Presentation Before Diagnosis is Sales Malpractice

March 23rd, 2010

Every once in a while we do things that help us learn a lesson or make for a great teaching moment, I am 99% positive my Dad did not have this planned out but it was a great lesson and one I am passing down to others.

I received a call from my Dad a few weeks back.  He retired 2 years ago from being an over-the-road Truck Driver.  If you don’t know anyone in this profession (in my mind one hardest/most stressful professions) one common thing among Drivers is they are known to have bad backs from sitting in a seat for millions of miles.  In the middle of our conversation he proceeds to tell me how his back has been starting to bother him again.  I didn’t think twice and I proceeded to tell him to go buy a medicine ball that he could lay on and stretch his back out.  He hesitated for a minute then said “ok.”

About one week later I am talking to my Dad and I asked him how is back is doing. He proceeds to tell me that it is actually getting worse since he has been trying to stretch it over the ball.  I am starting to really worry about him and told him he needed to call a Chiropractor.  He has an appointment with a Chiropractor who finds out the REAL problem.  This past fall my dad hurt his knee, and because of that he was favoring the bad knee which was causing the muscles on one side of his back to work harder than the other to compensate for how he was walking.  The Chiropractor was able to help relieve some pain but sent him to a knee specialist to fix the REAL problem.

He calls to give me the verdict of the appointment.  Tells me how the medicine ball would have never solved his pain and his knee was the real problem.  I told him he should have called my sister (she is the smart one….initials after her name, works at IU med center) and I was just in “sales.”  Something in my brain then clicked and the lesson learned came.  He came to me with a problem, I made a bunch of assumptions and I was excited to tell him about what I could do to help him without understanding the real problem! Sound familiar??  I was talking with my wife about this and she makes this comment “thankfully when you are talking to prospects you don’t treat them like your dad.”

From that time on it has helped reinforce one of our main beliefs.  Script before diagnosis is malpractice.  I don’t perform malpractice with prospects/clients I just need to do the same with family members when they come to me with a problem!

Aaron Prickel

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Mike Protogere has been a Lushin client for over 5 years and credits Lushin for dramatic increases in the growth of his business.

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