Össur for 6 years now. I started out as a field sales rep in southern California, then progressed to a health systems sales manager. From there, I took on the Director of National Accounts role. In this role, I am currently responsible for the bracing and support for health systems and IDNs within North America, national distribution partners that we work with, as well as ecommerce and retail. I have five team members that I work with.
Three of which focus solely on health system- related activities, and then I have two other individuals that work more closely with our distribution, ecommerce, and retail. Össur, from the sales organization perspective, is broken out into three regions: northeast, southeast and western region. Each of which is essentially captained by a regional sales manager, and then they each have a district sales manager. I would say on average they have anywhere from 10-12 field sales reps in each region.”
At Össur, who on your team utilizes the data in Marketscape Insights?
It’s a combination of both sales leadership and our reps in the field. We push it from the top down then get the feedback from the field sales reps as far as information that they’d like to see. We then take this information to our Trella customer success manager to help us understand how to better use Marketscape Insights more effectively to find the information we need. So essentially, it’s our entire sales team within bracing and support that utilizes the Trella platform.”
Prior to having access to market data, how did your team gain visibility into the market?
“We had a good view of the market just based on relationships and our leadership team having a pulse on market activity, but when we pushed this information out into the field for our sales team to run with, we ran into a few challenges. We found that we would run into a lot of inconsistencies and validation issues as far as having confidence in what was actually happening in the market. So this led to us asking ourselves what the most subjective and time-efficient way would be to understanding our market and truly what is happening out there. That’s what led us to look into Trella Health’s Marketscape Insights. Market data helps build a foundation for which we can then go out and test what the numbers are telling us, and then develop an understanding as far as what the market is doing, where the market is going, and better understand what our customers are facing.
How has having access to market data changed the workflow of your team? 
“Six years ago, as a sales rep, it was always said that it takes around 18 months to really understand your territory and what’s going on, who the main players are, and where you should focus a lot of your time. I had to, and reps nowadays must spend time in the car driving around and setting up meetings and trying to understand at the ground level what the market is doing. We would then take that feedback and make an overall assumption as to what the regions are doing as a whole. Having access to market data now, it’s really changed the way that we look at not only orienting new reps, but also how we as a leadership team look at the different regions.
What drove the Össur team to move forward with Trella Health?
“Initially we chose to move forward with Trella because we wanted a better understanding of our customers’ challenges. We also wanted to see if we could set a baseline that is objective for the market itself and essentially build out a plan on how we can protect market share. In addition to protecting market share, we wanted to be able to identify how we could expand into new product lines, understand if we have gaps in our product lines that we are missing out on from an opportunity standpoint, and then it kind of cascaded from there as we continue to see the benefits like time efficiencies, you name it.
What does your workflow look like using market data?
“In the beginning, I was looking at the data daily to gain a better understanding of the market. Now, I look at it 2-3 times a week more situationally to work with sales folks in the field. Both facilitating conversations as to how they’re viewing the data as well as the story that they’re able to tell from the data. They are also bouncing their ideas off me or vice versa and we’re really working now to say, ‘okay we have this data set, now let’s go test theories in the market and come back with results so we can better work on our strategies out in the field and be more efficient’.
The data insights have led us to having greater collaboration. It has helped individuals who have shown a large interest and greater understanding as far as how to interpret the data and utilize it in their territories, to expand their role into facilitating for other individuals who are having more of a challenge or are not really sure where to start with the data themselves. So, it’s definitely led to not only opportunities externally, but also opportunities for our internal folks.
What is your favorite feature of Marketscape Insights?
“For me, the decile ranking comparison between prescriber rank and order rank is truly a unique insight that you have to have in our industry to substantiate a relationship. These insights help us to shape conversations with customers that we don’t necessarily have a relationship with. With this, we have some intel to validate out in the field prior to having the conversation. The visual portions in the product are also really helpful. The payer mix is helpful to see especially for our industry and really understanding where the physician has access to from a health systems perspective.
For example, are they operating out of a clinic or are they employed by an actual health system? That’s all key stuff for us to see in our industry. 
Do you have any success stories to share?
“At Össur, our sales team is about 50% brand new, so they’ve been with the organization for less than a year. In the past, from my own anecdotal data, we were shown where our customers are positioned in the territory based on Össur’s data. Essentially it would help us go out in the field, orient ourselves, and then know who to build relationships with. We would understand where the opportunity is based on info passed on from rep to rep to rep. Now, with Marketscape Insights, we are taking the data that we have internally and enriching it with Marketscape data to build out where all the pieces fit within the gameboard itself as opposed to only seeing what Össur knows internally.
It has really helped reps to understand and familiarize themselves with their territory, identify areas to grow, and understand if they are missing out on potential opportunities. It also helps to shape that coaching conversation to make a more efficient call pattern.
What advice would you give to someone considering purchasing Marketscape Insights?
“It’s been about 2 years since I’ve been trying to get market data that was continually updating, not static but dynamic. I essentially said that without data, Amazon would still be selling books. They made strategic decisions based on what their market was doing and developed themselves into the leader in logistics across the country and now across the world. So, that’s what helped move our team in the direction to say ok let’s pull the trigger on this and really break it down. How much is the contract and how many new accounts do we need to acquire in order for it to pay for itself?
Once that was all identified and laid out it was an easy sell from there. We will have more successes to come with this market data, I’m sure of that.”
Trella is thrilled to have Össur as a trusted and valued partner who supports our mission towards smarter growth and healthier outcomes. To learn more, visit their website here.
