Think Like A Surgeon

I'm going to make this extra little video here because I think the mindset and how you think about yourself as a professional is really, really important. So this is a little mindset video. And just remember the quote from the previous video, even the client follows your process for buying, will you end up following their process for not buying, usually.

If you act like a salesperson, you're probably going to be treated like a salesperson. What I want you do to is think and act like a surgeon. I think these people really have their stick down nicely. So let's have a look at the two. Let's have a look at the difference between a salesperson and how a surgeon would act. Sales people, free, everything's free. I'll come to you. Surgeon, you pay for that consultation right up front.

With a salesperson, it's usually an unspecified meeting. It's often kind of come out and meet you and talk about our new products but it's pretty vague. With a surgeon, it's very specific. Your job is to come in and we will diagnose you. Salesperson will go out and do free site visits. Sales surgeon will never do anything for free. You pay.

Salesperson goes to the client. So if they organize a meeting they'll drive to you. But with a surgeon, even if you're injured, even if you have to get a wheelchair to get there, you're coming to him or her. By all means, they'll put little ramps up to make it easy to get your wheelchair up but there's no way the surgeon is usually coming to you.

With a salesperson, the expectation is virtually everything that's free. With a surgeon, there's an expectation of paying for everything and paying a lot. With a salesperson, the client invests nothing before buying the main event. Even if the salesperson has to diagnose what it is they need, it's all done for free. With the surgeon, the patient invests money for everything. So the salesperson gets paid at the end of the sale and the surgeon gets paid at every single step in the process. Everything gets worked in the favor of the surgeon.

In terms of timeframe, the salesperson basically is available to come out almost see you immediately. The surgeon sometimes you have to wait two or three weeks or sometimes even longer to get an appointment with a surgeon. In some cases, you might say, well, gee, another five weeks before I can see the surgeon. I might be dead by then. And the receptionist answer will be well, if that happens, make sure someone calls up and cancels your appointment.

So that's kind of how it happens. So here's a quick quiz for you. You are happy for the surgeon to start cutting you open without a full inspection. Well, that's false. You want a full diagnosis. So a surgeon does a full diagnosis. A surgeon would never meet you unless you had completed all the relevant forms. You did right, if you don't do things their, they won't meet you. You need to think like a surgeon.

A surgeon would never operate unless you agree to the price. Well, that's true too. The surgeon will tell you what the price is upfront and they don't blink, and it's never cheap. You need to think like a surgeon. A surgeon would follow your instructions for surgery if you'd research thoroughly. I've done my research on the internet, my surgeon, here's how I want you to do it. I want you to do it step A, step B, step C. False, a surgeon would never do that. They'd kick you out of the office. You need to think more like a surgeon.

So be very clear on what needs to happen to allow you to do a great job in the diagnosis, and the design, and the build stages of your projects. Then reveal your process and get the clients to fit in with you. It shows power, it shows status. It shows that you value what you're doing and it gives you expert status and power.

So either the client follows your process for buying or you follow their process for not buying. It's your decision. When is the best time to take control? It's at the start. Okay. So the start, often people will call me up and say, "Hey, I wonder if I can have a coffee with you and pick your brains around some sales and marketing we're doing." How do I translate that? It's I want to get some advice for free from you. Buy me a coffee. I mean, how many times have people said that to you? It just means they want free advice.

The answer is no, I have the specific service. If you're looking to do some ... if you need some advice or analysis, I can do a service for you. It's $500 and we can go through and I can review everything and give you some proper answers. If the [inaudible 00:05:03] that, then maybe you shouldn't be investing 90 minutes of your time on a brain-picking exercise for free coffee.

So when you're outlining your process to people, I just want to take some examples from other industries on how other people show here's our process. If we're going to revere our process, we need one. Now, what I like about some of these examples, they're not from architecture. But see how they've created an animation. They've told you what each of the steps are and they've drawn little dots that you move along. And I think that's really good. Every time it gets animated, it's good.

Here's one for an airline. So it explains exactly what has to happen. You follow our process for doing it, we're not following yours. Have a think about if you've got a process that they need to follow, can you create some sort of illustration.

Here's another example of a bank, simplifying and having a process. So this was for switching mortgages from bank to bank. If you were at a different bank, they have this thing called operation easy switch and they just outline what happens, mission timeline, days one to two we do one, two, three. Days six to eight we'll do four and five. And there it is all on video, it's explained, it's detailed, here's what we do. And you can't jump out of this process. If you're going to work with us, this is how you got to do it. So these people are thinking like a surgeon. So you need to take control right upfront, right at the start.

So we do this and then coming course script, we've done a little bit of this. We are outlining what the process is and we say before we meet, my assistant will send you the following. Our terms and conditions, you need to sign that. So when I turn up we need to sign that and make sure we agree on our terms.

Number two, an outline of the overall best practice that we have developed for you to read. Have a look at that. Number three, we're going to also send you and invoice for needs and options review. You need to take care of that before we meet. Number four, a questionnaire to complete before our meeting. I need you to complete it and send it back before we meet so that I can hit the ground running and we can have a great meeting and go through and conduct the needs and option review. I need to have my head up to speed. So if you can get that back to me before we meet, that would be appreciated. And if you haven't, we'll have to delay the meeting.

Number five, some information about us and how the work we've done. And number six, a small gift. So that's coming straight from the incoming call script. So there's a little bit of here's our process, here's what needs to happen before we even meet for that first meeting.

So to encourage this process, it's embedded within the incoming call script. It's embedded within the options review video that you can use. It's embedded within the written proposal examples that we're going to show you and it's embedded within the 2K email that we're going to demonstrate very soon.