Firstly, thank you for your useful comment. Secondly, I agree that there is often a gap between what we see in front of us and what a client perceives to be the problem. It is therefore our job to close this gap effectively for the benefit of the pet concerned. This, in my view, is what sales skills allow us to do.

Being a good salesperson does not mean you are a bad person or have to abuse the trust of your clients. Personally I have never and will never feel the need to be dishonest about what an animal needs. Neither have I been advised to do this by any of our suppliers, Hill’s or otherwise (though they have provided some excellent sales training for my teams over the years). I would take an extremely dim view of the person who suggested such action.

I completely agree that if you are assured and confident then choice is not to be avoided. But i think that there is some way to go before the majority of vets have this communication skill down well enough to do so.

In the end there will always be a minority clients who say no to your recommendations. Though i wonder why they came to me in the first place, I’m way past losing sleep over them. The day a vet starts fearing the word ‘no’ is the day they will start making bad recommendations.

Dave.

There are some critical points to be made though.

Off course we want the best quality of treatment but the standard of quality of the treating vet might not be the same as the client he has in front of him.
In your example of treating a case of teethproblem, some people might not think of it as worse as you, as a vet, do. So we need to inform them about the dangers of it.

Hill’s salesmen advise exagerating things sometimes to convince the client to do the treatment. This directly comes as a negative word I think, because you like to be honnest with the client.
I think, in giving the options, you need to be self-assured and reliant. In that way, owners most of the time will choose your path of diagnosis and treatment.

In the end you need to say quality always costs something. And you try to convince the owner of doing the best for his pet. But if he decides the best is something else, we need to accept his choice…

I await your next installment with interest.

Caroline Johnson

P.S. Are you also blogging this on vetpol? http://www.vetpol.co.uk/vb/blog.php