Real stories. Real conversations. Real lessons from pharmaceutical and healthcare sales.
CommunicationSilence Doesn't Mean Someone Isn't Listening
A quiet physician, months of one-sided visits, and the field ride that revealed how much he'd been hearing all along.
One lesson pharmaceutical sales taught me that I'll never forget is this...
Silence doesn't always mean someone isn't listening.
Early in my career, there was a physician I visited regularly. Every call felt pretty much the same. He rarely asked questions. His responses were short. Sometimes he barely seemed engaged at all.
To be honest, after a while I started wondering if I was wasting my time.
From my perspective, he never seemed particularly interested in anything I had to say.
But I kept visiting him.
Month after month.
Call after call.
I continued sharing the clinical information, answering any questions he had, and showing up consistently. Nothing about his reaction ever really changed, so I just assumed that was the kind of physician he was.
Then one day I was doing a field visit with my manager, and we planned to visit this physician together.
I remember actually being a little reluctant.
I honestly didn't think it was going to be a very productive call.
As we started talking, the physician began discussing the product with my manager. Then he started repeating several of the key points I had been sharing with him over the previous months.
Almost word for word.
I was stunned.
That was probably the last thing I expected to happen.
Not only had he been listening...
He had remembered what I had been saying all along.
And not only had he been listening...
He was prescribing.
Standing there, I realized I had completely misread the situation.
Because he wasn't the type of physician who gave a lot of feedback, I assumed my message wasn't getting through.
I couldn't have been more wrong.
What can we learn from this story?
That experience taught me something I've never forgotten.
Silence does not always mean disinterest.
Some people are expressive.
Others are quiet observers.
Some give immediate feedback.
Others simply listen, think, and make their decisions privately.
If I had judged that physician by how engaged he looked, I probably would have stopped calling on him long before I should have.
Instead, I learned that consistency matters.
Showing up matters.
Continuing to provide value matters.
Sometimes the people who appear to be listening the least are actually hearing every word you say.
That lesson has stayed with me ever since, not just in pharmaceutical sales, but in every relationship.
Have you ever discovered that someone was paying much closer attention than you realized?
Enjoyed this story?
From the Field is an ongoing collection of real experiences from pharmaceutical and healthcare sales, exploring the relationships, conversations and lessons that shape better professionals.