The receptionist in a healthcare practice is usually the least-skilled, lowest paid employee. We’re talking someone who probably earns $10/hour on average.
Compare the medical sales professional to the receptionist. The sales rep often has a college or graduate degree and earns many times what the receptionist earns. The medical sales rep has excellent sales skills, relationship skills, and expertise combined with products or services that offer solutions to the healthcare provider. That is, if the sales rep can figure out how to get past the $10 receptionist.
Don’t misunderstand me – I mean no disrespect to the receptionist. These are often hard-working, nice people that are just doing what they are told to do – “not to let any sales people into the office to waste the doctor’s time.” If you, as a sales person, are there just to waste the doctor’s time, than you should allow your life to be controlled by the receptionist. However, if you bring value in the form of solutions and innovations that can improve the doctor’s practice and the lives of his or her patients than you need to start earning your money.
Always treat the receptionist and everyone in the doctor’s practice with courtesy and respect. But part of the reason you entered medical sales is to earn a professional-level income and that won’t happen if you can’t get past the lowest-paid employee in the practice. The reps that are making the money that you want to make know how to do this.
Don’t you think you should learn how?
Here’s a hint: what information could you communicate to the doctor that would make him or her want to speak with you? Here’s another hint: What’s in it for the doctor and the patient? Final hint: It’s not about you or your company – the communication should not start off with “I” or “my company.”
One last thought – How could you get the receptionist to help you get in to see the doctor?
Are your sales efforts being thwarted by a $10 per hour employee? Think about it…
Mace,
This is my weakest area of performance and I’ve been wrestling with this for about two years. My approach is to catch the Dr in the operating room or buy lunch.
I hate option #2 as I’m a distributor and don’t have the luxury of an expense account like my drug rep colleagues.
Don’t make the mistake of trying to make a complex sale in the OR by rushing the sale in the brief encounter with the doctor. Give him enough information to meet with you (i.e., what’s in it for him) and ask him to schedule some time with you outside the OR. It can be lunch, dinner, or preferably a meeting in his office. Always make the meeting worthwhile in terms of what the doctor learns so that he is eager to meet with you again.