Medical sales, know whether your customer is telling the whole truth?

Perhaps one of the more difficult and frustrating parts to pharma medical sales is never really knowing whether you have sold or not. At best you will leave your call with an idea that you may have got a result, but you may have to wait a couple of months to see it in your figures, and you may not be able to isolate a call then.

Is there any other way of knowing if you've made a sales Well there are some sound principles on non verbal language, sometimes referred to as body language which can give the truth away. Get this right and it can not only give you more instant feedback on your meeting, but possible guide your approach whilst you are in there. Here's some of the key principles to consider.

Specificity is truth. In general, when people are telling the truth are very specific, when someone starts to embellish things a little, or indeed simply lie, it can all get a little wishy washy and vague. So for example, you are a medical sales rep calling on a GP two weeks after your last visit, you ask him if he has tried your product since the last visit, he replies 'oh yes, I think so' versus ' yes, I used it last week for a chap with back pain'. It's a pretty good rule rule to follow. In the first case, an immediate follow up question of 'what type of patient was it' will confirm your suspicion with an equally vague answer, such as 'err, I don't think I remember now' !

Eye contact can become poor when someone is not being very truthful. This can be equally consistent, it's very difficult to look someone in the eye and tell a straight lie. Gps are experts in burying themselves with a prescription or something while you carry on with your call, avoiding any eye contact at all. Try stopping and staying silent until they stop and look at you (if you shut up they will!). Then look them straight in the eye when you ask them probing questions and see if they can maintain contact, if not, it's probably not as they are saying.

The body is more likely to be facing away from you when things are not quite truthful. I was in a medical sales role for 10 years and it's surprising how many GPs have swivel chairs, allowing them to carefully angle themselves away from you as you begin to speak. Someone being truthful with you is far more likely to be 'open' towards you in the way they sit.

Volume can lower when someone isn't being truthful. You can see extreme cases of this in children. When they are trying to fib their way out of something, they can be seen to start to mumble it, almost in the hope you will not quite hear the incriminating evidence. If you listen carefully in your call, and note your customers volume early in the call, try to notice whether there's any dip in volume when they begin to answer any questions on their prescribing and the use of your product.

Watch out for hands moving up to the face and mouth. Again this can often see exaggerated examples of this with children. It seems to be like a reflex reaction to bring the hands up around the face and particularly the mouth when not being truthful. Almost as if to cover up your mouth to hide the untruthful words coming out of them.

Like all of these kinds of tricks, they're not 100% and they can be artificially manipulated by the knowledgeable. However, my guess is that most of your customers in medical sales aren't knowledgeable about non verbal language. So the next time you ask your customer if he is using your products, if he swivels in his chair to face away from you, looks out of the window whilst mumbling quietly with his hand over his mouth, why follow up with 'are you sure?'.