Diagnosis
All the pieces are in place, but there's something holding back your career.
Prescription
An increased understanding of business acumen will get you to the next level.
IN A SENSE, YOUR TERRITORY IS a sole proprietorship. You "own" it. You manage it, and at the end of the year, the health of its bottom line is dependent
upon your business savvy.
Because you must manage your territory like a business, it naturally follows that you must possess a fairly high degree of
business acumen if you wish to succeed. No doubt, your company's training programs have prepared you well for navigating your
way through the sales transaction – how to open, bridge, handle objections, close and so on. But let's take your selling skills a step further and examine a few of the business talents that can help you maintain solid
relationships with your customers while driving utilization of your company's products.
This article provides an introductory overview of five key components of the business-acumen skill set:
- Communication
- Critical Thinking
- Leadership
- Negotiation
- Teamwork
Each term is discussed in the context of the sales representative as a business (because that is exactly what you are), and
each item features a starter tip that will jump-start the development of your business-acumen skill set.
Communication
Negotiating Strategies
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Try to get through the first hour of your work day without exchanging any type of communication, and see how far you get!
The fact is, we spend nearly 80 percent of our waking hours communicating in person, by e-mail, on cell phones and land lines
or by text-messaging. If communication is so intrinsic to our lives, it follows that those who do it poorly are unlikely to
achieve all that they want. Obviously, successful sales professionals must be superior communicators or else they could never
articulate a product's clinical characteristics to any physician.
But good communications goes well beyond the basics of good listening, eye contact and body language — all the behaviors you
learned in Sales Training 101. Here's a quick self-assessment that may provide hints as to where you might require some additional
work. Answer "yes" or "no" to the following questions:
- Do people misunderstand you or later request clarification of what you said or wrote?
- Do you monopolize interactions without letting others express their thoughts and argue?
- Do you lose track of what you have been saying, hearing or writing?
- Is your writing full of long sentences and technical language instead of being clear and concise?
- Do you communicate without first choosing the best time or defining what you want your message to accomplish?
If you answered "yes" to any of these questions, you might consider that to be an area in which some added focus will sharpen
your expertise.
Communication tip: Preparation is essential. Your managers and trainers probably have hounded you over and over again about the importance of precall planning. And they
are right!
If you are skilled in delivering your product presentations, you may consider it unnecessary to prepare for each individual
call. However, preparation is the presentation "must" that is most often neglected by business people at every level. To create
a presentation that efficiently targets each healthcare provider, you must make the time — every time — to prepare and customize
your approach.
It is critical for you to understand the essential purpose of your presentation, which is not necessarily to "sell product."
Your purpose might be to persuade, explain, instruct, update or motivate the customer — and each of these objectives requires
different styles and methods of communication.
