medicalsalesschool.com Blog

One of the signs of gross inexperience in any type of sales is when a salesperson describes his or her product as “the best” or as “superior.”  Think of how ridiculous this sounds to your prospect! You can’t tell anyone that your product is the best because you have no credibility in the regard that you have a conflict of interest because you stand to benefit from the sale — of course you are going to say it’s the best.

Medical sales professionals present their products or services from the perspective of how it will benefit the medical professional and the patient.  You can present scientific data from reputable journals (be careful of “white papers”) and let the clinician decide how your product stacks up in any particular study and arrive at his or her own conclusion that your product offers distinct advantages over your competitors. You can point out distinct features and benefits between products.  You can ask the prospect which product he feels would deliver a superior outcome, or some other real-world benefit.  But you can’t say that your product is the best.
Sell with this adage in mind:  “If you say it, they can doubt it; but if they say it, then to them, it must be true.”

Don’t ever begin a presentation with the overused, amateurish line, “Hey doc — would you like to see the best (your widget) on the market?  When you do that, you lose all credibility and you start your presentation with your prospect thinking, “okay — here comes a sales pitch” instead of “let’s see if you can offer me a solution.”

Your product might be the best, but you can’t say it.  You can show the solution you offer, and ask questions that will force the prospect to compare your offering to the others that are available.  But unless your prospect arrives at the conclusion that your product is the best, then to him or her, it’s not.

I spoke to a medical sales rep today who told me that his presentations go well, until it comes time to ask for the business or “close” as we all like to call it.

I asked him to tell me what it is that he is feeling emotionally at this point in the presentation. Very glibly, he admitted that he feels anxiety and starts to stutter. He also admitted that he has not been closing effectively.

Conceptually, it seems pretty simple — once you have gone through the presentation, demonstrated how your product or service fills the prospect’s needs, handled objections, etc. — you just ask for the business. If you haven’t practiced asking for the business and you are not comfortable transitioning to this point of the sales process, it will create a feeling of discomfort.

Sales people are told to “expect the sale” and even to assume it’s a done deal as you ask for the business. This is so much easier to do if you prepare ahead of time for every part of the sales presentation, including getting your attitude and excitement up before you come face-to-face with the prospect.

In medical sales, closing should be easy if you have done everything else right and you are not trying to figure out what you are going to say next. If you cannot go through the presentation smoothly when you are practicing by yourself, you will probably bungle it in front of the customer.

Healthcare providers are not comfortable buying from sales people who are not comfortable selling. If you can’t do your presentation smoothly, with confidence and a smile, then you need to practice it until you can. Don’t make the mistake of thinking that you can “wing-it.” Do what the pros do — practice!

A busy doctors office, critical care unit, or administration department is not the place for casual conversation. Medical professionals are busy people and they don’t take well to salespeople who schedule time or “pop-in” to talk about the football game on Sunday.

When you’re there for a sales call, get down to business — politely, but quickly. The most valuable time in most medical device reps lives is when they are face-to-face with a customer. Use this time to execute the call plan that you prepared in advance (you did prepare in advance, right?).

ONce you have received a commitment from the customer to use, try, or support your product, or you have gotten their commitment to move to the next step of the sale — then you can banter about non-professional subjects like golf and food. But don’t waste that valuable time until you have used it to meet the goals for your sales plan.