A territory sales rep for Upjohn communicated with her actions when she was denied the opportunity to communicate with words. She was making a joint sales call with her boss, the district manager. The doctor they were calling on worked at a medical clinic that was located on the twelfth floor of a high-rise office building in downtown Los Angeles. It’s important to remember here that most doctors don’t like to meet with pharmaceutical sales reps. The reason is there are lots of them, they are young and aggressive, they think they know everything so they insult the doctor’s intelligence and often promise things on which they don’t follow through.
When they arrived at this clinic, the doctor they wanted to see made it very clear through his receptionist that he had no intention of seeing them. As they stood there trying to figure out what to do next, the very doctor they wanted to see came out of the examining area and said, “I have a woman patient in one of my examining rooms who would like a video tape on Rogaine. Do you have a video tape with you that I could give her right now?”
Since they didn’t have one in their immediate possession, the doctor immediately went back into the examining room without even listening to what they had to say. As it turned out, the sales rep did have videotape on Rogaine in the trunk of her car. But that was down twelve floors across the street, down the street two blocks and down four floors in a parking garage.
This sales rep immediately set off to retrieve that tape. When she returned, her boss was standing outside the entrance to the building. The woman who wanted the tape had already left, but the sales rep’s boss knew what she was wearing and which direction she was walking. They ran this woman down on the sidewalk and gave her the videotape, a gesture for which she was very grateful. They then went back to the medical clinic where the sales rep wrote a detailed memo concerning what she had done. She then stapled her business card to the memo and left it with the receptionist.
Two days later, the sales rep’s phone rang. Guess who it was? It was the very doctor who just two days prior would not agree to meet with her. And guess what he wanted her to do? He wanted her to make an appointment to come in and meet with him. Why? Because with that single gesture she had convinced this doctor that she was the type of sales rep that had his best interest at heart. That’s the kind of sales rep every doctor wants to work with.
The lesson here is that this sales rep went from no access to total access because she capitalized on her moment of truth.
Several years ago I was flying on American Airlines from Albany, New York, through Chicago’s O’Hare Airport to Phoenix. The flight out of Albany was two hours late because of a mechanical problem– which meant I would miss my connection on the last flight of the evening to Phoenix and have to spend the night in Chicago. As the plane taxied up to the gate, I asked one of the flight attendants what kind of treatment I could expect from American Airlines: would they treat me with a sense of appreciation as I had just gone the extra mile for American Airlines, or would they give me a meal ticket for the employees’ cafeteria and tell me to wait at the airport until the next flight left in the morning? The flight attendant’s response was, “I don’t know. That’s not my end of the business. But good luck.” Needless to say, I had visions of a long and uncomfortable night in Chicago.
I got to the American Airlines ticket counter at about 10:30 P.M. expecting the very worst. A very sympathetic and pleasant ticket agent greeted me and when I told him my name, he immediately gave me my boarding pass for the morning flight, handed me a voucher for the Westin O’Hare, pointed to where the limousine would pick me up in two to three minutes, and said, “I am very sorry for any inconvenience this has caused you.”
Talk about a pleasant surprise! I was absolutely shocked. The whole transaction took forty-five seconds and the treatment was strictly first class, as the room at the Westin was incredibly expensive. I learned that American Airlines enjoyed a substantial discount rate for a block of rooms at the Westin O’Hare that was set aside for passengers who missed their flights. Because it was nearly Christmas and Chicago was jammed with people, all the hotels in town were full, with people waiting in line to get in. As a result, the Westin O’Hare had been calling American Airlines and begging them to release this block of rooms so they could rent them out at full price. But American Airlines refused to do so until all their inconvenienced passengers were taken care of-they were capitalizing on their moment of truth.
I’m not the only passenger with a story like this about American Airlines; shortly after this incident, American went on to become the largest airline in the free world. You can’t accomplish a feat like this if your customers aren’t talking about you and saying great things. I bet in the last several years, I’ve told more than 10,000 people about this incident. I’m probably one of American Airlines’ best salespeople and they don’t pay me one cent in commission or bonus. They just keep on giving me the same high-quality service I’ve grown to expect, especially in those situations where I am inconvenienced. In other words, American Airlines knows how capitalize on its moments of truth.
Ross R. Reck, Ph.D.
Author of The X-Factor: Getting
Extraordinary Results From Ordinary People
