Sales Coaching
Your Success Is Our Success
Sales Coaching is a fundamental element to developing the team to close more consultations and enhance the patient experience. Sales training alone, achieves only so much. It’s the ongoing sales coaching, working with the team, that creates the biggest impact. It allows them to explore what works, what doesn’t, and hone their new skills in a safe environment. Sales coaching follows the Ethical Sales training modules of which there are five; Sales Conversation, Art of Questioning, Handling the Objection, Telling the Story, and Mastering Mindset. The modules cover the whole consultation process for your practice, from the initial phone call to post treatment. This training supported by on-going sales coaching delivers exceptional results.
Starting Point
Our starting point in sales coaching is the patient and thinking about it from their point of view, what’s important to them, how they feel during the consultation process. In addition to the patient experience, we pull in our expertise of why and how people buy, and the emotional side of their journey. The other consideration is the staff themselves. Defining processes, creating play books and other assets are important to drive consistency and continuity, though we are mindful people should bring their personalities and authenticity to every patient interaction.
The Consultation Process
The consultation process will be fully mapped out, allowing us to clearly observe the patient journey through the practice, from their initial inquiry through to post treatment. All likely variables will be captured to ensure we have covered all aspects. Part of the process development is to rehearse and facilitate walk-throughs of the processes. This allows the team to experience the processes firsthand, and more importantly, allows them to be involved in the development, ensuring buy-in and ownership as changes are made. In addition, what works on paper doesn’t always work in real life, so we capture this at the very start.
The PlayBook
When the first steps are finalized, we will then work with the team to create play books, cheat sheets, and talk tracks. These become a critical teaching tool for existing and new staff in the future. In effect, they become the ‘Consultation Process Manual’. It ensures all team members follow the defined systems and have the tools in place to execute them in any sales opportunity. Metrics will be finalized during this phase. We can use existing conversion rates to provide baseline numbers. Being able to track various metrics throughout the consultation process allows us to track its effectiveness.
Once the processes are defined, documented, and supporting materials such as the play book are in place, the team will need to be trained on the processes and tools. To some extent, this occurs naturally as various elements are finalized and implemented. Though a more formal sales coaching session allows the whole team to understand how the consultation works.
Sales Coaching Pulls It All Together
A highly skilled medical team who can sell is a critical component to a highly successful cash-based medical practice. Too often, we get a call when ‘the person who was best at selling’ leaves the practice, and sales literally fall off. Regardless of the specific situation within your practice, ethical sales is a major part of the practice and its overall growth and success.
As such, sales coaching is a phenomenal tool to help individuals and teams grow and develop their sales skills, and to change their mindset about what sales is. The ongoing nature of coaching allows people to develop at their own pace and engage with the process where they are and in areas that are holding them back.
Team members can come to coaching with their specific focus and challenges, allowing them to hone the skills they need at the present time. The ethical sales coaching and training is positioned to the team in a way that does not elicit fear. From our experience, the Front Desk, Patient Care Coordinators, Nurses, Providers and Doctors did not sign up to be salespeople. However, they all have a vital role to play in the sales process and sales strategies for creating the optimal patient experience. After training, your providers will become the new medical sales team, well versed in the sales experience.