Stop Selling!

Are we too focused on the number of calls we need to make each week, on reaching the right numbers, selling our quotas and meeting quarterly goals? In other words, are we only about selling something?

Maybe that’s our problem.

We keep hearing the voice of the sales manager in our heads, telling us to get the orders, move the products, increase the sales — on and on and on! What we don’t hear anyone ask of us is to build relationships, enhance our networking and meet new health care professionals.

We may be so focused on the numbers that we fail to see what actually helps us reach those numbers. So let’s stop selling and take a new approach: Ask yourself, “Of the people I met for the first time last week, who could become a customer?”

Stop worrying about what deals you are going to close next. Instead, start building relationships and learning more about your potential customers. Consider the following five important relationship-building strategies that just may lead to that next sale:

1. Learn about the work of your professional customers. Too often we spend time with someone we think could become a customer, only to find that they have little interest in the products we offer. You may find that although you came to talk to a social worker or a nurse about one product, they are really interested in something else. All the patients the social worker meets may need your products and services, or the case management nurse may only work with a select group of diabetic patients.
2. Learn about the kinds of patients the potential referral source works with and the major clinical issues and challenges those patients face. Does your customer work with patients with a particular illness or diagnosis? Are their patients being treated by physicians you know? Do their patients go to treatment centers or rehab clinics that you also work with? The more you understand their customers, the better able you will be to help your own.
3. Decide what products and services you can provide that will meet their needs. While you are listening to your customer, put your thinking cap on: What do you have in your store, warehouse, or can you otherwise access that will meet his or her needs? The goal is not necessarily to tell them about everything you do and see, but to talk about the products that would be of interest to them in their work with patients.
4. Get to know the lifestyle, work environment and business stressors of your products’ end-users. The more you know about your patients/end-users the better able you will be to meet their needs. You may want to attend clinical conferences on specific diagnoses or go to staffing conferences to increase your medical knowledge. Take time to read about key diseases, treatment plans and the meanings of clinical and medical terms used when discussing the care of particular patients. Some of the best education can come from the respiratory therapists and clinicians working within your own company.
5. Take time to gain an understanding of the customer’s priorities. Talk with the customer about what is important to them. Ask referral sources what their most important concerns are when they are working with a home care company and what challenges they have faced with other companies.

Remember to focus on finding ways to share the message about your services and programs — and not just to sell them. You want people to know that you are different and unique but, most important, you want customers to get to know you, respect you and appreciate the quality of the products and services you offer.

Think more about building the business relationship and setting the groundwork for a positive rapport rather than focusing upon what kind of business the account can generate.

Stop selling! As a former customer, I can tell you it all sounds like something we’ve heard before. Get to know your customer, and he or she will be more apt to want to get to know you. Your great work will ultimately sell itself.

Louis Feuer is president of Dynamic Seminars & Consulting Inc. and the founder and director of the DSC Teleconference Series, a teleconference training program. He can be reached at www.DynamicSeminars.com or by phone at 954/435-8182.