As you know, I am an advocate for the philosophy that ‘everybody lives by selling something’ and that people buy from people they trust.  At its best, selling is about the principle of exchange:- the exchange of value where both parties benefit from open and transparent communication and know what they are engaging in.

So can ‘selling’ be seen as a legitimate role in the various practices of medicine?  I.e. GP’s, dentists, optometrists, physiotherapists, surgeons, etc.

If we take it that good selling is where people are fully informed of the facts surrounding their situation, are given legitimate options to choose from, and are in a position to make their own decisions without fear of deception, bullying or intimidation then, yes, selling can form a part of the practice of medicine.

Educating your ‘clients’ is a key function of good selling and selling does involve persuasion on occasion, especially where people are concerned about the decisions they have to make as it relates to their priorities, needs, wants, fears, desires or frustrations.  Some clients are prepared to take more risks than others.  Any good sales person or medical practitioner would make sure their clients are made fully aware of the risks so they can enter into a decision with their eyes open.  Offering your best expert advice is part of what we pay the medical profession for.

Bad medicine like bad selling is about tricking people and taking advantage of the unsuspecting and the uneducated.  And as the medical profession is part of the educated elite, where there is knowledge there is power.

My concern lies in the corporatising and commercialisation of medicine and I feel it is posing some ethical problems by creating a range of competing motivations such as ‘Do I do the best for my patient or my shareholders’ wallets?’

You may notice the increase in the amalgamation of medical practices, especially in the areas of dentistry and optometry and the shift in focus to shareholder value.  It’s similar in my view to corportatising child care and look at what happened there.

A couple of years ago, I was asked to present information on ‘selling’ to a dental group.  They were interested in how to bring a sales culture into their business and get patients to buy more, especially ‘teeth whitening’ and other ‘vanity’ offerings.   I must say, I felt very uneasy and did not continue with that business.  A recent article in The Weekend Australian, 28-29 August 2010 titled ‘Ethical doubts over optical sales’, highlighted the potential issues with the ‘corporatisation’ of Optometrists.  The President of the Australian Medical Association highlighted the possible ethical dilemma and conflict of interest, with optometrists working for large corporates and their emphasis on selling prescription glasses.  Whilst he stated that there was no evidence of the over prescribing of prescription glasses, he raised issues about providing accurate medical advice and the desire to increase the value of the ‘sale’ and shareholder value as a real risk.   The issue revolved around ‘trust’ – trust in the advice given and the options presented.

This is not just hearsay.  Take the following scenarios I came across in the last 4 weeks:

1. A dentist, about to clean the teeth of his patient after the normal check up, suggested that the patient should have a photograph taken of their teeth so they can have a before and after shot.  The patient agreed, but found out later when they got their bill that they have been charged $55 for the photograph unaware they were required to pay for it.  At no time did the dentist inform the patient that there was a cost associated with the photograph.  When the patient confronted the receptionist about her bill it was immediately refunded without question.
2. A patient is overcharged via her private health fund by her dentist.  The dentist was able to access her private insurance surplus taking advantage of her savings.  When she confronted him he told her ‘bad luck it’s already done’.  Now she has to take her complaint to the Dental Board and her insurance company wasting her time and creating more angst.
3. An optometrist offered to take a photograph of a patient’s retinas to check for pressure build up, etc, and like the dentist above, didn’t inform the patient that there was a cost associated with this.  Later, the patient found out there was a $90 fee attached to the photos, and upon challenging the receptionist, had the fee waived.

That optometrist patient was me in this instance and as a result I no longer go to this optometrist.  My trust has been breached and I could not rely on his opinion or advice any more.

I understand that dentists, optometrists, vets, naturopaths, physiotherapists and podiatrists, for instance, have ‘retail’ arms to their businesses because they can sell ancillary products.  However, I am proposing that there needs to be more attention paid to the transparent selling and ‘up selling’ of products and services between the medical advice given and the sale of retail products.  Not having met all medical professionals I can only assume that the vast majority know the difference between giving sound medical advice free from bias and the offerings in their retail business.  For instance, I like going to my vet.  He gives me good advice, and he hasn’t tried to take advantage of me by over selling products or offering me things I do not need.  He informs me of my choices and, as a result, I reward him by returning to him when I need vet advice as well as buying my dog and cat food from him rather than the big pet store a few kilometres away.  I like supporting him and I understand that retail is part of his business mix.  I buy from him because he is a good vet and he also offers products of a superior value that I couldn’t get at the supermarket.

The spotlight, too, is being shone more brightly on the relationship between the medical profession (GP’s and Specialists) and the pharmaceutical and pathology industries.  I wonder how many have been influenced or even induced by pharmaceutical or pathology companies to change their prescribing or referral habits in favour of personal benefits at the expense of patients.  No wonder people are increasingly feeling cynical and wary about the intentions of the medical profession.

In conclusion, I recognise the need for businesses to be well run and profitable, however, when shareholder value outweighs the health and wellbeing (financial as well as physical) of its clients or patients, then I think we need to question the application of ‘selling at all costs’ in these cultures.

Remember everybody lives by selling something.

Author: Sue Barrett, www.barrett.com.au

Through the looking glass was voted by you as the number 8  Sales Trend for 2010.

Many sales people are tired of being told that they need to sell like someone else to be successful.  Many are unsure of what they should be modelling.  Too often they are told to ‘just be like’ someone else but with no reference to what that actually looks like they are left poking around in the dark mimicking the ‘star’ performer and left feeling unauthentic.   And ‘big sticks’, bribes or fear don’t help either.

Most people, and especially sales people, want to be the best they can be but without having to be someone else.   Clearly defining what good performance looks like is key.  Here is a model we use at Barrett where we focus on three key areas:

The Three Dimensions of Optimal Performance

1. KNOWLEDGE: General awareness or possession of information, facts, ideas, truths or principles.
2. SKILLS & PROCESSES: A series of actions directed towards a specific aim.  The ability to do something well, usually gained through training or experience.
3. INSIGHT: The ability to see clearly and intuitively into the nature of a complex person, situation or subject; a set of beliefs or a way of thinking that determines somebody’s behaviour and outlook.

Putting practical tools and processes into the hands of sales people and sales managers are an important step however, the first step is giving people insight into their own strengths and capabilities and allowing them to change from the inside out.   Seeing what is possible and being able to model their capabilities and attributes on top performers whilst retaining their own identity as a person is crucial.  Articulating exactly what that is by using the model above puts real content on the table.

With the product edge gone, the key differentiator will be your people.  In 2010 and beyond, enlightened leaders are focusing on understanding their people and helping their people understand themselves and what motivates and drives them.  They are taking note of how people think and make decisions.  Creating the best team for your business will be about how you play to your people’s strengths to achieve goals and fulfill ambitions.  Teaching people how to transform their capabilities, communicate more effectively, and how to manage their behaviours and mindsets are critical.

Gaining deeper insight into self and others is much more than just navel-gazing.  With proper resources and support, insight can be a life changing experience for people and can greatly enhance company success.  While for a number of years we have been focusing on skills and processes, we are now realising the importance of people and their role in business.  Enlightened leaders will be supporting their people in gaining deeper insight and more knowledge.

Insight means having Choices; working with clear Purpose; Self and Other Awareness; knowing your Capabilities; developing your Creativity; building Resilience; and Self Direction.

Knowledge means having a clear Strategy;  access to well defined Processes; good Information; Role Clarity; clearly defined Tasks; Standards of High Performance; Responsibilities; and the ability to make Decisions.

In addition to skills and processes, giving sales people access to insight and knowledge allows for the cultivation of sales wisdom because achieving sales mastery is about working from the inside out.

Remember everybody lives by selling something.

Author: Sue Barrett, www.barrett.com.au

Delighting customers does not build loyalty.  Reducing customers’ effort does.

These were the findings from a large customer service survey conducted by the Customer Contact Council (CCC), and featured in the July edition of the Harvard Business Review.  The survey’s aim was to get answers to three questions:

1. How important is customer service to loyalty?
2. Which customer service activities increase loyalty, and which don’t?
3. Can companies increase loyalty without raising their customer service operating costs?

After conducting structured interviews with customer service leaders and a study of more than 75,000 customers, the CCC uncovered three findings:

1. Exceeding expectations during service interactions has negligible impact on customer loyalty

Of the 75,000 customers surveyed, they were more interested in how well a company delivers on their most basic and/or vanilla promises rather than being dazzled and having their expectations exceeded.  However, 89/100 customer service department heads had ‘to exceed customer expectations’ as their main strategy.  This is not new.  As I wrote back in June 2007, ‘Exceeding customers’ expectations?’, living by exceeding customers’ expectations doesn’t add up and ends up costing us more in the long term.

2. Service organisations create loyal customers primarily by reducing customer effort

In other words, helping customers solve their problems quickly and easily – not by delighting them in service interactions.  Given these findings, we need to reframe around making the customer experience easy.

5 ways to lower the effort and make it easy for customers:

1. Don’t just resolve the current issue but head off the next one
2. Address the emotional side of customer interactions
3. Minimise channel switching by boosting self serve channel stickiness – 57% of complaints came from customer trying to resolve issues online but couldn’t
4. Use feedback from unhappy customers to enhance issue resolution rate
5. Empower the front line to deliver a low effort customer experience

3. Customer Effort Score (CES) tops the charts with the highest predictive power

In the customer service environment, Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) is a weak predictor of customer loyalty.  Net Promoter Score (NPS) is slightly better.

By decreasing customer effort to purchase you can get increases in repurchase, increase spend and willingness to tell others about their experiences.

The survey asked customers to rate how much effort they personally put forward to handle their request.  They were asked to rate on a scale of 1 (low effort to purchase) – 5 (high effort to purchase).  94% of participants reporting ‘low effort’ stated their intent to repurchase, 88% stated their intent to increase spend, and 1% stated their intention to speak negatively about the experience.  Versus 81% reporting high effort stated their intent to spread negative feedback about the experience.

Outcome: CCC advises that we should move from increasing customer satisfaction to decreasing customer effort.

Remember everybody lives by selling something.

Author: Sue Barrett, www.barrett.com.au

“Courage doesn’t always roar. Sometimes courage is the little voice at the end of the day that says ‘I’ll try again tomorrow’.”

This quote more often than not reflects my life as an entrepreneur, business woman, sales person, mother, partner and friend. On those days and nights when I feel overwhelmed and sometimes exhausted by all my responsibilities and commitments that little voice reminding me to ‘try again tomorrow’ keeps me focused on why I am doing what I am doing – it helps me to continue to cultivate my resilience, to continue to put one foot in front of the other, to make decisions and to keep on moving.  If I am ever in doubt, that little voice reminds me of all the other challenges I have mastered and that my track record speaks for itself.  Over the years I have learnt to trust that little voice and I have learnt how to mind my emotions.

However it wasn’t always that way. Beset with self doubt earlier in my career and often searching outside myself for reassurance and validation, I eventually understood that listening to my little voice and working constructively with my emotions, feelings and thoughts were invaluable life skills.  Developing emotional resilience and a deeper self awareness has supported me to better achieve my goals, communicate, work with, and lead people more effectively, as well as spring back emotionally after suffering through difficult and stressful times in my life.

Through much searching, reading, listening, practice, and self reflection I have come to understand that emotions are never right nor wrong, good nor bad, or correct or incorrect.  Emotions are simply pieces of information telling us how we are currently experiencing our world.  However, what we do with the emotions we experience can help or hinder us.

For instance the Cognitive Model is a psychological model that looks at the role of our Cognitions (our thinking) in influencing how we respond to situations in our lives.  Oftentimes, we may feel a situation has caused our feelings. These feelings can be good or bad, positive or negative. However, the Cognitive Model says this is not right.  Rather, it is the way we THINK about a situation and our interpretations of it that cause our feelings and responses. Therefore, it is our interpretation of a situation that triggers how we feel or respond, not the situation in and of its self.   This is not new either here is a quote from    Epictetus, 1st Century AD,  “Men are disturbed not by things but by the views that they take of them.”

Developing Emotional Resilience
The first step to becoming more emotionally resilient is the acknowledgment that there is room for improvement and taking the time to learn more about yourself.  The following behaviours and attitudes are some ways in which emotional resilience can be demonstrated and measured:

• Have realistic and attainable expectations and goals.
• Show good judgment and problem solving skills.
• Be persistent and determined.
• Be responsible and thoughtful rather than impulsive.
• Be an effective communicator with good people skills.
• Learn from past experience so as not to repeat mistakes.
• Be empathetic towards other people (care how others around you are feeling).
• Have a social conscience (care about the welfare of others).
• Feel good about yourself as a person.
• Feel like you are in control of your life.
• Be optimistic rather than pessimistic.

Some Strategies to develop your Emotional Resilience
There are many strategies we can use to help us harness the positive power of our emotions. Here are a few for you to consider:

The Big 4:  7-8 hours of Sleep, Healthy Diet, Regular Exercise, Doing Fun Activities

Relaxation: Learning how to relax takes practice however two ways to start is to 1) use progressive Muscle Relaxation or 2) lie still in a warm, safe environment and play quite relaxing music or be in nature – sit quietly focusing on and experiencing pleasant sensory sensations such as the fragrance flowers or the twittering of birds.

Thought Stopping: As you notice yourself saying something negative in your mind, you can stop your thought mid-stream by saying to yourself “Stop”. Saying this aloud will be more powerful and make your more aware of your habit.

Thought Diary: Keeping a daily diary or journal of your thoughts can be an effective tool for examining your inner process.

Positive mantras & affirmations:  An affirmation is a positive thought or statement that you repeat to yourself and implant into your unconscious mind. A positive affirmation can act as the source of direction and inspiration for your present and future actions.  Once entrenched in your subconscious mind, a positive affirmation guides your thoughts and actions in a desired direction and can be used to overcome negative and habitual thought patterns in order to create shifts in your behaviour and actions at an unconscious level.  Positive affirmations can subtly but pervasively change your self talk from negative to positive.

Change Self-Limiting Statements to Questions: Self-limiting statements like “I can’t handle this!” or “This is impossible!” are particularly damaging because they increase your stress in a given situation and they stop you from searching for solutions. The next time you find yourself thinking something that limits the possibilities of a given situation, turn it into a question. Doesn’t “How can I handle this?” or “How is this possible?” sound more hopeful, and open up your imagination to new possibilities?

Meditation & Mindfulness: The purpose of meditation is to heal and transform.  Because meditation is a skill you can practice meditation anywhere at any time. In every moment you can chose to meditate.  The energy that crafts and guides the practice of meditation is mindfulness.  Mindfulness allows us to look deeply and move beyond the busyness of our mind.   It allows us to focus on an object with single pointed attention.  When mindful, we are focused and not distracted.

For ongoing emotional distress: We suggest people consider seeing a professional in psychology, medicine or nutrition to get a correct diagnosis and appropriate treatment.

Sadly, most people have never been taught how to positively harness the power of their emotions, feelings, thoughts and behaviours, however many of the tools we can use to do so have been with us for at least two thousand years.  And for too long business has ignored the positive power of emotions so here are some reasons why you should mind your emotions.

Five business reasons to Mind Your Emotions®:
1.    Healthier, more productive business relationships
2.    Better staff engagement, alignment and retention
3.    Healthy conflict management strategies which address the issues and don’t attack the person
4.    More effective leadership, team work, sales and service outcomes
5.    Less sick leave, stress claims

Five personal reasons to Mind Your Emotions®:
1.    Greater self awareness, insight and personal growth
2.    Ability to experience more positive emotions and less distress in our lives
3.    Ability to develop more productive attitudes, feelings and behaviours that help us achieve our goals
4.    Ability to be an effective leader, colleague, partner, parent, friend, team player, etc.
5.    Ability to better manage the effect of our emotions on personal / team performance, workplace well-being and personal happiness

Learning how to mind my emotions has allowed me to become more emotionally resilient and strengthened my resolve to achieve my goals and live the life I want to live.

If you want to discuss how to develop strategies to enhance your emotional resilience and make the most of your capabilities and the situations your find yourself in, let us know and we will see if we can help you directly or refer you to the best person for your situation.

Remember everybody lives by selling something.
Author: Sue Barrett, www.barrett.com.au

As the saying goes, “If you can’t take the heat get out of the kitchen”.  Once again MasterChef has served up some great life lessons.  Last year I wrote about the great leadership, coaching and mentoring we can learn from MasterChef.  Again Garry, George, Matt and the other guest chefs showed us how to excel in this area of leadership.

On this occasion, I want to comment on ‘Resilience’ and dealing with setbacks and challenges, and how MasterChef gave us a window into how people handle stress and demanding situations.  The time pressures and increasingly difficult tasks set for the contestants showed us how well they were able to manage themselves under pressure and produce the goods.  You could often see the demands of a given situation getting to a number of the contestants.  It was unrelenting at times.  Those who were able to hold it together and ‘manage’ themselves on every level when under added strain performed better.  The constant practice enhanced their skills for sure, but it also taught them how to deal with pressure which is just as important.  Prior to the final episode, we saw Adam, Claire and Callum put under pressure and it was Adam and Callum who held it together better than Claire.  Claire is an extremely talented cook but got rattled more than the others thus affecting her performance.  Unlike Jonathon who survived eight out of nine elimination challenges, Claire had only been in one before and you could tell.  She wasn’t ready for it.

Luckily for the MasterChef contestants they were only subjected to this for about three and a half months.  Working chefs are required to take the ‘heat’ everyday albeit in environments they can control.  This got me thinking about those professions where every action and the outcomes of those actions are scrutinised every day, placing pressure on those to perform at their best.  Professional Chefs and Sports People, Air Traffic Controllers and Surgeons come to mind and I am sure there are several others.  With the exception of weather for both the Air Traffic Controllers and some Professional Sports People, for the best part, all of these professions allow their people to work in environments they can directly control and influence.

Sales people also have the scrutiny of performance in common with these professions however, they are often working in environments that are not of their own making or design.  They need to be able to deal with, and adapt to things outside of their control, i.e variable conditions and new environments, meeting new people, going to new places, uncovering new issues; variables of many kinds.  And unlike recipes, which if executed correctly should turn out like they were intended, sales people are often presented with the ‘Mystery Box’ (same ingredients different outcomes) on a daily basis several times a day.  They have to be able to think on their feet, and create outcomes their clients need and want.  They need to know how this goes with this to that.

How do they handle the stress?  How do they develop their resilience to perform at higher and higher standards every day without cracking?  How do they pay attention and make sure every client feels like they are special and important when you have listened to 5-25 people already that day?

As sales people, our actions are assessed by ourselves, our managers and our clients.  We deal with acceptance and rejection of our offering every day.  Our activities are tracked and mapped.  There are league tables, etc.

Any self respecting, self managed, self aware sales person would be able to tell you where they are at each day.  They will also tell you that they have learned not to take ‘No’ as personal rejection – that’s a fatal mistake made by many a new sales person.  Selling is the ultimate ‘thinking on your feet’ and ‘doing’ job.  Like athletes, we need to be continually exercising and getting fitter, developing our skills, knowledge and mindset all at the same time.

Why don’t we teach ‘How to Build Resilience and a Healthy Mindset’?

A healthy mindset is just as, if not more, important as product knowledge and selling skills.  However, most businesses usually only train their people in business skills, product knowledge and processes.  What we need to do is help people become more emotionally aware, intelligent and resilient in a number of ways.  We need to work with the whole person and provide people with access to a range of tools, processes and techniques which give them insight and teach them how to manage their emotions. We need to teach people how to develop healthy and resilient attitudes so they can take the heat and really excel.

We can’t all go on MasterChef to have our resilience and cooking skills tested, nor do all of us have the opportunity to be elite athletes and learn what it is like to work under obvious performance pressure however, we can learn how to develop resilience every day in small ways.

Higher performers, unlike many other people, have searched for and found tools, processes and techniques that help them develop strategies to enhance their self awareness and emotional resilience, and allow them to make the most of their capabilities and the situations they find themselves in on a daily basis.

Developing a Healthy and Resilient Attitude

The first step to becoming more emotionally aware, healthy and resilient is the acknowledgment that there is room for improvement and taking the time to learn more about yourself.  It’s about honest, constructive feedback and learning not to take things personally.  That is what MasterChef is all about – continuous self improvement and self awareness.  That’s what MasterSelling is about!

Next week we will look at some of the tools, behaviours and attitudes that help build self awareness, health and emotional resilience.  If you want further information about this, please contact us directly.

Thanks to MasterChef for another excellent season – truly inspiring stuff!

Finally, Mary Anne Radmacher’s words sum up for me and probably many sales people and entrepreneurs our lot: “Courage doesn’t always roar. Sometimes courage is the little voice at the end of the day that says ‘I’ll try again tomorrow’.”

Remember everybody lives by selling something.

Author: Sue Barrett, www.barrett.com.au