You Had Me at Hello…

“Be creative.  Use unconventional thinking.  And have the guts to carry it out.”                                                                                                                      – Lee Iaccoca

“It’s a good thing that we went to aisle two”, my daughter told me.  She had lost her cleaning cloth that came with her glasses and was using one that we had been given at our local grocery store.  A couple of weeks ago, a sales rep for a company selling cleaning products positioned himself in aisle two and put on a presentation for interested shoppers.

There were several of us that went to listen to his pitch and my daughter was really impressed and pressured me to purchase some of the company’s products before we left the store.  I was impressed as well and thought about the qualities of this presentation that motivated us to buy things.

They are the following:  1. Make sure you Get noticed, remember the announcement that you would hear “Attention K Mart Shoppers”?  Well, they made an announcement in the store that said in the next two minutes there would be free gifts in aisle two.  I was already there so it couldn’t hurt to check it out.  2. Give them Something for nothing, the sales rep introduced himself and immediately gave us a gift just for coming to listen to him talk about the best cleaning products ever (Now you know how she got the new eye glass cleaning cloth).  3. Relate ability, he showed how everyone had toothpaste smears on their bathroom mirrors, skid marks on their floors and spills on their counters.  I did not feel alone.  4. Humor, he had all of us laughing as he talked to us and was  5. Informative as he educated us with  6. Demonstration, which was very effective and even more so when he had the  7. Audience participation so we saw for ourselves the reality of smears, skid marks and spills easily disappearing.  8. He Called for action in a way that supplied just enough  9. Peer pressure so we had to do what everyone else was doing because we all want to let the person standing next to us know that we have a clean home too and  10. There was a Guarantee so we could always bring it back if we weren’t 100% satisfied.

Several people bought cleaning products that day.  I left the store with two additional double sided cleaning mitts, one for each hand.  I have to say I was sold and was happy about it!

Nursing Notes:

The art of persuasion is a critical skill for a nurse and many experienced nurses have developed this skill when working directly with difficult patients and families.  As some nurses choose a path of management, it becomes necessary to develop and hone the communication skills of selling and influencing.  Whether trying to get hospital administration to add resources to a project or influence key decision makers, nurses need to feel confident in selling and closing a deal.