Archive for the ‘General’ Category
I love watching accountability in action. Just last week I was staying at a great hotel, the Embassy Suites, inPortland,OR. The next morning I had to leave quickly after my meeting to get to the airport. Because there wasn’t a taxi stand at the hotel, it could take ten or fifteen minutes to get a taxi, so the doorman suggested I arrange for the taxi to be waiting at a specific time.
When I walked out of the hotel at the arranged time, there wasn’t a taxi waiting. The doorman called the taxi-cab company to see how long it would be. He told me it could be ten minutes. This gentleman knew I was concerned about getting to the airport on time to make my flight. That’s when he said, “Don’t worry, I’ll take you. Wait right here.” Within moments, he drove up and off we went.
First, the hotel was not obligated to take me to the airport. They typically don’t make “airport runs.” It wasn’t the doorman’s fault that my cab didn’t show up, but he accepted the responsibility to take care of my problem.
That’s accountability! Taking ownership of the situation, whether it be good or bad.
I’ve written about this before. It is like the shipment we sent to a client that never arrived. We get the call from the client. Hey, we shipped it. It’s not our fault. But, I would never tell that to the client. I would simply say, we’ll take care of it, and then we find out what happened. It’s not our fault, but it is our problem – to solve!
Accountability can create customer confidence, and confidence can lead to loyalty.
Shep Hyken, CSP, CPAE is the Chief Amazement Officer of Shepard Presentations. As a professional speaker and author, Shep helps companies develop loyal relationships with their customers and employees. For more information on Shep’s speaking programs and books, please contact (314) 692-2200. Email: shep@hyken.com Web: www.hyken.com. For information on customer service training, go to www.TheCustomerFocus.com.
If you sell to doctors in the U.S., it’s probably no surprise to you that many are not happy with their jobs and who can blame them. They are losing control of how they treat their patients, the government and insurance companies are telling them what they can charge for what they do, and the costs of maintaining a practice keep going up. A recent survey of 20,000 physicians confirmed their discontent in that 52% said that if they had it to do over, they wouldn’t go into medicine.
As a medical sales professional, you may be wondering, “So what does this have to do with me?” The answer is, “A lot!”
You have a 50-50 chance of calling on someone who wishes he or she was doing something else to earn a living. You have to acknowledge the possibility that the curiosity, wanderlust, and unlimited income potential that may have motivated some doctors to pursue a career in medicine has diminished. These doctors are not interested in spending time with salespeople just to know what’s available. The truth is, many no longer care. They just want to get through each day with as little interruption as possible.
Physicians who are less than satisfied with their careers often operate with a survival mentality, that is, “Don’t spend more than necessary (money AND time), do only what needs to be done, and don’t get sued.” Where do you fit into each customer’s thinking?
The Problem: If you are one of the majority of salespeople who is product-focused in your selling, you violate the time, money, and risk (don’t get sued) mindset. Whatever product you sell, customers already have a product that essentially does what yours does, or they feel they don’t need it. Giving you time to look at your product will consume valuable time and if they decide to buy, money that they or their hospital doesn’t want to spend. And finally, when you ask a physician to do something different than he or she is doing now, you introduce the element of risk because the outcome that will occur from using your product is unknown, even if it’s predictable (i.e., don’t mess with what’s working). So if you walk around trying to sell a “product,” you’ve already lost half your customers in the first 15 seconds of your sales presentation.
The Opportunity: Doctors who would choose another career over practicing medicine feel that way because of the increasing challenges in their professional and personal lives. When one of these physicians senses that you can eliminate, reduce, or make tolerable any of these challenges, you have their attention. Engage them in a compelling conversation that allows them to see, and more importantly to feel how they can achieve a desired or improved outcome for their patients in less time, with less money, and with reduced risk and you will have customers that are eager to buy. But this can only happen if you are focused on them and solving their problems or pain, not trying to sell a product.
What about the other 48% who said they would go into medicine again if they had it to do over? They might be slightly more open to meeting with sales reps, but truthfully, each of them is also a potential problem or opportunity. The bottom line is that most physicians won’t welcome an intrusion from a product salesman. However, they will MAKE TIME to talk to anyone who they truly believe can make their lives and their patients’ lives better.
You’ve got 15 seconds…
Mace Horoff has spent the last 28 years working with the medical device industry. He is an award-winning speaker, trainer, author and consultant focused on sales force effectiveness for
the medical device, pharmaceutical, dental, and other related healthcare industries. To learn how Mace can make your medical sales force more effective, please call (561) 333-8080 or
mace@medicalsalestraining.com.
Average medical sales reps are an endangered species. Stop being average and learn how to sell like the top 5% of medical sales professionals with a comprehensive and convenient online eTraining course.
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Now, on to the question:
What is the top all-time paid app for Apple’s iPhone?
As consumers use their mobile devices more and more to enjoy music, television and movies, they are facing a capacity crunch as those devices quickly fill up, writes Gregory Schmidt in the New York Times. Cloud services from Apple, Amazon and others help with the storage problem, but they come with annual fees, he points out. Services from iTunes and Amazon are free for lower capacity storage, but then jump to $25 a year and up. Western Digital has introduced My Book Live, an external hard drive that creates a personal cloud for shared storage on a home network. For $180, you get a terabyte of storage capacity, and you can share files with other computers on your home network, stream media to an entertainment center, and access files on your mobile devices. It also serves as an automatic wireless backup for all computers.
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