Here are the six lessons learnt from the emergency room and intensive care unit:

1. Equip your salespeople with diagnostic questioning skills

At the heart of a doctor’s practice is the use of diagnostic questions. Upon my arrival at the emergency room, and throughout my stay in the intensive care unit and eventually to the main ward, the doctors always asked me questions: to help figure out initially what medical problem they were dealing with, and subsequently what progress I was making.  These professionals are masters of combining open and closed-ended, probing, as well as qualifying questions effectively to help their patients.

At the ER, the doctors opened the conversation with a number of open-ended questions like, “How are you feeling now?” or, “When did this happen?” Then they follow up with a series of closed-ended questions like, “Are you hypertensive?” or “Do you have xyz condition?”  As a matter of fact, the questions are relentless, because this is a life or death situation.

In the same way, salespeople must learn to ask the necessary discovery questions to find out the specifics of a buyer's situation: needs and pains.  However to do that, sales organizations must invest a lot of time teaching and coaching in the area of questioning skills, and this must be an on-going process, not just during a one or two day sales training event.

2. Practice critical listening

Salespeople are coached to practice active listening: which requires that they fully focus attention, understand, remember and respond to what the prospect or customer has said during sales interaction.  It is about building rapport and creating a mutually beneficial condition to do business.
 
However, in life threatening situations very typical of many arrivals at the ER, there is no time for doctors to build rapport and confidence with most patients by using active listening skills.  That may be useful during a doctor’s appointment in a consulting room.  But in the case of emergencies, doctors must make some of the diagnosis very quickly and accurately to save lives, and that’s when critical listening skills become important.  

Critical thinking experts Richard Paul and Linda Elder define critical listening as “A mode of monitoring how we are listening so as to maximize our accurate understanding of what another person is saying.”

In an article “Critical Listening: The Key to Effective Communication” published by Amanda Hiner of Winthrop University, the author argues that listening critically to others involves 1) analyzing and assessing assumptions, claims, and information, and 2) sympathetically entering into the perspectives of others. The article goes on to further to list seven traits of critical listeners.

1.    Active, Engaged - they deliberately seek understanding as they listen.

2. Fully Attentive – they resist forming a response before the speaker finishes speaking.

3. Systematically Analytical – they apply the Elements of Reasoning to information, claims, and ideas.

4. Focused on Clarity – they ask follow-up questions until they achieve understanding.

5. Responsive – they paraphrase the speaker’s statements to demonstrate comprehension.

6. Empathetic – they try to understand the speaker’s needs, assumptions, values, and opinions.

7. Collaborative – they seek ways to find value in the combination of ideas and input.

Clearly, introducing your salespeople to practicing critical listening skills in addition to active listening would help them be better at diagnosing prospects’ pain and needs accurately as well as building long-term mutually beneficial relationships.

3. Invest in useful sales tools

The doctors relied heavily on medical data from a battery of tests they made me do using both rudimentary and advanced medical technology to assess a number of different aspects of my health situation.  For instance in the intensive care unit, patients would typically be hooked up to at least three different medical equipment which helps doctors to monitor their vital stats as well as their progress.

In order for your salespeople to be successful, sales leaders must introduce them to the use of the latest sales acceleration tools to monitor activities from lead generation through to pipeline management.  Secondly, your salespeople should be taught how to use your SFA and/or CRM.  Failure to do so will leave your salespeople short of great success you expect from them.