Diagnosis
You're closing by the book but still not getting the results you want.
Prescription
Changing your behavior is the first step to getting doctors to change theirs.
This may be the most important article you ever read as a pharmaceutical rep. That's because I am going to challenge you to
change something you've been doing for a long time – something you're supposed to do, that you've been trained to do and that
your manager expects you to do. You ask your doctor for a "yes," at the end of your sales call, and you think you are getting
the answer you want. But when you ask, "Based on what I told you today, will you put your next six patients with Disease X
on Brand Y?" – you might be getting the answer you want, but you really need to ask yourself if you're getting the action you want?
If not, I challenge you to change your selling style. If you want to be successful, you've got to get your doctors to make
changes, so it stands to reason that you should make changes as well. I'm asking you to become a questioner. I'm asking you to clarify and probe, and to continue to question even after you get
a "yes."
Being a pharmaceutical rep is unlike any other kind of salesperson. If you're selling cars, for instance, you might say, "If
I can show you how we can knock $1,000 off the price, will you buy this car today?" If the buyer says "yes," you can whisk
him away to sign on the bottom line, and you can put that "yes" in your company bank account and start spending your commission.
But when a doctor says "yes" to prescribing your drug, there is no way to know if the "yes" is a meaningful answer or a way
to appease you. Doctors know the drill, they know why you're there and what you're after. So why not deliver and make everyone
happy?
Put yourself in the doctor's position – she's been listening to you talk for three minutes in the middle of busy day. She's
already seen six reps and six more are waiting. She has patients in the waiting room. Her teenage son is having a meltdown
at home. All she wants to do is get on with her day. If you were asked for an answer under those circumstances (and aren't
those always the circumstances?), wouldn't you say "yes," too?
Why doctors hate your training
Here's what I think has gone wrong in the pharmaceutical industry: Somewhere along the line someone told Mr. Big Pharma that
people who ask more closing questions wind up closing more sales. This is true for some types of sales, but not true for all.
For example, many doctors tell me they hate stupid and leading questions. Asking a busy physician, "Doctor, do you see patients
with hypertension?" will get you nowhere, and might be the end to your visit. But reps ask questions like this all the time.
That's because Mr. Big Pharma taught you to assume that more closing questions — especially "yes" questions lead to more sales.
But that only works if everything else is in line. Turns out, one of the most erroneous points in sales training is that if
someone says "yes" enough times, when you ask the closing question they will say "yes" again. Think about it. If I got you
to say "yes" 10 times in a row, then asked you to jump off the Golden Gate Bridge, you might agree to it, but you wouldn't
mean it.
To get to a meaningful yes, you're going to have to put aside a very traditional way of selling and embrace my "Questioning
Strategy" type of selling.
