Focus Magazine - Spring 2016 - (Page 30)

FEATUREARTICLE The Art of Sales Improvisation - Your Competitive Advantage ■ By Randy Sabourin T here's a moment every life sciences sales rep knows and many dread. It's the moment during the sales call with a healthcare provider when you know nothing is going to happen. Every rep has been in that situation and they know the answer is the reason they are good at their job - they improvise. e ability to improvise is to combine being creative and delivering that creativity in real time. It's thinking and doing simultaneously. It's the skill of working with what you have around you and leveraging it to meet your objectives. It's not winging it or being unprepared. You've seen people who are naturally good at improvisation, but like most useful skills, it can be taught. It is taught to firefighters when they're learning to use the Jaws-ofLife, to athletes who need to save a play gone wrong, to jazz musicians, and to actors for both serious and comedic purposes. e process steps of improvisation 30 are attention, accept, adapt and advance. e most important aspect, however, is preparation. In a sporting analogy, learning how to skate would be a great skill to have mastered before you attempt to improvise during a hockey game. For a rep, this applies to understanding product information, your customer, competition and the improvisation process itself. Knowing this information allows you to access this knowledge easily and keep brain power for the creativity of improvisation. e four process steps for sales improvisation are simple and mimic on a basic level the give and take of a conversation. Attention - or as a subset, listening - is the simplest, most important step, and unfortunately the one most oen neglected. Listening without distraction, judgment and "mind chatter" is very diﬃcult. One factor that makes listening diﬃcult is that we can comprehend speech at a rate between 300 to 500 words per minute while the average speaker talks to us at a speed of 150 to 200 words per minute. In the gap between what we hear and what we process, our mind wanders. is step is essential to gathering information and being aware of what's potentially useful in the conversation, in the room, or gathered from the doctor. Acceptance is the next step in the process. It can be diﬃcult for some business people because it requires us to let go of judgment and control. is is counterintuitive for many people, particularly those who tend to be "take charge" individuals and have been taught to take control of the conversation. Be that as it may, accepting a situation for what it is - not attempting to control or judge it - and using the new information as an input into the revised decisionmaking process is essential to eﬀective improvisation. Adaptation is the next step in the sales improvisation process. Now is your chance to apply your cognitive and creative skills in order to achieve the objectives, in spite of the changes engendered by the situation. By paying attention, listening and accepting the situational realities, we are now in a position to blend salient facts with creativity and adapt to the new situation. Holding onto your account strategy in the face of new challenges is counter-productive; letting go and adapting to the situation is the key to a great conversation. FOCUS | SPRING 2016 | www.L-TEN.org http://www.L-TEN.org

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Focus Magazine - Spring 2016

Focus Magazine - Spring 2016
From the President: Change is in the Air
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
Guest Editor: 'Training Event' or 'Learning Experience'?
Directions: Engaging with Life Sciences Leaders
Front of the Room: 'It Can't Be Me, Right?'
Neuroscience: The Science of Imitation
Bristol-Myers Squibb: Launching a New Global Selling Model
Accelerating the Journey to Customer-Centricity
Cognitive Science: Creating More Effective Multimedia Learning
The Art of Sales Improvisation – Your Competitive Advantage
Developing Leaders Who Excel at Strategy Execution
Learning Technologies for Event-Based Training
Defending Your Sales Process
Virtual How: Market Access Training
Ad Index
Focus Contacts
5 Questions with Kevin Kruse

Focus Magazine - Spring 2016