By: Susan Boydell | sboydell@barlowmccarthy.com
One of the most common challenges I often hear from field staff is dealing with issues and barriers. Folks aren’t sweating the small stuff (well, maybe a little bit of sweat!), but it’s the big stuff that can’t be fixed with a simple phone call. Access is one of the most common “big stuff” barriers. Think about it, hiring new doctors, building a new cath lab; they just aren’t things you can fix overnight. But, we can’t let that stop us, so let’s talk about what you can do.
First, let’s understand what it means when a customer expresses a barrier to sending you any additional business. They are basically telling you that your service currently isn’t meeting a specific need. It is a clear message, yet determining how to respond can be a challenge. Especially when they are expressing something you know is a problem.
Using our “access” barrier as an example, here are a couple of foundational steps you can take to address their concern, prepare your response, and hopefully move beyond it.
- Listen carefully to what they just said. That means listening to all their words. Let’s imagine they said they prefer to use your specialists, but they just aren’t willing to wait that long to have their patients seen. So, they told you two things in that statement; quality and appointment timeliness are both important. But which one is most important? #3 will help answer that question.
- Repeat what they said to confirm you understood their concern correctly. This is a simple technique to validate their points but also to build trust, as demonstrated through good listening.
- Ask a clarifying question to determine, in this case, which is most important to them, quality or access. You might also want to clarify from a quality perspective what is most important for their patients. Are they different for different types of patients? This is where it’s important to understand your clinical differentiators over the competition, which leads us to #4.
- Respond authentically. Let’s assume we uncovered that quality is most important to the referring physician. If they are willing to send patients to the competitor because their patients are seen quicker, than likely they perceive quality as equal or not differentiated enough to be worth the wait. Now, you know what you have to communicate! This is where you have to know your stuff, be able to articulate your clinical points of differentiation, and be prepared with a proof source if you need it. And again, what you share has to be a good match to what the physician articulated as important from a quality perspective.
- Measure that what you shared makes sense. This is where you toss the conversation back to the physician. A couple of things can happen here. They can be in total agreement, and we know what to do if that happens, or they will continue to push on the access issue. If they continue to push, you’ve got to start over and look for other points of differentiation to overcome the access problem. Perhaps you focus on certain patients that really require the expertise that you provide. Work hard to ensure they only think of you for those niche patients.
This is hard work, but with diligence, good prep, and follow-up, you can be successful. This article is just the tip of the iceberg in managing issues and barriers. Stayed tuned for a follow-up article on tracking and reporting issues to get your leaders attention.
Looking for more??? I am excited to be offering a complimentary webinar on this very topic this week. The webinar is titled, “Let’s Talk About Issues” and is scheduled for February 28th at 10 am CT. I would love to have you register! Register here: https://zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_aOreIKiXTViTXwpbaPqvNA