How To Build Emotion In Pharmaceutical Sales Situation And Close More Sales

You've learned about the power of the right words in small business sales strategy. Words that convey emotions, as you recall, can move the prospect from paying attention to taking action. Hence, you want to use 'power words' in the next opportunity you have when communicating with prospects and customers.

You'll notice 2 necessary ingredients there: Words and Emotion.

In this post, we're going to look at how to build emotion in pharmaceutical sales situations. Even though the focus is given to sales in the pharma industry, the concept is universal and can be applied to any sales situation. I choose pharma because that's what I'm familiar with.

You'll learn the concept of how to infuse emotion in a selling situation, and after you've grasped the idea, you can apply it to your own industry selling situation. You'll find the concept easy to understand and apply because my aim is for you to be able to use it to your advantage. If you benefit from this in any way, I consider my goal is fulfilled.

First, let's look at:

• Many Pharma Marketing Materials Lack of Emotion

What you find in abundance in many brochures, journal, clinical studies (obviously!) is 'dry,' straight to the point fact and figures. How do you feel when reading a statement like:

• "Analyzer W improve turnaround time by 70%."
• "X reduces adverse coronary event by 30%."
• "Y is the preferred antibiotics of choice in a 12,000 GP survey."
• "Patient-reported achieving reaction Grade 4 with Z within 30 minutes of ingestion."

 I don't know about you, but for the past 12 years I've been selling to 'human being' in pharmaceutical industry--General Practitioners, Physicians, Clinicians, etc. and these hard facts are valueless to them. They are raw except...

• Translate to Relevant Benefits

Notice that I say essential benefits. Not all your product features to spark the interest of your customers. In fact, features do not provoke 'emotional response'--benefits do. So your first task, whenever you're going out to promote something, is to get to know your customers, what matters to them, and how to position your offer as the savior of the day.

Know your customers--it really is essential!

When you know your customers well enough, often time they would reveal to you what issue they have right now regarding your market segment and how they want it to be solved. Now, pay close attention to this because you want to go for the kill--no point beating around the bust 'feature or benefit dumping' and hope that something stuck...

... Selling that way is so yesterday, and it sucks!

Which benefit that makes your customer's eyes glowing and keep them asking in curiosity? That is the one you're going to hammer again and again and again but...

... As important as knowing what t say, to build emotion you must also know how to say it--how to put your offer forward.

• The Best Emotion Building Format: Storytelling

This is not taught is regular sales training. You won't find your trainer drill you with storytelling exercise all day long. They instead flash a few PowerPoint presentations and let you go back to sleep on it; which is precisely what you'll do later--sleep!

How do you turn the hard fact and benefit into a story?

This is not something you can achieve in a single sitting. Heck, even after 12 years, I still find myself learning how to best tell my story but here's something you can use as a guideline whenever you need to come up with a good one:

• Use specific names (whenever you can). It's better to say Abby, the Chief Pharmacist at Hospital So and So reduces patients compliance by prescribing our once a day dosing drug.
• Start by telling your customer the situation your 'references' are in--or maybe a task they are carrying out.
• Tell them specific action that such a person take--reduce dose, change reagents, change analyzers, etc.
• ... And tell them the outcome or result that comes out

But here's some No-No for this technique...

• Don't merely makes things up--it drains your credibility, and it gives you bad names
• Don't bad mouth or bring people down.
• Don't leave any story hanging--finished with the robust and relevant result they experience and close with a call for action.

There you have it--a simple solution on how to build emotion in pharmaceutical sales; find relevant, most compelling benefits and weave that into a suitable story format. The rest is up to your customers to decide. The ball is in their court now...