Connecting The Dots of Healthcare

Yesterday, my youngest daughter had a friend, “P.”, staying over to spend the night. Arriving home, I found two kids anxious to be dragged around behind a jet ski on the lake and I was in the house only long enough to learn that dessert was fresh cherry pie.

“P.,” Sally exclaimed, “we’ve got cherry pie for dessert!”

P. didn’t share her enthusiasm. “I really don’t like cherries,” she said with a touch of disappointment.

“Really?” I said, “You really don’t like cherry pie?”

“Well, I don’t like cherries… but I like cherry flavoring.”

Sally countered, “How can you like cherry flavor if you don’t like real cherries?”

“I don’t know,” P. offered, “but I like cherry lollipops, cherry Kool-Aid, and cherry cough syrup.”

“Cherry COUGH SYRUP!!!!????” Sally and I said simultaneously.

Sally continued, “EEEWWW, GROSSSS!”

Sally was dumbfounded and expounded why real cherries were sooooo much better than any cherry flavored product. Why, cherry flavoring actually didn’t even taste like… well…  cherries! Cherry flavoring wasn’t even REAL, it was artificial!

About an hour later, the Real Cherry vs. Artificial Cherry Flavoring debate had been forgotten, washed away by a practical physics demonstration of angular momentum on two kids flying off a float behind an accelerating, turning jet ski.

Dinner was spectacular, fresh corn and squash from the garden of a friend and fresh cherry pie, except of course, for P. My wife placed a bowl of cherry Jello with Cool-Whip in front of P., prepared when we were on the lake.

How can someone prefer cherry Jello over a fresh cherry pie? Give a hundred people a choice between cherry pie and cherry COUGH SYRUP… who could possibly choose the cough syrup? My nephew Chris would, and has, consumed an entire cherry pie as a meal. He’d kill for cherry pie, his favorite food in the world.

So who would choose cough syrup?

 Well, P. would. And, well, that’s all that matters. 

‘Cause P. ain’t me, you, or Chris!

In sales, buyers like what they like and, more significantly, buy what they like. And that really is all that matters. If you don’t know what your buyer wants, and can’t provide what they like, you’re probably going to lose a sales opportunity.

“But you can’t even compare fresh cherries to artificial cherry flavoring!”

“You?”

Who is “you?”

Is “you” actually “them?”

If “you” is “them,” you’ve forgotten a cardinal rule: In sales, it’s not about you, it’s about them.

It doesn’t matter what you like, it’s what they like.  When you work to sell a physician, or any customer, something that they don’t prefer, you’re your own worst enemy. Got something “new and improved?” Give the options, briefly explain pro’s and con’s, and let them decide. They may just prefer artificial over “REAL.” “Artificial” may just be more “real” than “REAL” to them. Who knows? You don’t, until they tell you!

My wife was a pharmaceutical sales rep when I met her in my surgical residency. She hasn’t forgotten how to sell. Just ask P. Well, wait ‘till she finishes her second bowl of artificially flavored cherry Jello.