Speaker 1: Hello, this is Dr. Eric Bricker, and thank you for watching A Health Care Z. Today's topic is the top 10 sales tactics in health care. Now, I want to start off with a brief story. I was at a conference about four years ago for health care innovators, specifically working in employee benefits. I was talking to a very successful employee benefits broker consultant, and he actually helps other brokers and consultants sell innovative solutions to employers. He said, you know, Dr. Bricker, one of the challenges that I have is that the people I work with, they just lack sales skills, and I got to thinking, that is a fantastic point. We can have tremendously better value propositions, especially for employers and employer-sponsored health plans, but if we don't have sales tactics in order to be able to persuade others to use those value propositions, it won't work. The best value proposition without tactical business-to-business sales does not work. Well, likewise, you can have these sales tactics and have a horrible value proposition, and listen, that might not work either, so you really have to have both. Let's focus on these top 10 sales tactics today. These specifically come from two of the most successful insurance broker benefits consultants that I have ever worked with. They were the top producers in their offices, and they are, frankly, if I told you their names, regardless of where you live in the country, I bet you you know who they are, because many people around the country know these folks. That's how successful they are. Okay, number one, and also, they sold groups like 1,000 to 10,000, so they were doing mostly self-funded groups. When we talk about innovative solutions for self-funded employers, that was exactly the type of employers that these folks were working with. Number one, they had enthusiasm, so people were like, oh, you're always so enthusiastic on your videos. I learned how to be enthusiastic, frankly, from watching these people. I first met these gentlemen like 13 years ago. Two, they smiled a lot, so they were enthusiastic. Why do they do that? Okay, I'm sure all of you know this, but first impressions are formed in the first 0.1 seconds. It's not in the first minute. It's not in the first second. A first impression is established in the first 0.1 seconds. You could come across as enthusiastic, and you can smile, and that's pretty much all you can accomplish in 0.1 seconds. That's super important. Next up, they were very good at remembering and using people's names, and they were very good at small talk. What are those two things are for? Those are for building rapport with the people you're meeting with. Building rapport is super important. Now, I was horrible at remembering names, and I was horrible at small talk, but I noticed that they were very good at it, so I would practice it. Guess where I would practice it? The number one place where you can practice it is if you ever go to a store, like a grocery store with the checkout person. If you are ever interacting with somebody at a cash register, that is a fantastic opportunity to practice small talk. I hated small talk, and I was horrible at it, but I would practice with people at cash registers, and that was super helpful. Next up, they would tell stories. They wouldn't just give a whole bunch of facts about the value proposition. They would tell stories. Why is this so important? Our brains are hardwired to listen to and pay attention to stories. We've been listening to stories for thousands, if not tens of thousands of years. If you're going to rattle off a whole bunch of things in a value proposition, at a very basic level, the person listening to you is going to forget them. They're not going to pay attention to them, but if you can encase them in a story, at the end of the day, it just helps the other person remember it, so they're never going to find your solution of value if they can't even remember it, so you've got to put it in a story. Next up, they would name drop people and businesses that either use the product or associate with the product, et cetera. Why would they do that? It's because of social proof, monkey see, monkey too. Again, it's not just about the quote unquote value proposition, it's like, well, who else is using the value proposition? By weaving in people and businesses, that social proof is hugely powerful. Next up, they were well-dressed. I'm sure many of you are familiar with what's referred to as the halo effect. Again, if you can have a good first impression, then people ... It's also referred to as consistency bias. If you can have a good first impression, if you're like, they like the way you look or they like the way you're dressed or they particularly like your tie or your outfit, then the other things that you say and that you do, they actually will subconsciously try to like those things as well because they liked it to begin with. The halo effect is something that being well-dressed, you can use in your favor. Okay, next up, they would intentionally try to help solve people's problems. If anybody was talking about, well, we're having a hard time hiring for this particular job within the HR department, they would actually look within their LinkedIn network to see if they could find somebody that would help fulfill that job. Or if they were like, hey, I'm really trying to find a new ... I'm trying to get a new Ford or a new GM car or whatever, they'd be like, oh, you know, I know this dealership and they do a great job, et cetera, et cetera. In the small talk, they would help that they would not just small talk for the sake of small talk, but you could actually work to solve their problems outside of your value proposition, et cetera, because really when you're in sales, regardless of what you're doing, you're really in the problem-solving business. These two gentlemen were always trying to find all sorts of problems that their customers were having that in some small way, they could solve those problems. I remember one time he was talking with a CFO who was a horrible golfer and he was losing golf balls constantly. The next time he met with him, he just brought him a sleeve of golf balls because he was trying to solve his problem of running out of golf balls so frequently. Okay, next up, you're going to read ... These gentlemen and successful salespeople are very good at reading body language and then adapting their presentations, oftentimes based upon that body language. I'm sure many of you know there's the UCLA study that found that only 3% of our communication is the actual words that come out of our mouth and 97% it's the intonation of our voice, it's our facial expressions, it's our body language. When we are selling, we have to adapt to our audience. The audience isn't going to be like, hey, this really isn't resonating with me, or hey, I'm getting bored and I'm tuning out. They're not going to be that explicit with you. You've got to read their body language and then you have to adapt the presentation as you go along. Okay, that's super hard to do, right? Easy for me to say, really hard to do, so how do you do it? You have to practice it. You have to do it a lot. Both of these gentlemen that were working in groups of 1,000 to 10,000, they started out with small and medium-sized businesses. Why? Because there are a lot of small and medium-sized businesses, so you get a lot more at bats, so you get a lot more practice. Specifically in healthcare, there are many people who watch this video who are domain experts in healthcare, but they don't have sales experience and frankly, you're like me and you don't have sales skills. These are skills. It's like shooting a basketball, okay? This is a skill that can be learned. I was not born with this. The vast majority of people are not born with this. These are specific skills that you can and you must learn in order to be able to effectively convince people to use your value proposition, so quit working on your product. Stop working on your value proposition and start working on this, because without this, you're not going to be successful, but with this, you will. That's my point for today. Thank you for watching A Health Care Z.