Practicing to Perfection

Posted on September 5, 2013 by Sean Moore | | Leave a comment

Arrow Perfect PracticeWe see LeBron James soar through the air and slam dunk a basketball.  We watch Peyton Manning throw a perfect pass while in double coverage right into the hands of his receiver for a touchdown.  We sometimes assume that these individuals who accomplish extraordinary things have some sort of special gift that is unachievable.  I am here to tell you there is no “Magic Pill” that can make you a great athlete or a great salesperson.  Think back to your collegiate days or your early career experience: we all know people who have amazing talent but have not reached their true potential.

The path to greatness requires not only disciplined practice but also perfect practice.  Last week we discussed the importance of having a sales script; this week we will discuss the importance of practicing our pitches until they are perfect.

Considered one of the greatest soccer teams in the world, Spain’s La Roja uses a simple drill to hone and perfect its players’ skills. This drill, known as the Rondo (“Piggy in the Middle” in the U.S.), has the team form a circle with two players in the middle. The players around the circle quickly pass the soccer ball back and forth while the two players in the middle attempt to intercept. This fast-paced drill enables the players to hone their reaction times and improve their ability to pass in tight quarters. Rain or shine, the Spaniards repeatedly run this drill before every single practice and game.  You can see the drill here:

In order to master a sales script, you need to practice, practice, and practice. During a recent training class, some of our new hires not only pitched our products, but they did so repeatedly until the pitches became second nature. It is a well-known fact that if one practices specific actions and reactions a certain way, that person is far more likely to perform the same way on “Game Day.” Practice reinforces the permanence of good behaviors and habits and enables you to respond skillfully and solidly present the product, even in stressful situations in the OR.

With that said, after attending a training course or a sales meeting with tenured reps, I am often amazed when I get into the field with a TM. It is so easy to replace good behaviors that could have been perfected by practicing with those that do not achieve the desired results. We must practice, but we must practice with purpose. The concept of the “10,000-Hour Expert Rule,” popularized in Malcolm Gladwell’s book entitled Outliers, states that becoming an expert or perfecting a skill requires 10,000 hours of practice.

However, if you spend thousands of hours performing and practicing incorrect behaviors, you’ll just become better at doing something incorrectly.

In the grand scheme of things, it is not sufficient to just practice for 10,000 hours; rather, in order to become an expert, we must practice deliberately and with feedback, while always seeking to correct and improve upon errors. In other words, we are seeking perfect practice! If you’re serious about your business and your sales success, you owe it to yourself to take practice seriously. And remember, if you continue to make the same mistakes without correcting them, you won’t reach your full potential.

One of the greatest soccer teams in the world embraces the belief that practicing the fundamentals every day leads to greatness, and we can learn from this attitude. Once we leave a sales training or meeting where we learn about a new product and the skills necessary to effectively sell it, we must continue to practice with the intent to improve and master those skills. In addition, while practicing with your manager or peers, be careful to approach perfection correctly by seeking to improve your performance with each try. Understand that you will not be perfect all the time, and instead of becoming frustrated or quitting, learn from your errors and continue to improve.

Remember, you will perform as you practice, because practice doesn’t make perfect, but perfect practice does. With perfect practice comes perfect execution, success, and an increase in commissions!

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Scripting Your Success

Posted on August 29, 2013 by Sean Moore | | Leave a comment

trellisWhenever we hear the word “rule,” it has a negative connotation for most people.  We imagine a stern principal, parent, or other authority figure from our childhood who was always enforcing the rules.  Even as adults, we remember receiving a ticket from an unyielding police officer for breaking a traffic rule. The word “rule” for most people can be a put off.

After some research, I discovered that the word “rule” has its root in both Latin and Greek.  The word comes from the Latin and Greek words for “trellis.” A trellis is a tool, a support system that enables a grapevine to get off the ground and grow upwards; as it grows, it becomes fruitful and productive. For a grapevine to produce fruit, it must have a trellis to support and guide its growth—or it will just slump to the ground. When this happens, the fruit tends to rot before it ripens. Even in the wild, grapevines will use just about anything as a trellis: a tree or even a rock.

Expanding on the concept of the trellis, a sales script is a rule that supports and guides our growth as salespeople.  I believe the most successful medical device reps use scripts as trellises, a practice which enables them to fully focus on what the customer is saying while relaying a solid sales message.    

The purpose of a sales script is not to be confining.  A sales script ensures that you’re at the top of your game with each and every surgeon.  We all have off days, and we all encounter stressful situations. On these days, we risk not putting our best foot forward (and thus blowing critical opportunities!) with our potential surgeons if we do not have a script.

Scripts have the added benefit of freeing your mind to focus on your message to your audience rather than on the actual words you use.

When you follow a script, you never have to worry about what to say; this means you can truly listen to your surgeons.

A script also prompts you to remember crucial pieces of your sales pitch, such as branding language.

Your sales script gives each surgeon a clear message about your product and also keeps your branding consistent. Branding is an important part of company culture, and it’s important that a territory manager on the west coast is saying the same thing that another salesperson is saying on the east coast.

Often when I stand in front of a group of salespeople and utter the word “script,” the idea is often met with resistance. Even with all the overwhelming evidence that scripts absolutely work for generating sales, many salespeople will still reject them. I hear all of the regular explanations, including “I don’t sound like myself when I use a script.” The fear of sounding canned is legitimate. If actors and politicians sounded canned, movies and television shows wouldn’t be entertaining, and speeches wouldn’t be believable. But that is exactly why actors, politicians, and top sales professionals have a practiced and polished script.

Scripts are a powerful way to manage your message, but they must be rehearsed, practiced, and memorized.

When salespeople complain that scripts make them sound canned, what I actually hear them saying is this: “I’m not willing to put in the effort” or “I don’t care enough about my own success to take time to practice my scripts.”  These salespeople are willing to shoot from the hip and bet their quota and income on the roll of the dice. Sadly, this is the exact reason why the top 20% of sales professionals make 80% of the commissions. They are simply willing to do the things that average salespeople are unwilling to do.  

A memorized sales script is a support system—a trellis that will enable a salesperson to climb to the top of the sales rankings, earn a great commission, and position himself or herself for the next promotion. 

I hope I have convinced you that having a script is important, but it’s also imperative to practice our sales scripts until they are perfect. I look forward to exploring how to do this in next week’s post.  Have a great week—and good selling!

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Don’t Be a Wallflower!

Posted on August 22, 2013 by Sean Moore | | Leave a comment

wallflower 2True job satisfaction comes from following your passion.  Performance excellence comes when you fully engage the work you are passionate about.  Passion enables you to perform your job in extraordinary ways.  Knowing what to do will drive performance; however, knowing why you do what you do will ignite your passion.  Passion enables you to find creative ways to achieve your goals.

I’ve made an observation relating to passion after watching the top-performing Altrus territory managers and other medical device reps sell a new product.  These top-producing sales reps have no doubt in their minds that Altrus or the product they represent is the absolute best device on the market.  These territory managers derive true pleasure from sharing this passion with customers and colleagues. 

Have you ever played golf, baseball, or tennis?  These sports all have a sweet spot.  When an athlete finds this sweet spot using just the right golf club, baseball bat, or tennis racket, he or she will experience amazing results.  Hitting the sweet spot in sports yields a long drive down the fairway, a home run, or a great return.  If you have ever experienced the sweet spot in your favorite sport, you know what I’m talking about.  The swing feels so effortless, and you barely feel yourself hitting the ball.  The ball goes far and exactly where you want it to go—and the feeling just doesn’t get any better!

Passionate Altrus sales reps help their surgeons play in their professional sweet spots by using Altrus. These reps express the tremendous fulfillment they obtain when helping their surgeons learn a new technique or new product and then seeing the positive impact on the surgeons’ practices and patient outcomes.

The most successful new product sales reps help their surgeons find their sweet spots and then live there.

How do you engage your passion and help your surgeons find this sweet spot with your product?  The answer is simple: passionate reps aren’t wallflowers! 

According to Dictionary.com, a wallflower is “a person who, because of shyness, unpopularity, or lack of a partner, remains at the side at a party or dance.”  In the medical device industry, we could define a wallflower as “a medical sales rep that lacks confidence or passion for the product and remains in the back of the operating room, not engaging the surgeon or owning the room and the outcome of the situation.”

A passionate new product medical device rep engages their surgeons.  Too often I observe sales reps that lack assertiveness towards the product they are selling and the environment they are selling in.  If you have a device that you know could drastically change a surgeon’s practice or a patient outcome, never ask for just five minutes to discuss your new product!  You need that surgeon’s undivided attention and time to really explore what issues he or she is currently having and how your device may or may not help. More importantly, you are trying to uncover a surgeon’s sweet spots before he or she uses your device.  In other words, if you have a good idea what your surgeons’ issues are, you will have a better chance to position your device to help their practices and deliver a better patient outcome. You can’t do that in five minutes or at a scrub sink before surgeons enter the operating room.

Assuming you have spent the necessary time to uncover the surgeon’s pain with his or her current device, you now have an opportunity to work a procedure with your new device.  We need to continue to engage with each surgeon in order to become part of the procedure.  We need to resist the temptation to become a wallflower in the operating room.  Your device needs you! You need to ensure that the surgeon is using your device correctly.  A new device cannot sell itself; it needs you to engage with the surgeon and coach each one to find his or her sweet spot.  Most importantly, do not allow the surgeon to use your device incorrectly.  If a sales rep observes a surgeon’s incorrect technique and does not offer correction, undoubtedly, the surgeon will blame the device or the rep for the experience.

A passionate Altrus rep understands that no device is perfect but also firmly believes that Altrus is the best device on the market and every surgeon should be using it.  This energy and enthusiasm is contagious for surrounding colleagues—and for the customer too!

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Unstoppable Momentum

Posted on August 15, 2013 by Sean Moore | | Leave a comment

Meer go aroundAs Vice President of Sales and Marketing at ConMed, I have been reflecting on where we have been and where we are going with Altrus. We have made significant progress promoting Altrus as the best vessel sealing device on the market and ConMed Advanced Energy as the “Complete Energy Solution.” We have shown consistent growth quarter after quarter.

What many do not realize is this: selling Altrus or any other new product is one of the most difficult challenges in the medical device industry. Our competitors rely on contracts, existing business, and name brands, only needing to sell clinical acceptance. On the other hand, our sales reps may not have any of those luxuries when launching a new product and must gain clinical preference and then secure a surgeon to use his or her limited political capital to fight for the product.

In essence, to have success with Altrus, we must be significantly better than the competition, for nothing is taken for granted or handed to us. I am incredibly proud of our many leaders at ConMed who are consistently experiencing success with Altrus.

Selling a new medical device such as Altrus is all about momentum. In one of my favorite books, The Compound Effect, author Darren Hardy uses an analogy we can all relate to. Hardy explains momentum from a child’s perspective as he or she plays on the merry-go-round at the playground.

All successful sales people have good habits—there are no exceptions to this. A daily routine based on good habits separates the successful elite from everyone else. The habits of successful people have driven them to always be more informed, more knowledgeable, more competent, better skilled, and better prepared.

Selling Altrus or any new product is hard at first, but once you get into a routine of positive habits, you will really get going—then watch out! Newton’s law of inertia states the following:

“Objects at rest stay at rest, and objects in motion stay in motion unless acted upon by an outside force.”

Remember playing on the merry-go-round as a kid? Everyone would jump on, and it would take so much effort to get it moving. One big push produced a little movement, and then another push produced a little bit more, and so on. You continued to push until all those efforts added up, making it easier and easier as the merry-go-round went faster and faster until it moved on its own! When it would start to slow down, you would run beside it for a few seconds and then jump back on. It took such little effort to keep the merry-go-round and the party going! The hardest part was the initial act of getting it moving.

Everything is at rest and wants to stay at rest. So how can you change this? It might seem difficult at first, but by making those efforts (pushes) to achieve a model day every day until it becomes a habit, you will build momentum. Once you get going, just like the merry-go-round, it will be hard to stop—you’ll be virtually unbeatable, and eventually you’ll be able to put forth less effort though you’ll be achieving even greater results. Remember, momentum can work in two ways: it can work for you or against you. The compound effect is always at work; negative habits, when left unchecked, can send you into a momentous tailspin of “unlucky” circumstances and consequences.

A few months ago, I heard a story about one of our successful Altrus sales representatives. The story resulted from a conversation between the rep and a manager two months into the quarter. The discussion focused on what to do with a particular PO they had in hand: should they process the order immediately or hold it for a month and then process it the next quarter?

The sales manager quickly turned the conversation to the importance of keeping the momentum going with their Altrus results; the worst thing they could do was jump off the merry-go-round and try to slow it down. What they needed to do was jump off and run a little faster to give this thing more momentum!

It’s so much easier to keep momentum going than it is to start all over with push after push. The sales rep trusted the manager, put the order in, and committed to every chance they got to get the merry-go-round to spin more quickly. We are now halfway through the year, and this rep is already very close to achieving the yearly Altrus quota, along with the coveted potential year-end bonuses!

There is still lots of time left in the year for you to create momentum with Altrus or your new product sales results. And this momentum will extend into next year as well! As Darren Hardy states, “Want Big Mo to pay you a visit? You build up to it. You get in the groove, the ‘Zone,’ by doing the things we know we need to do. Then BANG! Big Mo kicks in your door. And, you’re virtually unstoppable.”

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The Temperament of Success

Posted on August 8, 2013 by Sean Moore | | Leave a comment

Temperament of SuccessOver the past few months, I have had the privilege of interviewing many outstanding leaders here at ConMed.* I have mentioned before that our people are our best assets, and the interview series absolutely confirmed that sentiment.

As I have reflected back over the entire interview series, I began to think about the characteristics of these outstanding people. They are all unique individuals with distinct identities and personalities—and this diversity lends a depth and breadth to the corporate world at ConMed that is priceless. At the same time, however, I see a pattern of character traits—identifying attributes—that seems to be prevalent in our leaders here. I would like to explore those traits in today’s post, and, hopefully, you will be inspired and encouraged on your own road to success as you recognize some of these traits in yourself while also perhaps seeing ones that could use a little improvement!

1) Our top leaders at ConMed exhibit rugged and fierce perseverance.

Medical sales is a tough field—no one can deny that. Any given day can produce unexpected glitches, difficult personalities, and unpredictable outcomes. In order to rise to the top as these leaders have done, perseverance is a key characteristic—they simply allow no option for giving up. Instead, they press on in the face of obstacles, often making a way when others may throw up their hands in defeat.

2) Our leaders are committed learners for life.

The most successful people around the world are lifelong learners. Whether you are in medical sales or not, a hunger to learn and grow continuously often paves the way to success. I am grateful that our leaders approach every day as a new learning opportunity, embracing and owning each and every situation to better themselves professionally.

3) My colleagues are relentless goal setters.

One of the questions in each interview I conducted asked about goal setting—how important it was to the interviewee and how he or she went about setting goals for each week. Without fail, every single leader interviewed said that goal setting is crucial to consistent success. Goal setting is a first (and necessary) step to achievement, and my colleagues demonstrate this principle beautifully.

4) The successful leaders at ConMed have a global mindset.

That is, they see the big picture. Although details are certainly important, it is so easy to get sidetracked by all the details that spring up throughout each day and forget to keep the main thing the main thing. Keeping the big picture in mind for each week, each month, and each quarter allows these leaders to stay on track, achieving challenging and ambitious goals time after time.

5) Our managers are good listeners.

And they are good listeners across the board—they listen to their surgeons, they listen to their colleagues, and they listen to their management. Being a good listener often means reading between the lines—really hearing what the other person’s or entity’s needs truly are in order to meet those needs adequately. This quality of listening well requires patience and understanding, and, without fail, it marks the top leaders in medical sales.

I will say it again: medical sales is a tough field. The characteristics that must be developed and honed in order to be successful in this field are many, and I am incredibly pleased to witness firsthand the growth of so many stellar leaders here at ConMed. As we journey through the second half of 2013, let’s remember the above qualities and strive to implement them even more in our professional lives.

Perhaps you see one or more of these traits you would like to focus on from now until the end of the year. Pick one that stands out to you—one characteristic you can merge with your own unique approach to medical sales to make the second half of your year vibrant and explosive. Use these earmarks of success to help launch your own growth and education and then watch your career jump to new heights.

You may just find that the best is yet to come.

* You can find the individual interviews by scrolling back through recent posts or by entering the word “interview” in the search box.

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