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Abstract Academic promotion should look at problems from the perspective of doctors, so as to establish communication bridges, learn prescription concepts, and continue to learn and progress.
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I often hear sales representatives ask, "Why don't doctors listen when I tell them about the product? Why do I still get kicked out when I go to the clinic with confidence after receiving training?"
< p>This common problem is not surprising to me because I have experienced it too.I remember when I was a sales representative, I received arduous product training and sales skills training, which lasted for half a month, including various examinations, drills and video grading. Because I studied hard, I got good grades and felt confident at the end of the training. Then I returned to my area and went to the clinic excitedly, ready to work hard.
But what happened next made me extremely frustrated.
What happened is as follows. The doctor said, "I have been listening to your company talk about this for ten years. Someone said it before you came here, and now I listen to you again. I am very busy..." I What did you do wrong? I asked myself.
Similar things happen again and again, which makes me very frustrated. But I still repeat it over and over again, or talk about the product in different ways. I believe in the sales skills of training, and I believe in my product even more. "Sincerity leads to gold and stone," I believe.
But it turns out that no matter how diligently I visit, the effect is still limited.
Finally, I realized that teaching academics is really thankless!
01
Academic promotion should be viewed from a doctor’s perspective
I have reviewed it myself. Is the information provided by the company really old? uncertain.
Because new research and progress in any field really does not happen overnight. Even if a good study suddenly appears after waiting for a long time and is shown to the doctor, the doctor will just look at it and say "I got it" and then act as if nothing happened. Even when I show clinical evidence from abroad to clients, there are often clients who say, "A foreign country is a foreign country, and the races are different."
Am I not diligent enough? Neither.
I have started making early visits at 7:30 in the morning, and I used to work in the emergency department until about 1 in the morning at the latest... My number of clients and frequency of visits are relatively high. The manager and I had almost no time to sit down and wait for customers during the visit, and the customers never said that I was not diligent.
Is it because my customer relationship is not as effective as the "fees are met" approach? It doesn't look like either.
I can’t satisfy people who just want fees, and they are not my target customers, so I don’t need to invest a lot of time and energy. Even customers with fewer prescriptions gave me feedback: "I don't approve of your company style, but I approve of you. If you change to XX company, I will support you!" So I couldn't laugh or cry, so I thought, maybe customer sentiment is not the main problem.
Am I not investing enough resources? Neither.
With limited resources, it is impossible to "spread the rain and dew equally". I have calculated that my investment in key customers is no less than that of my competitors. Even if there is a gap in some cases, the opponent does not have an absolute advantage.
Am I not "flexible" enough? It's a bit like it, but it's not an absolute factor.
According to my observation, some children who have just entered the industry are very smart, and customers like them within a few days, but it may take me more time. I really don't have any advantage in this regard.
To be honest, for a long time when I was in sales, my sales performance was not bright. Many of my bosses thought that I was not suitable for sales, and I also suspected that I might not be the right person.
Once, during the marketing department training, I saw a market segmentation map that I had seen countless times. I was suddenly touched.
How did they draw it? How did this logic come about? I realized that the reason for my repeated failures was that I didn’t know how to analyze opportunities and seize them; I also didn’t know how to express myself naturally in a real environment. My knowledge and skills were dead! They are as cold and boring as a pliers wrench.
I may have never thought about the problem from the perspective of a doctor.
What is the communication bridge between me and the doctor?
Patient. There is only this answer.
02
Build communication bridges and learn prescription concepts
Although I have received various trainings, I am just a soldier armed to the teeth.
When I rushed to the battlefield, I actually lacked basic insight.
I know that I need to understand the department structure, I need product knowledge, medical knowledge, and I need to find "target doctors", "target patients" and "target departments". But facts have taught me time and time again that it doesn’t work! I don’t understand why I can’t graduate even though I worked so hard to complete these “homework”.
I got up again and again wherever I fell. One after another, how hard you try, but how stupid you are!
I never think carefully about how the data, training, and knowledge work in the real environment! I only think about utilitarianism, "What you are talking about has nothing to do with me? Can I exchange sales!"
I thought I knew everything about my customers. I knew their home addresses, their Children, their preferences, shoe sizes, birthdays, zodiac signs, and even blood types, I tried my best to figure out their temperament and needs... but I couldn't figure out how they treated the doctor! Who are their patients? I turned a blind eye to the diseases of the old patients in the outpatient department and the people on the beds in the inpatient department.
What are doctors’ experiences after using my product and competing products, and what are their prescribing concepts? How did these concepts come to be? Under what circumstances, what concerns and thoughts will they have, how did their successful experience come about, and what about their failed experience?
If I analyze it in detail, I can answer less and less. I'm basically just a spectator watching people seeing doctors. My interactions with my clients are minimal and I am a high-end nanny.
What I thought was academia turned out to be just about basic concepts, holding scientific meetings, talking about products, holding conferences, looking for speakers, whether they had good things to say about us, input-output ratio, etc., only That's all.
I realized that my failure was that there was something wrong with the information I collected. What I was familiar with about my clients had little overlap with the work they faced every day.
When I started studying patients, studying customer perceptions, and studying how they treated patients, I felt that the people who rejected me had truly changed.
We began to have a language to communicate with each other. How can I help them? When we think about it this way, our relationship is no longer a simple exchange of interests.
If I cure a patient with my products, I will be happy and feel a sense of accomplishment. I became emotionally attached to my product...like an enthusiastic mother saying to her child: "Give him a chance to try it." I am just as frustrated as the doctor about patients who cannot be cured. My first reaction is not "This has nothing to do with my product." I will rush to ask, "Please show me, please help me analyze, how could this be..." I even go from one hospital to another with the case. In hospitals, just to understand what the problem is, if you encounter someone who doesn’t understand, learn it quickly.
The product information and medical information I learned have also changed from slogans to vivid things that can be picked up at will. As it came out of my mouth, it began to sound less and less like a "sales pitch", but the client accepted it instead. As I take over new jurisdictions and develop new clients, I rely less and less on the client information and analysis my predecessor gave me. I like to do it myself. Like a doctor, you can palpate with your own hands, and your first visit is like meeting an old friend.
As for my previous shortcomings - the so-called improvement of emotional intelligence or strengthening communication skills, I found that I don't have to deliberately please anyone, as long as I don't annoy others. Just be myself and focus on what I do best. Being silly and stupid may actually appear sincere and reassuring.
Such a change is very simple, natural and effective. On good days, I continued to change jurisdictions every quarter and exceeded my quota every quarter. Even after a few years of leaving, there were still directors who came to me for information immediately when they encountered problems.
I developed my own routine and style.
03
You must learn the basic skills of the industry
As the old saying goes, "Ten minutes on stage, ten years off stage."
When we show up for a customer visit, that's show time. Before that, preparation around the show is the focus. To put it simply, it is conceptual judgment, patient flow, and diagnostic process.
This information cannot be easily obtained from customers. Many times it comes from observation, understanding from different ways, interpreting and reasoning about the collected information, and then putting it together like a puzzle. Sometimes you make mistakes. You'll be happier if you spell it right.
Frankly speaking, this process is much more difficult than being a guest. But it will change people's thinking and see opportunities that they couldn't see before.
On this basis, the knowledge and skills in your mind will be activated, you will be aware of details that you could not notice before, and you will not be as reckless as before. You will know what to say and how to behave so that it is easy for customers to accept it, and there is no need to deliberately Develop a sense of presence every day. In this way, the extra time can be used to find new customers, or simply take a rest. Because at this stage, customers’ decisions on medication are based on their own wishes, not just to help me. Even if I leave, sales will not change significantly because of me. This is a kind of competitiveness that is unique to me and difficult for competitors to copy.
Nowadays, when I go to the hospital, I often see the so-called "noon" concentrated working period, and there are also the phenomenon of "waiting to be summoned" at the door of the clinic. I feel that many people think that visits are only useful and effective during a few periods of the day, and the rest are almost garbage time.
I feel very sad about this. Are there still people who will try their best to collect information and draw their own battlefield maps? Treating show time as the place where the greatest investment of time and energy is put is putting the cart before the horse.
When several departments are together, the easiest things to hear are:
“You don’t understand, please make it simpler”, “This is useless”, “Why don’t we Learn from other companies, how they do it"...
Countless cases in history tell us that even if American soldiers are armed to the teeth, if they go to a place where the terrain information is missing, , the possibility of being killed continues to increase. The outcome of a war is never entirely determined by the quality of weapons.
What about our industry?
Are we eliminated by our competitors or by ourselves?
04
If you don’t study, no one can help you
Based on my own practice, I personally feel that the ten years of rapid development of medicine are "self-defeating martial arts" ten years.
The detailed division of labor and the improvement of efficiency are good things and are good for large-scale expansion of enterprises, but the weakening of personal abilities is obvious. Individuals are more like machines on an assembly line, focusing on execution, and those thoughts that improve personal abilities are not deliberately shaped.
On the other hand, industry compliance constraints have led to the reduction of previous sales methods. If market behavior will become more complicated in the future, collaboration and communication among relevant departments will become more complicated, and it will be dangerous for the sales team to still hold the idea of ??"I just need to aim and pull the trigger." Sales, marketing, and medicine are three languages. Knowing only one language is like not understanding the language/thinking of a doctor. It is difficult to improve in depth. Just relying on the other party to break it down and explain it to you will make you waste your martial arts skills in the process. "Mohammed went to look at the mountain, but the mountain didn't move, so Mohammed walked towards the mountain." Are you a mountain? Or a thoughtful person?
It will be increasingly difficult for people who only speak a single language to adapt to industry development in the future. If the medical department, marketing department, and sales department represent the three services, facing today's market competition, it is obvious that one service department alone is unable to meet its needs. If you only know one mode, how can you coordinate and cooperate with other arms in joint operations?
Where is our core competitiveness? A salesperson who only aims at pulling the trigger is neither a sales specialist nor a generalist in the industry. The industry threshold lacks a certain degree of complexity and technicality, and the so-called personal core competitiveness attributes appear fragile and fragile. As a sales representative, if you only rely on others to tell you the results and goals, if the person telling you is wrong, are you going to fight to the end without hesitation? The base of soldiers who only know how to shoot is very large, and they are more likely to become cannon fodder. History is like this.
One of the reasons why Xiaobing, played by Sun Honglei in the once-popular TV series "The Righteous Way in the World", stands out is that he is very good at drawing maps, which is rare in the same era. Lin Biao was almost like a god of war in the battlefield. It is said that he remembered the terrain of every corner within dozens of kilometers of the battlefield. Where the battle started and where it ended was consistent with his deduction. This is called the ultimate strategy, and this is the core competitiveness.
Patient portraits, customer portraits, key information and all market hospital information are just a starting point. It is equivalent to someone using their own experience to screen some customers and information evidence for you and then tell you what to do to maximize your chances of winning.
However, this does not replace your thinking and initiative on the front line.
Strategy is at the center and tactics are at the front line. Don’t mistake strategy for tactics!
Who will pay for you if you can’t achieve sales?
(The author has drawn dozens of maps during his own research, because as his understanding deepens, his vision will change)
05
Summary
Finally, I summarize my own views.
Today’s training is the same as studying in college. It is just the starting point, not the end. Learning is lifelong.
The common language between us and doctors is the patient and the treatment plan. You need to know the patient flow, diagnosis and treatment process, and more importantly, what kind of external and internal environment your doctor is in, and what kind of experience does he need? What is his concept of prescription? What are the drivers and what are the barriers? What can we do to help him?
Even if you can't do the above, and just want to simply press the trigger and type blindly, then you must have your own relatively simple "local map"! ? If you look for Beijing on a map of China, there is only one point, but Beijing is very, very big.
I have more failures than successes. It is natural for beginners to choke on water, but they will get used to it. I didn’t say the process would be easy, but you can’t learn to swim without getting into the water.
But even if you can’t learn to be an athlete, you can still learn to dig like a dog without sinking. Even if you learn incorrectly, you can learn to be a human torpedo.
I have also seen many people who do not follow this routine and still have a prosperous life. Everyone has his or her own practice. For myself, I feel that if I don’t have the talent of Southern Emperor and Northern Beggar, it is relatively easy to learn from Guo Jing. I should follow the steps and use time and effort to make up for the lack of talent.
The above nagging is my personal thoughts, as my explanation of "why I was kicked out by the doctor". That's what I thought, and I succeeded after improving it. I also believe that there are more and better ways out there.
I wish you success, may you find a direction and method that suits you, and may the world treat you gently.