1: “Think about a typical medical-surgical nursing unit,” the Omnicell sales professional says to his prospective client, a major hospital system, Erik Peterson and Tim Riesterer write in their terrific book Conversations That Win the Complex Sale.
Omnicell helps health-care facilities manage and distribute medications and supplies more efficiently.
“Pretend for the time being that you’re in California and that your nurses only have five patients to care for,” the rep says.
“Here are the patients. Here’s your nursing station. [Draws box with N.]
“Here’s the med cabinet. [Draws box with M.]
“There’s the inconveniently located supply cabinet. [Draws box with S.]
“Oh . . . and way over here? That’s the pharmacy. [Draws box with Ph.]
The Omnicell sales rep continues: “In this almost-perfect-world scenario, the nurse arrives at the nursing station for a 12-hour shift and begins her rounds.
“She visits the first patient, assesses his needs, goes to the medication cabinet, retrieves the necessary meds, returns to administer them, and moves on to the next patient . . . and so on, until all medications have been administered and the patients are all secure and happy.”
“Is this how things typically run in your nursing units?”
The prospect shakes her head and smiles.
“Here’s what’s far more likely to happen,” the sales pro says,
“Your nurse is going to be interrupted. A lot. In fact, according to some studies, nurses are interrupted up to 12 times an hour during a typical 12-hour daytime shift. . .
“The majority of these interruptions need to be dealt with right away. So instead of this nice, neat, orderly, almost-perfect-world scenario, your typical workflow tends to end up looking more like this.
[Draws arrows and lines as you are talking to illustrate each interruption.]
The sales rep continues talking while drawing: “She might arrive at the medication cabinet, only to discover that the drugs she needs are missing and need to be tracked down at the pharmacy or elsewhere in the unit.
“Maybe she gets halfway back to the patient’s room, discovers that she’s grabbed the wrong med, and has to go back and get the right one.
“A patient in another room might desperately need his pain medication, so the nurse will have to drop everything to get the narcotics, do the count back, and administer the drug.
“Or, once she gets to the patient’s room, she finds out that he’s brought some medications from home that need to be administered, and no one seems to know where they are.
“You get the idea. The point is that each of these interruptions takes time and attention away from patients.”
At this point, the sales professional shares some recent data about patient safety.
“Researchers in Australia found that each time a nurse was interrupted, it increased the chance of a clinical error by 12.7 percent,” he says. “The more distractions there were, the more mistakes the nurses made.”
The prospective client shakes her head.
“What about the impact on nursing efficiency?” the sales rep asks.
“If you take a look at each of these squiggly lines, you’ll see that every interruption forces a nurse to take a detour or go out of her way to deal with the interruption.
“That kind of inefficiency also adds up to as much as 5 miles per day that a nurse has to walk just to do her job.
“And, despite all that walking, that’s time that’s not being spent with the patients.”
Next, the sales rep talks about another big concern for hospitals: nursing satisfaction.
“You have distracted, exhausted nurses with no control over their time who are constantly worried about making a mistake that could harm the patients they are supposed to be caring for.
“Is it any wonder that the American Hospital Association is predicting a shortage of one million nurses by 2030?” he asks.
2: What you’ve just read is a vivid example of Step One of creating a “Big Picture,” a visual salespeople draw on a piece of paper or flip chart that simplifies a complex message and makes an abstract idea concrete.
“The best Big Pictures,” Erik and Tim explain, “start by visualizing the customer’s world, pains, or challenges.”
Now it’s time for Step Two: Show the contrast between the prospect’s pain today and the gain your solution can provide tomorrow.
The Omnicell sales professional continues: “Given that the quality and frequency of nursing interaction play such a key role in favorable outcomes, how can you and your nurses overcome these challenges?
“What if you could minimize the number of interruptions and distractions and their impact on your nurses’ workflow?
“How would this help you enhance patient safety, increase nursing efficiency, and improve nursing satisfaction?
“And what impact would this have on patient satisfaction?” he asks.
Notice what the salesperson does before talking about Omnicell: He invites the prospect to imagine a better future.
“Imagine the right side of this diagram showing you how things would be different with Omnicell,” the sales rep.
“With Omnicell, your nurses can access the medication cabinet remotely, from any computer or workstation in the unit.
[Draws dotted lines from patient bed to O rectangle.]
“They won’t have to go all the way to the cabinet to request or waste medications, which minimizes all the back-and-forth that makes them more vulnerable to interruptions and distractions, and can cause medication errors.
“It also means,” he continues, “that nurses can significantly shorten the time between assessment and medication delivery, so they’ll be able to get the patients what they need faster, with less disruption.
“What about all those endless loops around the hospital that hurt efficiency and increase the likelihood of interruptions?
“When you install Omnicell’s SinglePointe software solution, you’ll be able to keep everything your nurses need for their patients in a single, secure location—right here in the cabinet.
“This way, you can effectively eliminate instances of nurses having to stop what they are doing and hunt for missing items. This keeps them focused and on their task and better able to concentrate on patient care. . .
“This goes a long way toward alleviating the stress and anxiety that cause depression and burnout in nurses—and they’ll be more satisfied with their jobs because they’re doing what they became nurses for: Taking care of patients.
“That’s why hospitals and health-care facilities that have made patient satisfaction their top priority are coming to Omnicell.
“By simply letting their nurses be nurses, they can make significant improvements in patient satisfaction.”
3: With a simple drawing, the Omnicell salesperson makes a complex problem, and the company’s solution, easy to see.
Yesterday [hyperlink], we explored Erik and Tim’s three steps:
First: Draw your prospect’s world today.
Second: Draw how that world could look tomorrow with your solution.
Third: Look at the picture and ask, “What does that look like?” If a natural metaphor emerges, use it.
Pain. Gain. Metaphor. In that order.
“But don’t force a metaphor. If you don’t have one that fits, that’s okay,” the authors suggest.
The most important step is the first one: “If all you can do is visualize the prospect’s pain,” Erik and Tim note, “that can be enough. And it should be your top priority.”
Here are a few more tips for making Big Pictures.
“Don’t tell yourself that you’re not creative enough to come up with your own Big Pictures,” Erik and Tim write. “You don’t have to have the ‘creativity gene.'”
The authors share that their clients include engineers, scientists, or accountants—”i.e., people who don’t normally think of themselves as being creative.” And all of them have created effective Big Pictures.
Also, keep it simple. Your Big Picture should not require you to be an artist. “When you’re talking to a customer, you don’t have time for art,” they write.
What if you’re thinking, “But I can’t draw”?
“Use simple shapes—stick figures, circles, arrows, pyramids, and so on—to create your Big Picture.”
Their advice?
“Think with your hands.”
“Put pen to paper. Just make some scribbles as you talk through your customer’s challenges and how you can solve them. Your Big Picture will start to emerge after a couple of passes.”
The goal isn’t to create a beautiful picture. It’s to create a picture in which your prospect recognizes their own world.
It’s often helpful to work with a colleague or friend. “Partnering with someone helps a lot,” they observe.
“This exercise benefits from an initial flow of ideas, regardless of whether they are good or bad. You need to just start the flow going.”
More tomorrow!
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Reflection: If you drew your prospect’s world today, would they immediately recognize themselves in the picture?
Action: Grab a blank sheet of paper. Draw your prospect’s biggest challenge on the left and the better future your solution creates on the right. Keep it simple—boxes, circles, arrows, and stick figures are all you need.
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