Objections from physicians are often seen as “hurdles” or a signal that inhibits a doctor to prescribe your brand. Your success as a professional will depend on your ability to anticipate and handle or overcome Physician objections. No matter how well rehearsed your detailing is, at the final stage of his decision, the doctor may raise an “objection”. How well you handle it will make or break the opportunity given to you. However, to overcome many objections it takes a process – not a quick answer. While some objections may simply be factual questions that can be answered easily, others will be far more complex. This means the medical sales person may need to spend time overcoming the objection instead of answering quickly on the fly.

Medical Sales reps need to understand why physicians make these objections in the first place. Most medical sales reps don’t know anything more about the information or study they are presenting than what their marketing department tells them. Sales reps often misrepresent data and don’t tell physicians the whole story. That’s why – majority of the physician objections are designed to put sales reps on the defensive and test their knowledge.

So, in order to overcome Physician objections, sales reps must know their information inside and out. Not just the important points, but all of it. This will help sales reps gain respect, show physicians that they are different from their peers and overcome Physician objections.

Preventing objections
Many objections occur not because of “what your sales team is selling”, but because of “how your sales team is selling.” The underlying reason for objections usually relates back to value. In other words, the customer does not see a link between any problem, need, or opportunity and what the sales person is proposing. When dealing with objections, “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” When selling your solutions, the key to prevention involves doing a better job in uncovering and developing the underlying needs and helping customers see the link between their needs and the benefits of adopting your solutions. Top sales performers not only lay a strong foundation by uncovering customer needs, they also “connect the dots”.

Handling objections
Too often, when customers raise an objection sales people do not discover what is driving the objection. Rather, they immediately respond to the objection by reiterating the talking points of their offering. While it’s laudable that sales people believe in what they are selling, responding to objections by repeating the same points that generated the objection won’t be successful. By responding immediately they really don’t know what is on the customer’s mind – they only know what they think is the objection … not what is actually at the heart of the objection.

4 steps to answer a question properly

Listen patiently until the doctor has finished his question. Do not interrupt.

Rephrase the question, to make sure you have understood it correctly.

Answer the question as well as you can.

Make the doctor confirm your answer or ask him to solve the problem by using your product.

What to do when you don’t know the answer to a question?

Always keep calm and objective.

Do not respond to provocation.

Don’t try to fill in gaps in your knowledge with `invented’ information, this will lead to a discussion beyond your control – and if the customer is aware that you have gone beyond your limits he will lose his respect for you.

Direct denial method
This is a method of answering a doctor’s objection by making strong statements indicating that the doctor has made an error. You straight away contradict what the doctor says. Most likely, the doctor may get irritated and may sour your relations with him.

Indirect denial method
This is a method used to respond to a prospective prescriber’s objection by first agreeing that the issue raised in the objection is very important and later on denying the validity of the objection by softening the response.

Boomerang method
When an objection is raised, the medical representative turns it around by using what he says to prove that he is not correct. Use his own arguments like a boomer-ang which goes around in a circle and comes back to persuade him to prescribe your brand