Dealing with difficult clients is a big challenge for all sales people, but even more so for those working in the healthcare and medical sectors. As their goal is to assist clients in delivering enhanced patient care through products and services, a badly handled situation may negatively affect their relationship with the client, their morale, income, their company’s reputation and could also put patient safety at risk. Lorena Tonarelli looks into some strategies that can help.
To avoid difficult situations with clients, research shows it all comes down to one thing: managing relationships. Plainly put, understand your client's needs, find a solution that will meet those needs and deliver what is promised.
“The key,” says professor of marketing Dr Leonard Berry of Texas M&A University, “is to offer customers superior solutions to their needs, treat them with real respect, and connect with them on an emotional level. You also have to […] make it easy for people to find what they need, pay for it and move on.”
Here is how, according to Berry, you can achieve all this:
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Solve their problems – Clients buy products or services because they have a need or problem that requires a solution, writes Berry in the journal Harvard Business Review. If they can’t find what they want, they may experience frustration, which can lead them to become unpleasant and, sometimes, even angry or aggressive.
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Be prepared to go the extra mile – Don’t just try to sell your products. Find out what your client is hoping to achieve with them. Whether it is improving medical or healthcare staff performance, reducing hospital stays, delivering information to patients or setting up a state-of-the-art diagnostic imaging facility, help the client see how they can accomplish their goal through your products.
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Show respect – No matter how demanding, uncooperative, sceptical, fickle or insistent your client is, treat that person with respect. Don’t look bored, annoyed or impatient. Be courteous and polite at all times. Letting them know that you are there to help, no matter what, will lead to the client becoming less difficult.
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Connect emotionally – Berry says it’s important to “strive to establish feelings of closeness, affection and trust” with clients. To put this into practice, you need to find out about their values and show that you understand them.
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Don’t waste their time – Good sales professionals “understand that people’s most precious commodity in the modern world is time and do everything they can to save as much of it as possible for their customers,” Berry says. Wasting your client's time doesn’t just increase the likelihood that they become annoyed and difficult to deal with; you may end up losing them.
If, no matter what your efforts, the client becomes angry, the following tips will help you defuse the situation, before it escalates out of control.
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Stay calm – Keep talking in a friendly tone of voice, and avoid angry body language, like hands on hips or frowning. The key is not to take your client’s complaints personally. They are angry about the product, the service, or the company – not you.
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Keep the discussion positive – Refer to the situation that may be causing the client to be angry in terms of possible solutions, rather than consequences. Avoid saying “no,” or “it’s not possible.” And don’t blame anyone for the problem.
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Win their trust – Tell your client that you understand their frustration. Listen attentively to what they say and write down their concerns. Reassure them that the problem will be addressed to their satisfaction, and follow up to ensure this has been done.
After the incident, take note of the reasons that caused your client to be angry. Perhaps a certain service didn’t help them achieve the level of patient care they set out to obtain, a supply of medicines wasn’t delivered on time or the latest surgical implants didn’t perform as they expected. Write down the details, and take some time to review the information. See if there is something you could do differently next time around to avoid the same situation.
While you can’t expect all your clients to be friendly, pleasant or cooperative, the above strategies will make it easier to deal with them. You will avoid needless stress, improve your performance and master your way to the top!
