Treatment Ain't Prevention

Joe Schmuckatelly carries a load of boxes to the top of his basement stairs. His foot barely catches the edge of the first step and so he trips, tumbles to the bottom of the stairs... and breaks his arm.

Joe's wife (bless her) drives him to the Hospital Emergency Room. He visits with the attending Resident who tells Joe that bone density is important as a way of preventing this type of break. The Doctor writes him a scrip for calcium, and starts to turn away.

Joe speaks sharply, obviously he's in pain, "Wait a minute Doc, my arm is still broken!" The Doctor nods his head and tells Joe that good muscle tone is also important to prevent this sort of thing from happening -- he orders physical therapy and starts to turn away. Joe, frustrated now says, "But Doc, my arm is still broken!"

You get the picture?

Clearly Joe needs some treatment -- he needs to have his immediate problem fixed; the broken arm must be set and put into a cast. He wants to stop hurting. While the prevention steps are important, he needs to heal before the physical therapy can be started, and the calcium treatments will take time before they show an effect.

But Prevention is still important and if Joe doesn't take steps to fix the underlying challenges, he could face another, more serious break in the future. Joe's care should include a mix of both Treatment AND Prevention. In other words...

Treatment First. Prevention Second. Both are important.

I've noticed that the same type of story often plays out in sales training. The trainer (or book) starts by describing the problem (you broke your arm) and then describes that the best thing for you to do is to prevent that problem from happening in the first place! "Obvious" you think.

And that's the problem. It seems so obvious. The challenge is that when you're in the middle of your day, dealing with multiple prospects in different situations, your Automatic Pilot tends to turn on. It's human nature -- it's how our brains work. If we are to be successful in our efforts of applying Best Practices (the stuff that's already been proven to work for the situations we find ourselves in), then we must FIGHT to keep the Automatic Pilot Turned OFF!

Stephen R. Covey talks about it this way -- "Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space lies our freedom and power to choose our response. In those choices lie our growth and our happiness."

Turn Off The Automatic Pilot. OK, that's easy to say, but how do you DO it? The answer lies in The Plan-Do-Learn Cycle. Make a conscious choice to set aside time for Planning before your sales visit, and for Learning after your sales visit. How much time should you set aside? As Little As Possible. Avoid Analysis-Paralysis and Ready-Fire-Aim (one is not an excuse for the other).

Use a consistent, SIMPLE process, and don't change it for at least 100 times. Let the situation drive your process -- and Do Not try to force every situation to fit into your process. Be flexible, agile, adaptable.

You WILL make mistakes. The challenge is that you probably won't begin to notice them on your own until you've done it for about 20 times; you CAN accelerate your learning by getting a coach. Got one? Get one. Period.