I apologize for the delay in posting.  No excuses, just a learning curve that is taking me longer than expected:  My new book, Getting It Done, publishes June 20, 2011, and I am learning social media skills not taught when I went to medical school.  During residency, a mentor taught me that any job worth doing is worth doing imperfectly at first in order to get better.

I can only imagine what you must be thinking: “I have enough to do; why do I need to learn selling?”  My point is that you are already doing selling in its most basic form any time you ask a patient to sign an informed consent form or ask a nurse to do a task for a patient.  Selling basically is persuasion, and good salespeople are good listeners (p.15), regardless of how stereotypical salespeople abuse the privilege.  One cannot understand what people want unless one learns to listen.  Unlike hearing, listening is an active process that involves:

• Concentrating on the speaker, maintaining comfortable eye contact
• Listening with one’s eyes as well as ears to be mindful of body language
• Opening one’s stance to convey receptivity
• Suspending judgment to maintain objectivity
• Empathizing, trying to put oneself in the speaker’s frame of reference, using summary questions, such as, “Do I understand you to say….,”

How to Sell Anything to Anyone Anytime by Dan Kahle is a great introduction to the selling process.  He clarifies misconceptions and then writes, “Selling is the science of helping people get what they want” (p.21-2).  Asking questions helps people make decisions that result in their exchanging something that they have for something that you offer.  His Five-Step Selling Process involves (p. 25-7):

• Engage the right people, ie those who recognize that they have a problem, are accessible, have resources to invest, want to resolve their problem now, and are people with whom you enjoy working.  We are not talking about being on call, where one has a duty to see and treat patients.
• Make them comfortable with you, understanding that the other party defines comfort and risk, not you.  The greater his or her perception of the risk, the greater must be the relationship to enable someone to take that risk (p.71).  As with elective surgery, patients must feel that you understand and appreciate their concerns in order to lay their lives on the line.
• Find out what they want and appeal to that need.  Succcessful salespeople probe to discover what issues are important, what problems people want to solve, and what they are looking for in a sales experience rather than force products or services on others.
• Craft your presentation to show them how what you are offering gives them what they want.  If you are not successful initially, analyze whether you are offering the wrong solution or talking to the wrong people
• Gain agreement on the next step.  Every interaction has a next step, extending from gaining  prospects’ attention to setting up a conversation to learn more about their needs to crafting a presentation to solve their problems to getting them to commit to action, ie closing the sale.  A “no” is preferable to a “maybe,” so that you can focus your attention on prospects who truly value what you do rather than on people who are stringing you along.

When you feel great about what you do, selling becomes service, leveraging your talents to benefit others  and being paid for your knowledge and experience.  It is an iterative journey which, like learning judgment and technique, is something that any motivated healthcare professional can master.

Please let me know what you think about edgy posts that address the elephant in the room and what you desire to learn in the future.  May all your transitions be learning journeys.

Kenneth H. Cohn, MD, MBA, FACS

© 2011, all rights reserved

Disclosure:

I have a material connection because I received a review copy that I can keep for consideration in preparing to write this content.