Changing the Sales Conversation by Linda Richardson

Author:Linda Richardson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: McGraw-Hill Education
Published: 2014-03-17T04:00:00+00:00

Keep the Need Conversation Interactive

A January 2012 article in the Wall Street Journal reinforced the need to not only teach clients but also ask questions and listen to understand what is unique about them. The lesson learned was simple: Engage with clients. Listen to them. Don’t tell them—at least not until you know how they think. Doctors and their staffs are notorious for not wanting a sales pitch, but they are very open to learning.

Several of the large pharmaceutical firms found that their well-scripted approach in which they provided reps with a carefully customized message tailored to hospital groups, practices, and buyer roles was ineffective. They discovered that, although the scripts had been tailored to their clients’ practices and personas, the reps were not equipped to “intuit and respond” to what individual clients actually wanted.

The carefully researched and tailored prescripted pitches seemed generic to clients. The reps were sharing insights but not engaging their clients. The firms found that sales performance improved and relationships grew stronger when they changed their strategy to one that placed emphasis on probing and listening to leverage insight and knowledge sharing. One firm reported an increase in sales of $450 million over its previous quarter once its sales force began to share insights, probe, and listen to its clients.

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