Archive for February 2012
Medical Sales Reps: Sara’s Method for Leaving Irrelevant and Annoying Voicemail Messages
Yesterday, I stopped to say hello to a surgeon who has been a good friend of mine for years. He motioned for me to have a seat in his office as he was rapidly going through his voice mails. I was impressed with the speed at which he punched the delete button to avoid wasting even a second on any message which did not interest him.
One message stands out because of the comment the doctor made. The message was, “Dr. Barns, this is Sara with (she stated the name of her company, which I will omit to spare them the embarrassment). I’m really excited and I have some exciting news to share with you. Call me back at 555-5555. I can’t wait to talk to you. Bye.”
The doctor, thinking out loud retorted, “Sara, I’m glad you’re excited…I’m not excited.” He hit delete without making a note of the message and quickly moved to the next.
I asked him about Sara’s message. “Steve, do you have any idea what Sara is talking about that should excite you?”
He shot me a clueless look and said, “I don’t even know who she is. I’ve got 26 patients to see this afternoon. The only excitement I’m interested in is the excitement I will feel if I get out of the office while it is still daylight…then I’ll be excited!”
I thought about Sara. She’s probably calling every customer in her territory, leaving a similar message, and getting a similar response to the one I witnessed. What’s sad is that she likely feels as if she is being productive because she’s staying busy. Dr. Barns blew off the call and didn’t give it another thought. Unfortunately, some of Sara’s other customers will respond to her “salesy” approach and not in a nice way. They will tell their staffs to keep her out of the office. Busy medical professionals guard their valuable time from salespeople who seem to want to waste it.
Leaving a voicemail when a customer is unavailable has become a way of life. If you can’t leave one that’s effective, you’re better off not leaving one at all. And if you can’t leave an effective voicemail, you probably can’t sell effectively either because leaving a voicemail is nothing more than an extension of your sales effort. Is your entire value proposition based on “I’m excited?” If no, then why would you leave a voice mail message suggesting that it is?
Healthcare customers don’t care about how excited you are, how great your product is, or what you want to show them, sell them, or share with them. Their ONLY concerns are meeting THEIR goals and priorities, solving THEIR problems, overcoming THEIR challenges, and hopefully, helping THEIR patients. If you can’t articulate a value proposition that suggests your ability to accomplish these things for your customers, then you need to invest the time to learn how to do this and avoid your customers until you do.
Here’s a tip for sales managers: Do you have a non-performing sales rep? Ask him/her to leave you a voice mail message as if you are a customer who isn’t available. What is the value proposition implied in the voice mail? Is the message customer/patient focused or sales rep (I’m excited!)/product focused? If someone left you this voice mail, would you return the call?
Messages like Sara’s are surprisingly common. That’s bad for those who sell like Sara, but it’s a great opportunity for the small percentage of medical sales professionals who know how to deliver a relevant message effectively and consistently.
“Sara, if you would like to be able to deliver a customer-focused message so that customers will make spending time with you a priority so you can consistently hit your sales goals as opposed to driving customers to hit the delete button, give me a call at 561.333.8080. Then you will have something to REALLY get excited about!” I hope that Sara and YOU get the message.
Is being too young or too old an issue in medical sales? Only if you allow it to be.
People who sell in the world of health care have age hang-ups. That should be no shock, as people have concerns about age in most areas of life, both in terms of being judged, as well as judging others. Medical sales is no different.
Sales representatives speak to me about the age issue more frequently than I ever imagined. Usually it’s a baby-faced sales rep who was just hired out of college and fears that the health care professionals to whom he sells won’t take him seriously. I have also had conversations with older sales representatives who fear some gray hair or laugh lines might make it harder to get past the gatekeeper or to be seen as relevant in a rapidly changing healthcare environment.
Do customers make judgments about medical salespeople based on how young or how old they look? The answer is yes…if you let them.
Ronald Reagan’s age was a factor during his re-election campaign in 1984. At age 73, he was the oldest presidential candidate in history. When asked during a debate with his opponent, former Vice-President Walter Mondale, if Reagan thought he had the energy at his age to serve as President, Reagan retorted, “I want you to know that I will not make age an issue of this campaign. I am not going to exploit, for political purposes, my opponent’s youth and inexperience.”
Just like Reagan, your age won’t be a factor unless you allow it to be. You get to decide how your customers see you at your first meeting. If you stutter and stammer like an intimidated schoolboy in the principal’s office who is trying to explain why he is there, your youth and inexperience is what will be remembered. Likewise, if you confidently engage the customer in a value-focused conversation that leaves her with a feeling that you can make a difference, she’ll remember your knowledge and professionalism.
Sales representatives are often heard to complain that they don’t have a good product to compete, or “I could hit quota if I only had what the customer wants.” A sales manager’s usual response is to “Sell what you’ve got.” That’s good advice for products and services, but it also applies to the age issue. Sell “what you are” as a benefit!
If you’re on the left side of the age curve, by all means make sure you are adequately trained and certified to a level of competency before you get in front of customers. Then sell the benefits of being young and new. New sales reps are eager to learn, eager to please, energetic and hungry. They are often willing to go the extra mile to satisfy a customer where a tenured sales rep is too busy or has trained his customers not to expect anything more than what he delivers. Younger sales reps will usually subordinate their egos and position the healthcare customer as the expert, which is something that all sales reps should do. Many healthcare professionals like to help new sales reps to get established when they show drive and initiative and focus on the customer and the patient instead of just trying to sell a product.
If you’re part of the medical sales demographic who fears that streaks of gray in your hair or a lack of youthful good-looks is holding you back, get over it! While it is true that there are health care professionals who will allow a young and handsome or pretty sales rep into their office for nothing more than to admire him or her for a few minutes, it will never provide the basis for a purposeful business relationship. Pretty might get you into the office, but it won’t keep you there for long. Competency will.
Age does have the benefit of perceived experience. My hair was completely gray by the time I was 30. I never liked looking older than I was, but it provided many of my customers with a level of comfort. Often, I would be in the operating room with a product manager as both the surgeon and I were learning a new surgical procedure. The product manager was usually my age but I looked 10 years older. The surgeon would often verify any advice from “the kid” by soliciting my thoughts based on “my experience.” With hair dye or shaving my head as my only other options, I learned to position “experience” as one of the selling points of doing business with Mace and I studied my ass off to make sure I could back it up with technical competency.
Age is only a factor if you fail to differentiate yourself to your customers in more important ways. Don’t add a touch of gray to your hair if you’re 22 and don’t think that a facelift will help you to hit quota if you’re 62. Just “sell what you’ve got” but do it competently and effectively so that your customers think of you for the value that you bring instead of how you look.
The Differentiator in Medical Sales
The rules of medical selling have changed in most segments of the industry. Where it used to be possible to ingratiate a customer with a nice meal or a weekend at a resort, there is now little that you can do outside of providing a great product, providing great service and saying thank you.
Or is there?
Medical reps are always asking about how to differentiate their products. Often, it’s difficult because many products today are seen as commodities, that is, they all seem the same. So a differentiator has to be something else.
Like what?
Like You.
What is your idea of great service? If it means you return phone calls and solve your customer’s problems when they ask you to, so what? That doesn’t differentiate you. Healthcare providers and institutions are used to people returning their phone calls and solving their product problems when they request it. It’s a baseline expectation, not a differentiator.
What about saying “Thank you” when a customer decides to do business with you? Is your appreciation palpable to the customer if all you do is move your lips and utter two syllables? When the barista at Starbucks says “Thank you” after you hand over $4 for a latte, is it the “Thank you” that makes you come back for another? Saying thank you is good manners, but it’s not a differentiator.
It’s hard to differentiate yourself as the chosen supplier when your products look the same as your competitors, your service looks the same as your competitors, and yes, even the way you say “Thank you” is the same.
The only way a medical sales representative can remain relevant when products matter less is to BE the differentiator.
Every sales rep I meet pays lip service to the differentiators I talk about here, but few actually make the effort to deliver. Why? Because it’s hard work.
Knowing more than your competition is hard work. If your entire base of knowledge is limited to the sales training and product training provided by the companies that you represent, you can’t differentiate yourself. Clinical medicine is changing by the day. What makes you think that something you learned months or even years ago equips you to compete against those who create the time to read, study, and practice? When you can have a current concepts conversation with a customer that your competitors can’t have, that’s a differentiator.
Good service is returning phone calls. Differentiating service is anticipating your customers’ needs and then over-delivering on their expectations before they ask. Focus on providing patient and provider outcomes instead of selling a product and you differentiate your level of service.
Saying “Thank you” doesn’t differentiate you as a sales professional, but expressing your appreciation in a genuine, specific, and non-patronizing way does. Instead of stopping at just a quick verbal “thank you,” why not mail the customer a handwritten thank you note saying that you truly appreciate the trust they put in you? Offer one or more ways that you can make the customer’s job easier. And then DO IT! That’s showing appreciation. And by the way, healthcare customers just like spouses and significant others start to think that you no longer appreciate them when you stop telling them that you do. Don’t underestimate this seemingly small act—it’s a differentiator.
It’s the manufacturer’s responsibility to differentiate at the market level, but at the customer level, differentiation is your job. The only differentiator you control to improve and maintain the sales in your territory is the one in the mirror.
Medical and Pharma Reps, if customers won’t talk to you unless you bribe them with food, answer this: “what the hell are you selling?”
I wrote an article back in 2006, What Happens When You Can’t Even Buy a Customer Lunch, that discusses the implications of the AdvaMed (Advanced Medical Technology Association) Code of Ethics for Interaction with Health Care Professionals. Effective since January 2004, it eliminated financial (or gastronomic) inducements (other than what is incidental to normal business) for physicians and health care institutions to use a given medical device.
Today, there are an abundance of online posts decrying the unfairness and sales-killing implications of The Sunshine Act. A typical post reads, “Buying lunch for the office or the physician was the only way to get a few minutes of the doctor’s time. Thanks to the Sunshine Act, there’s no reason for the doctor to see me now.”
Please pardon a clichéd, overused millennial response, but… REALLY?
Over the decades, pharmaceutical reps, and too often medical sales reps operated more like catering businesses and less like professional health care sales representatives. When a sales rep whimpers, “Bringing lunch was the only way the gatekeeper would let me in the door,” I almost find it laughable…almost, because it’s not funny. The college-educated sales professional can’t get past the lowest-paid employee in the physician’s office without offering a tray of food as a bribe. Who is hiring and training these people?
Medical sales is a noble profession and I have little patience for anyone who diminishes the value that sales professionals provide. Doctors cannot deliver care without the necessary diagnostic tools, medical devices, and pharmaceuticals to treat their patients. When you get a product or service into the hands of those who provide care, it’s because decision-makers recognize value. In the critical world of health care, selling value has little to do with a salami sandwich or tray of lasagna and everything to do with communicating the right message to the right people at the right time. And for those of you who defend the practice with, “Well, the food gets me in front of the customer so I can sell the value,” I say “The only value the customer sees in you is a free lunch.” When you are able to offer a solution that delivers palpable benefits to health care providers and their patients that include improving outcomes, reducing risk, saving money or anything else that keeps them up at night, they are willing to talk to you and yes, they will buy their own sandwich. But if you sound like every other rep whose value proposition just blends into canned sales noise, you’re going to have to buy your way in…only now you can’t. Bummer!
The Sunshine Act might be onerous; it might be an invasion of privacy and it might be extreme when it targets a seemingly low and insignificant level of compensation. If you feel defeated by it, then seriously—find a new line of work. Or you can look at it as leveling the playing field. Competing is no longer about the bigger expense account and gallons of Ben and Jerry’s. It’s about your ability to sell your value and the value of your product and service to every person you encounter that stands between you and the sale. Commit to learning how to do this and you’ll be closing business with customers where your competition can’t even get in the door. And your customers will treat you more like a valued professional and less like the delivery guy from Domino’s.
Medical sales: Coasting is what you do when you’re going downhill!
There is a mixed-blessing to earning commissions through recurring business. The plus side is the continuous selling of product with the associated steady flow of income. The potential downside is losing focus on expanding the customer base and product mix; in other words, you stop growing, become complacent and start coasting.
Medical sales is hard, and it’s easy to get caught up in the “busy work.” I consider busy work the activities that help you to maintain your business, but do little if anything to gain new business. Often, these tasks could and should be considered “minimum wage activities.” It’s a common paradox to find people who got into medical sales to earn a six figure income and then spend their days doing tasks for which an unskilled labor force receives on average $10 per hour! It’s the sales rep who makes deliveries herself instead of paying a courier to do it so she can make two or three sales calls instead. It’s the sales rep who delivers literature to a customer without having a sales conversation, when the same result can be achieved by sticking the literature in an envelope and buying a sixty cents postage stamp. Or it’s the surgical sales rep who schleps instruments and implants around the territory until 11:00 pm at night to set up for a customer’s surgical case the next day. It’s no small wonder that customers often see medical sales reps as little more than highly paid delivery people.
Talk to any of these reps and they will tell you that they’re working their asses off, and truthfully they are. They are working hard, but doing easy work. The hard work is selling, but it’s easy to avoid that by just staying busy instead of creating the time to do what you’re really paid to do—SELL. Metaphorically, you’re on the bike, but you’re not pedaling—you’re coasting!
Coasting in sales is when you’re doing what you need to do to keep the money flowing, but you’re not doing much, if anything, to increase your sales volume. The pitfall is finding yourself comfortable with the money you’re making and patting yourself on the back for maintaining the business and keeping your customers happy.
Sales representatives are an endangered species. Your relevancy is shifting due to the plethora of information that is available to your customers at the click of a mouse. The information that you fail to provide will eventually be found by your customers on their own. And when that happens, the only thing left to consider is who will deliver the product or service? If it’s you, than you really are just a delivery person.
When you’re not fanatically focused on selling, you’re coasting. Don’t confuse being busy with being successful. Success in medical sales requires you to get a customer who is not currently using your product to buy from you. Or it’s getting one of your current customers to buy a product from you that she is currently buying from someone else. But if all you’re doing is scrambling to hold onto the business you already have, make no mistake—you’re coasting—and coasting only works when you’re going downhill.
To learn how to sell effectively in the shortest period of time check out this video about my new online medical sales training course.
