No, believe it or not,

the doctor is not God!

Having served many years counseling and consulting with doctors, and writing books for and about doctors, I was able to collect a wealth of insight about their personal lives and professional careers.

     Whether you’re a lawyer, insurance or investment broker, hospital executive, real estate agent, luxury car or boat representative, accountant, website development guru, upscale clothing marketer, hi-tech product marketer, quality restauranteur, travel agent, executive resort manager, pharmaceutical or medical product detail rep, If you market or sell to doctors, you can do a better job of it when you understand some of what I’m about to share with you. 

     Now I’m not talking about whatever you might think you know about doctors by watching ER or House or Gray’s Anatomy or old re-run episodes of Chicago Hope or Dr. Kildare for that matter. Those shows may look and feel authentic and realistic, but they’re not. They’re no more realistic than if you took your job and compressed all the highlights of the year into one maniacally-paced day!

     There’s nothing wrong with jam-packed storylines on TV as long as you don’t start believing that the other half actually lives as they’re portrayed. I mean I was a huge fan of “24” and Jack Bauer was the best, but in case you hadn’t noticed, he never slept or used the bathroom.

     No, I’m talking about down and dirty here. I’ve amassed tons of in-the-trenches input that I alone have had the unique opportunity to observe, listen, question and assimilate. Here’s some of what I learned:  

•      Most of the twelve hundred or so doctors I’ve known well and have worked closely with would rather be, or rather have been something other than a doctor. With stress driving average physician life expectancy closer to 60 than to 80, many doctors struggle with keeping their personal lives in check and their family lives in balance.
•      As definite and commited as most of us tend to think a physician’s career path might be, the truth is that many are not happy with shouldering the stressful burdens of professional medical practice. 
•      This conclusion is not to imply any lack of dedication. It is simply an indication that even those physicians who lack exceptional skills or bedside manners do not deserve to be begrudged for the money they make (and they’re making a whole lot less these days, besides).
•      So, what does this all have to do with selling to doctors? STOP thinking about selling your products and services to doctors. START thinking about how you can help doctors to save time. Time, to a physician, is money because she or he has no warehouse full of products.
•      His or her time is all there is that can be packaged with the skill, experience and training. And, right, a doctor can only sell one package at a time!
•      Having more time gives doctors more freedom to see more patients who need attention. Having more time lays the groundwork for doctors to strike a better balance with their families and gain increased control of their personal lives.
•      In the process, they become happier. Happier doctors practice better more effective healthcare. Your doctor sales assignment: Figure out how to save your doctor prospects and customers more time!  

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Hal@Businessworks.US   302.933.0116

Open  Minds  Open  Doors

Make today a GREAT day for someone!

SPIT IT OUT,

ON PAPER!

Literally?  Well, not unless it’s a tissue, or maybe a paper towel or napkin.  Figuratively, then?  Hey, you may be bright enough to stay employed after all.  Are you being a wise-guy?  Of course, this is a blog, isn’t it?  So what’s your point? 

     Unless you’re in a high-stress, time-crunch job location like the ER, the battlefield, the deck of an deep sea fishing trawler, an air-traffic control tower, or the floor of the stock exchange, anything that’s important enough for you to say is important enough for you to say in writing. 

[P.S. If you’re a tree-hugger worried about your green reputation going down the tubes because you use too much paper, stop reading here and have a nice day!] 

     Once you get your basic thoughts down, edit them carefully (sleep on them if possible), then deliver them in writing (or printout), on paper (or occasionally, online via email)! 

     Now, wait a minute, I’m just a landscaper; the only paper I handle’s a time sheet, and my brother says his company makes all decisions by email! Ah, all the more reason to carry a pen and pocket pad.  How many times a day are you interrupted?  How much of where you were, do you remember after a series of interruptions?

     Every minute that you spend taking notes on the boss’s instructions and putting your ideas down on paper is an investment in your self-success, and the success of your business.

     You simply won’t believe this until you do it consistently for 60-90 days.  But that time period will make a believer of you. 

     As for your brother’s email-crazed company, and my note earlier that occasionally online communications work, is not a condemnation of email.  It is a warning flag that when you email important ideas, you are suggesting they are not so important because you’ve presented your thoughts in the mad rush, snap decision making “delete/save/file/reply” environment that emails breed. 

     Even when an important communication is carefully constructed and edited, it can fail because it was zipped off without enough attention to proper subject line wording, or careful thought given to the who’s who of Cc’s and Bcc’s, or just because the use of email can give the impression that the contents are not well thought out and have been shot from the hip. 

     Sometimes being more personal is better.  I hand deliver proposals to clients when possible because I can be there to see their faces and judge responses they may not express in an email reply or even a telephone discussion.  

     You can read and hear words in a response, but when you can’t see the facial expressions, the posture and the attitudes involved, you’ve only got half the answer.  How confident would you be of making a sale the customer agrees to while hand signaling or winking derisively to a co-worker as you’re babbling away to them on their speakerphone.  And emails are even more distant.

     Whether you’re a contractor making a mental “punchlist,” a law enforcement officer reconstructing an accident scene, an engineer struggling with an architect‘s lack of reality, an administrative or salesperson working with other’s deadlines and expectations, or a physician explaining a procedure to a patient, put it in writing! 

     By writing out what you observe, hear, think or propose, or by drawing a diagram to explain yourself you are taking giant steps toward improved communications.  Improved communications win job promotions, bonuses, customers, comeraderie, industry and professional attention, and management (and, yes, even family) support.  halalpiar

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Check out and contribute to the daily growing 7-Word Story started 77 days ago (inside a coffin).  Click on the link to the right, or go to the “BOOKS” tab at the top of this page, then to the top headline link.

These networks,” the doctor continued, “and the borderline-Marxist viewpoint candidates they ushered into the spotlight, have managed to captivate and control your brain!”  

     “I’m sorry to tell you this, my friend, but you,” the doctor leered cynically over the tops of his reading glasses as he shifted his stethoscope from his neck to his shoulders and frowned parentally, “you have a severe case of NMD, and I’m going to recommend you go directly to the hospital for some immediate transfusions.  I’ll meet you there in twenty minutes.”

     “Aaaaah, NMD?  Twenty minutes?” 

     “Well, yes, Network Media Disorder, and, yes, I can squeeze one more patient into my insurance-company-alloted 12-minute maximum-per-patient examination time period, and still have eight minutes to get to the hospital, which is ten minutes away, but I drive fast!”

     “Er, no, Doc!  I’m needing a little bit more explanation from you than that before I go racing over to the ER for this mysterious transfusion that you seem to have prescribed just a little too quick for my liking.  Am I going to die within the next half hour or what?”

     “No, nothing like that.  It’s just that you need immediate attention or –it’s possible within any given hour– you may find that you have allowed yourself to be brainwashed  beyond repair!” 

     The good doctor tugged at his shirtcollar, took a deep breath and proceeded, “You see, by the time the election ended last week, you had already built up a rampaging attachment to CNN, NBC, CBS, ABC, TNT, and MSNBC (and MSNBC all by itself is a rather astonishing attachment considering only seven people in all of America actually watch it!).  

     In the process, your dormant benevalence greeted these screaming liberal radical networks with open arms and you were rapidly transformed into a wild-eyed supporter of electing our nation’s most management-inexperienced, Disneyworld-fantasizing team of candidates in all of history. 

     “These networks,” the doctor continued, “and the borderline-Marxist viewpoint candidates they ushered into the spotlight, have managed to captivate and control your brain.  It was not easy, but with at least $650 million in mysterious campaign donations lining their pockets, they could afford to take some bold and assertive thrusts into your skull, and convince you that change was the answer to the world’s problems, and that the candidates they supported were the second coming of the agents of change.

     “. . . and you, my friend bought into it.  Now you must pay the price of setting yourself up to be thoroughly brainwashed.  It’s either a lobotomy or a transfusion of the fair and balanced FOX network, mixed with some Rush and Sean and Michael and Mark and Laura and Greta, and a few other saviors of society.

     “You need these transfusions before the newly elected dictator attempts to disarm talk radio with his backer’s so-called Fairness Doctrine (it could not possibly be more inappropriately named!) . . . an extraordinarily sick platform if you ask me.  So that, in a nutshell, is why I want you to hurry on over to the ER.  The longer you wait, the more these talking heads will infiltrate your brain, the more you become a sheep, and then we will have some truly major medical challenges to face!”

     “Well, it’s true, Doc, I have become addicted.  I mean Wolfe and Katie and the rest really have welcomed me into their network families and I am afraid of missing even C-Span at this point.  I suppose a little re-balancing wouldn’t be such a bad thing.  I mean, I do rotate my tires, even.”        Halalpiar 

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Check out and contribute to the daily growing 7-Word Story started 61 days ago (inside a coffin).  Click on the link to the right, or go to the “BOOKS” tab at the top of this page, then to the top headline link.