What Does Your Customer Need to Believe About Themself?

People are funny. If you want to know what the politically correct answer is, putting them in a fluorescent litmeeting room with a group of their colleagues will get if for you.

Not sure it is always the real answer though.

I remember doing a series of consultant meetings for a pain medication that I was working on. In anticipation of a potential new indication, we were asking questions about what the participant’s treatment protocols were, who they referred the patients to and how they followed up with those patients.

Meeting after meeting the answers that we got were pretty standard with each medical professional outlining a pretty extensive series of things that they did to make sure that the patients got the care that they needed.

After one of the meetings, I bumped into a participant and we started talking. One thing led to another in the conversation and we ended up discussingthe patients afflicted with the disease covered by our potential new indication. Very different from what this person had said in the actual meeting, they admitted that to the fact that theyactually hated dealing with that type of patient and referred them to someone else as quickly as theypossibly could.

In subsequent meetings the feedback was often the same.The medical professionals genuinely believed that they were doing the best that they could for the patients and took all the required steps. But, when you dug deeper, they would admit to referring this type of patient out the first chance that they got. In their mind they were giving full support to the patients but in reality they were often unloading those patients as quickly as possible.

It was no different when I worked in the area of sexual health. Virtually all doctors, nurses and pharmacists believed that they had great relationships with their patients and those same patients would be completely comfortable talking to them about the most intimate details of their sexual lives. But, when asked how often that would actually happen, very few could recall having had a conversation with a patient about their sexual health.

If you have been a sales rep you have no doubt met those doctors who would tell you that they spend all the time needed to make sure that each of their patient’s health needs are taken care of appropriately. All the while you know that they try to keep the time they spend with each of those patients down to a five-minute maximumper appointment.

Make no mistake. People almost always believe what they say to you about how they connect and work with others. That does not always mean that it is true.

After many years of seeing it in different forms, I have come to the conclusion that there are some things that we just need to believe about ourselves.

I need to believe that I am a good parent to my children and a good partner to my girlfriend. I need to believe that I am a good person.

When my behaviors don’t reflect exactly how I imagine myself to be, my first instinct is to find ways to rationalize those behaviors instead of changing them or, the image that I have of myself.

I am working ongetting better about this…

We are all like that and our customers are no different. They need to believe that they are good people, parents and partners. They also need to believe that they are good at what they do professionally.

But if you want to help a customer and the patients that they take care of, you need to be aware of and adapt to this.

Whether it is a customer, a colleague or your children, you need to respect, recognize and sometimes even support what they believe about themselves.

But,at the same time, you need to watch what they actually do. Then, provide solutions based on what they do, not what they say.

Anything else will be a waste of their time and your own.