Dream Crushers

Posted on October 19, 2012 by Sean Moore | | 3 Comments

Have you ever dreamed of becoming one of our President’s Club winners?  Do you hope to one day be the #1 sales rep in the company? These goals are absolutely within your reach! In the coming weeks I would like to offer a few principles which can accelerate the journey to your goals. We will discuss the first principle this week and follow up with the other principles in the upcoming weeks.

The first principle we observe regarding success is that we must be extremely careful that others do not influence us in a negative way.

We all, at some point in our lives, have had our dreams attacked and destroyed by others.  Dream crushers abound in our culture and even in our field.  Some people are not pursuing any dreams of their own, and, unfortunately, the last thing they want to see is the success of others.

In the 1960s, Harry Harlow conducted a fascinating social experiment with monkeys. Five monkeys were locked in a cage, and a banana was hung from the ceiling with a ladder placed directly underneath it. Of course, one of the monkeys would immediately race towards the ladder, intending to climb it and grab the banana. However, as soon as he would start to climb, the researchers would spray the monkey with ice-cold water. Interestingly, they would also spray the other four monkeys at the same time.

When a second monkey was ready to climb the ladder, the researchers would spray this monkey with ice-cold water and then apply the same treatment to its four fellow inmates. The monkeys learned their lesson. They were not going to climb that ladder again—banana or no banana!

The researchers then replaced one of the monkeys with a new monkey. As you might expect, the new arrival would spot the banana and wonder “why don’t these idiots go get it?!” As he started to climb the ladder, the situation got interesting. The original four monkeys, familiar with the cold-water treatment, would run towards the new guy and yank him down. The new monkey, although blissfully unaware of the cold-water history, would instantly get the message: no climbing up the ladder in this cage! One by one, the researchers replaced all original monkeys with new ones, and each time a new monkey would attempt to climb the ladder, he was pulled down by the other monkeys. 

In time, only monkeys who had never received the cold shower were in the room, but none of them would climb the ladder.  They also prevented any new monkey introduced to the cage from climbing the ladder—even though none of them knew why they did this.

Perhaps you have been discouraged by others against pursuing your dreams—such as becoming the #1 salesperson in our company.  I want to stand behind you and affirm you: you can do it! It’s never too late to start dreaming, and the path to success is wide open in front of you!

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Practice does not make perfect!

Posted on October 12, 2012 by Sean Moore | | Leave a comment

Considered one of the greatest soccer teams in the world, Spain’s La Roja uses a simple drill to hone and perfect their 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 circle quickly passes 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 run this drill before every single practice and game, repeatedly.

We use a similar ideology during our three-week new hire training programs, which are more than just times set aside to relay product information, but to create an environment for our new sales people to practice, practice, and practice. Looking back on a recent training class, the new hires not only pitched the products, but also had to do so repeatedly until perfecting each pitch to the point the pitches became second nature. It is a well known fact that if one practices specific actions and reactions a certain way, they are far more likely to perform the same way on “Game Day.” So, we had the new hires memorize sales pitches and repeat the steps verbatim. A new hire told me our role plays felt like a scene out of, “The Miracle on Ice,” where Kurt Russell’s character Herb Brooks drilled his team with “suicides” and kept blowing his whistle while yelling “Again! Again! Again!” Although our tactics on repetition were similar, it was more than just having the new hires pitch the product again and again; they had to pitch it perfectly or they had to start again. Our ideology was that just because you’re practicing pitches all day, it doesn’t necessarily mean you’re going to perfect them until you are performing the correct actions over and over again. This not only reinforces the permanence of good behaviors and habit, but also enables you to respond in stressful situations when you’re in the OR and present the product like it was second nature.

With that said, after a training or a sales meeting with tenured reps, I often am amazed when I get into the field with a TM how those “good” behaviors they could have perfected by practicing, have been tweaked or replaced with behaviors that do not get the desired results. It goes back to not only practicing, but doing so with purpose. The concept of the 10,000 Hour Expert Rule, popularized in Malcolm Gladwell’s book “Outliers,” states 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, you must practice deliberately, with feedback, while always seeking to correct and improve upon errors. In other words, you 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 wont reach your full potential.

One of the greatest soccer teams has the belief that practicing the fundamentals every day leads to greatness; we can learn from this. Once we leave a sales training or meeting where we learn about a new product or the skills necessary to effectively sell it, we must continue to practice with the intent to improve and master those skills. Also, 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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Shoot the Puck!

Posted on October 5, 2012 by Sean Moore | | 2 Comments

As an adolescent in Western Canada, I grew up playing hockey and idolizing Wayne  Gretzky. In my office, one of my most prized possessions is a miniature hockey stick signed by “The Great One” himself. How I acquired the stick is a funny story. My father, with my mother alongside in this instance, was travelling on business in Edmonton when the Oilers were in the middle of their dynasty. My mother, to this day, has absolutely no knowledge or interest in sports of any kind, which includes hockey. At the time of my parents’ outing to Edmonton, the Oilers would often practice in a rink inside the West Edmonton Mall, and usually signed autographs after practice. My dad had a small hockey stick he gave my mom and convinced her to stand in line to get Gretzky to autograph it. When my Mom got up to the front of line, she introduced herself and proceeded to nonchalantly tell Wayne that her son (that’s me!) also played hockey. To top it off, she decided to ask him if he was an Oiler hockey player since she needed “this one guy’s” autograph that her son was obsessed with (i.e. Gretzky’s autograph). She basically met and had a conversation with the greatest hockey player ever to lace up, during which she had no idea who he was and wanted to know if he even played hockey. I heard he found my mom quite amusing. True story!

Anyway, the point of this week’s update is not to convince you that Canadians Hockey Players are awesome or that you should start watching hockey immediately, but it is the following: although Wayne Gretzky is known to fans as “The Great One,” early in his career scouts didn’t believe he would ever make it to the NHL because of his size. Gretzky was only 5’11 and 165 pounds, whereas most entering the NHL were at least 6’0 tall and 200 pounds. When Gretzky was rejected by the NHL, he signed with the WHA, and in over a year was finally signed by an NHL team, the Edmonton Oilers. The scouts were still not convinced; they predicted Gretzky would crumble in face of bigger and stronger players. What the scouts didn’t know was Gretzky he had been competing with stronger, taller, and heavier players from the first time he picked up a hockey stick as a child. After years of coaching and with his Dad’s mentoring, he developed a simple strategy and has been quoted numerous times saying, “You need to skate where the puck is going, not where it’s been; and shoot the puck! As you miss 100% the shots you don’t take!” With this basic strategy Gretzky set 40 regular season records, 15 playoff records, 6 All-Star records, won 4 Stanley Cups, 9 MVP awards, and 10 scoring titles.

So what fundamentals of Gretzky’s strategies can we apply to our approach with selling a new medical device product? If Wayne Gretzky were selling a new product, he wouldn’t be afraid to take chances, because without that commitment nothing ever happens. It’s easy to find a million excuses to not take a chance, not to ask the surgeon to call the OR Director, not to ask for the order, not to ask the surgeon to change his/her preference card, or not to ask the surgeon to call a colleague and suggest that they use his/her new product. So, if you don’t take the shot by giving into excuses, then there is absolutely no way of succeeding. Yet, if you do decide to take the shot, there is always a chance you might make it, even if the odds aren’t in your favor. If you take a chance at every opportunity that comes your way, you will get better, overcome fear, eventually hit the net and score!

More than taking chances, the other aspect of this equation is put yourself in a position to be successful with a new product by skating to where the “puck” is going. Make sure you are continuously planning ahead, planting seeds into the accounts you plan to work, and then reaping the rewards when you get there. I have seen sales people in our industry that simply start the day by driving around and looking for a blue “H,” all the while wishing and hoping they close a sale that day. Cold calling without strategy or purpose doesn’t work. Why not call ahead to schedule an educational program, and get agreement to in-service the surgeons on your equipment? As a result, you now have a reason to be in the OR and are in the position to have a clinical conversation with a surgeon. You then need a reason to get back in the OR (“shoot the puck”), and close for both results (“hit the net”) and a reason to get back in the OR again (another chance to “shoot”). If it doesn’t work—try it again! Wayne never scored on every shot, but he did score a large number of goals because he shot a lot of pucks!

Take a good look in the mirror today and assert yourself that you are a winner, you are going to put yourself in a position to be successful, and you are going to take action. You will see a change take place in your life, business, and your sales results. The absolute worst thing you can do is to take no action at all and not shoot the puck; the best thing you can do is to be present, think tactically, and take every chance.

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Negative Zero to Hero!

Posted on September 28, 2012 by Sean Moore | | Leave a comment

Watch this 20 second video before reading ….

More than twenty years ago, just two days before Christmas, nineteen-year-old Jami Goldman and her friend Lisa Barzano headed home for the holidays from a Colorado ski trip. Jami and her friend never imagined they would end up sliding into a snow bank and getting stuck on an Arizona back road that state troopers had closed without checking for travelers in distress. They endured three days and nights of a freezing snow storm that all but buried their Chevy Mini-Blazer. The car battery died during the first night, stranding the girls in below-zero temperatures. When the snow stopped, they gave up the idea of leaving the SUV as the surrounding snow was thigh-high. Instead they sat in sub-zero temperatures with a cinnamon roll and a frozen six-pack of Diet-Pepsi. Freezing, thirsty and hungry, they languished for ten painful days and eleven nights, wondering why no one had found them. At home, Jami’s parents launched a huge statewide search to no avail. The girls, close to unconscious, were discovered randomly by a man and his son on snow mobiles. Jami’s limbs were frost-bitten, beyond redemption and she was nearly dead. Once she was revived, Jami faced the harsh reality her legs would have to be amputated before the spreading gangrene would kill her.

Before the incident Jami was not much of an athlete and really did not exercise. Her main concern in the days before the operation was if she would ever walk again. Her medical staff insisted that she needed to exercise as part of recovery; within 48 hours she was using a walker and taking her first steps with her new prosthetic legs. As a part of her continued physical therapy, she started working out in the pool and within 6 months, she no longer needed a walker. She found she really enjoyed working out and decided to start running. The irony is Jami had to lose her legs in order to discover she had a skill set for running. Four years after her surgery, Jami started running competitively and set her sights on the 2000 Para-Olympics in Australia. Around the same time Adidas approached Jami to participate in an advertising campaign; Jami’s commercial took the media by storm and she received an overwhelming outpouring of positive feedback from the prosthetics community. She did compete in Australia in the 200, where she broke the 200 meter record. Jami has since gone on to become a motivational speaker, a published author, has appeared in two major motion pictures, a major athletic commercial, became an elementary school teacher, as well as a wife and mother. In an interview she was asked if she would want to have her legs back. She said, “Right now, no. My prosthetics define me. They are part of who I am, I am exactly the person I want to be.”

Champions like Jami understand that adversity is the catalyst to mental toughness and success. If you remove adversity, you remove the joy of victory. I often say, “You are either getting better or getting worse, you never stay the same.” Adversity pushes us to grow and learn. Average people choose the path of least resistance; where as successful people perform at higher levels of awareness, and understand the challenges they face make them stronger. Adversity to the average equals pain. Adversity to the successful is their training ground to success. Don’t get me wrong, successful people don’t welcome adversity, but instead view it through the lenses of learning and the opportunity to grow. Think about how you made it through a tough time in your personal or professional life and how it applies to this quote from J. Marriott, “Good timber does not grow with ease; the stronger the wind, the stronger the trees.”

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The Fry Guy and the Second Sale

Posted on September 21, 2012 by Sean Moore | | 1 Comment

I grew up in a small town in the province of British Columbia. By age 10 I had my first job delivering local newspapers. At the time the local McDonald franchise actively recruited nearby high school students, so when I turned the legal working age of 15, I decided to apply. After interviewing and getting the job, I remember being excited to start and had decided I wanted to start in the “Drive Thru” department. I was utterly disappointed on my first day when my manager assigned me to the “prestigious” position of “Fry Guy.” The manager told me I had to work my way up to front counter sales and then work up to Drive Thru as these were the most important positions in the restaurant.

For the next few months I worked 8 hour shifts schlepping fast food for $3.65 an hour and made what felt like thousands of pounds of fries after school and on the weekends. During those months I learned about team work, responsibility, what it takes to run a business, and most importantly a strong work ethic. After almost a year I was promoted to the front counter sales, and then to Drive Thru. I then understood the importance of the front counter sales and the Drive Thru positions at McDonalds, as we had specific sales techniques we had to follow. These techniques are a part of a very valuable business principle that can be applied to sales in almost any industry, including medical devices.

McDonalds trained the counter and Drive Thru sales people in every restaurant around the world that it’s the power of the second sale that drives profitability and success. If you have been to a McDonalds you have noticed the sales representative always asks if you’d like fries and soda with your order, or if you’d like to supersize. You almost never say no! In fact, in a proven study 40% percent of people will say yes. How does purchasing soda and fries determine the success of a company that annually spends millions of dollars on marketing campaigns? As it turns out, the profit margin of a burger is minuscule compared to the profit margin of a soda and fries, and the financial success of the restaurant rode on the back of these two additional food group items that patrons rarely think twice about ordering.

McDonalds marketing campaigns have one main purpose, to get patrons into their restaurants. Once the customer is in a McDonalds, it is up to the sales person the customer interacts with to maximize revenues and profits with every visit. In the medical device industry, think about how hard it is to generate that first sale; it’s similar to McDonalds getting a customer to their restaurant. When a sales person closes the first sale, the second sale becomes easier to obtain, yet not everyone closes the second sale. The problem is sales people often get so excited about the initial sale they are at times oblivious to taking advantage of any additional opportunities.

In any medical device company we can avoid this by being conscious that once the initial sale is made, it’s still imperative we suggest other solutions and value added product offerings. It’s much easier for a prospect to justify the second sale when they recently justified their original decision to buy from us. Looking for additional opportunities in the OR allows you to maximize your time, energy, and effort you just put forth. Think about hard it has become to get in the OR, so when you get there and have a reason to be there, how are you maximizing your selling effectiveness? Next time you’re in the OR between procedures and before you leave the OR, look for those additional opportunities. We all know what our company’s main thing is, but it can’t be the only thing. I am not sure we can directly correlate that suggestive selling will increase our sales in the medical device industry by 40%, but I do know if you don’t ask for an order, you surely won’t get one.

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