How Alliance Medical tripled its close rate on competitive deals
Gareth WalshChief Growth & Marketing Officer, Alliance Medical
Alliance Medical is one of Europe's largest providers of diagnostic imaging, running mobile and fixed-site MRI, CT and PET-CT scanners across the UK and Europe. Its 45-person sales team sells to NHS trusts, private hospitals and healthcare networks.
The challenge
Reps who knew the product cold, losing deals in the conversation
Alliance Medical's contracts regularly run past six figures, and they are decided by procurement committees, clinical leads and finance teams who each want something different. The reps understood MRI and PET-CT better than most people across the table. What slowed deals down was the conversation: a procurement lead pushing back on price, a trust saying it would revisit next quarter, a clinician who wanted the service but didn't control the budget.
“Our reps knew the product cold. What they struggled with was the conversation itself: the moment a procurement lead pushed back on price or an NHS trust said ‘we’ll revisit this next quarter.’ That’s where deals stalled.”Gareth Walsh, Chief Growth & Marketing Officer
Coaching couldn't keep up. With 45 reps across several countries, a regional manager could sit in on a handful of pitches a quarter, and the feedback depended on whichever meeting they happened to see. New hires needed 8 to 12 weeks before they could run a procurement conversation alone, so a senior rep held the relationship while the new person shadowed.
“We were essentially paying for two reps to do one job during every onboarding cycle. The senior rep held the relationship while the new hire shadowed. It wasn’t scalable.”Gareth Walsh
The solution
Rehearse the procurement meeting before it happens
Alliance Medical gave every rep an AI buyer modelled on the objections the team actually hears in NHS and private healthcare procurement. Scenarios came from its own playbook and were scored on its own scorecard, with feedback straight after each attempt.
- NHS budget objection: “We don’t have the budget allocated this fiscal year.”
- Clinical and commercial misalignment: the clinician wants the service, but procurement controls the contract.
- Competitive displacement: defending against an incumbent provider or a cheaper alternative.
- Contract renewal: an existing trust is thinking about switching providers.
New hires had to pass a certification of 15 scenarios, with minimum scores, before leading a meeting on their own. Nobody had to schedule the rest. Reps averaged four to five sessions a week, most of them self-started on the morning of a key meeting.
“With RepLab our reps are not just practicing, they are perfecting. The feedback loop is immediate: a rep can practice a procurement objection at 8am, refine their approach, and walk into the 10am meeting sharp. That simply wasn’t possible before.”
Gareth Walsh, Chief Growth & Marketing Officer, Alliance Medical
The impact
Close rates tripled within six months
Within the first six months, close rates on competitive procurement deals tripled. Reps walked in having already heard the objection they were about to get. Ramp time fell from 12 weeks to 5 because certification replaced shadowing, so new hires closed their own deals instead of handing them to senior reps.
Managers got time back as well. More than 10 hours a week across the management team moved from running repetitive roleplays to reviewing live deals.
Related: AI roleplay for sales teams and enterprise rollouts.
