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The Mackay 66
KNOW YOUR CUSTOMER
The Mackay 66 is a selling tool from Harvey Mackay’s book, Swim with the Sharks
Without Being Eaten Alive—a must-read for any salesperson. It helps you gather
personal and professional information about your customers to help you sell.
Information won’t help you sell unless you use it. I used this tool as a rep and
currently to better understand my managers and salespeople.
One of my districts conducted over 250 birthday celebrations for their doctors and
staff members and as a result, those reps owned their offices! Sometimes they
baked cookies, brought doughnuts and coffee, or even a birthday card, whatever it
took to own the office. That meant that these reps almost always gain access to
their doctors where other reps did not. The result usually meant better
relationships and more prescriptions.
I continue to use this tool as a sales director because my managers and
salespeople are my customers and I want them to do the right things. The more I
know about my salespeople, the better I will be able to sell them on my ideas.
Mackay’s book includes 66 things to learn about your customers. Below is a
shortened version of what you should know about your doctors and their office
staffs.
Melfa 24 for Doctors
Doctor’s Name:
Specialty:
Date of Birth:
Office Address:
E-mail Address:
Office Hours:
Best Days & Times to See:
Office Staff Names & Birthdays:
Home Address:
Marital Status:
Spouse’s Name & Occupation:
Spouse’s Birthday:
Children: Names, Ages, Birthdays:
Hobbies:
Hometown:
High School:
College, Medical School, Residency:
Fellowship:
Sports or other School activities:
Someone He or She Admires Most:
Favorite Movie:
Favorite Book:
Favorite Food:
Musical Preferences:
Doctor’s Name: If you work in a territory with diverse cultures, your doctors’ names
may be difficult to pronounce. Go the extra mile and learn how to properly
pronounce a doctor’s name and always address a doctor by his or her name
preceded by “Doctor.” Show them the respect they deserve!
Birthdays: You would think that other sales reps would know the doctors’ birthdays
and use this powerful tool to gain access in offices—most don’t! The best reps are
those who gain access and develop the best relationships with their doctors and
staff. A birthday celebration can simply entail bringing a birthday card for a doctor
or one of his staff.
During one of my birthday celebrations as a rep, I brought a birthday card and a
couple of boxes of Dunkin Donuts (plastered with my product stickers) to a doctor’s
office. The doctor had not arrived yet, so I told the nurses and office staff that it
was the doctor’s birthday and that I would be back later.
Later that day, I ran into one of my colleagues. He asked me, “What did you do to
Dr. A?”
I thought I had done something wrong and said, “Nothing much, I brought him a
card and doughnuts and I’m going over there right now.”
My colleague responded, “Dr. A was in a great mood because the entire clinic was
wishing him a happy birthday. He had tears in his eyes because of what you did!”
What I did? I spent ten bucks on doughnuts and a card. I thought all reps were
doing this. My colleague also told me that Dr. A was going to write prescriptions for
all my products that day. Now, that’s what I really wanted to hear.
When I finally returned, the nurses told me how happy I had made the doctor. I was
a celebrity in that office. When I finally saw Dr. A, he reached out to me as if he
was going to hug me, but then stopped himself and settled on a handshake. We
discussed my products in detail—making sure he would know exactly the types of
patients for whom he could prescribe my products. For two years, I celebrated the
birthdays of everyone in that office, and for those two years, I owned that office!
Hobbies: In his book, Mackay tells a story about how top businessmen from the
U.S., including himself, traveled to Cuba to try to do business for U.S. companies.
He noticed that Castro was using a translator when speaking to other U.S.
businessmen. Mackay did his homework and learned that Castro loved bowling.
When Mackay reached out to shake Castro’s hand, he rubbed his shoulder and
told Castro he had hurt his arm bowling. Castro, without the help of his translator,
started speaking English to Mackay. They hit it off so well that Castro invited
Mackay to his house to bowl in his private bowling alley.
Although most pharmaceutical reps can no longer take doctors golfing or bowling,
they can share hobby experiences instead of the activity itself. For example, rather
than taking a doctor golfing, you can discuss an article on golf. You can be
creative without spending money or breaking company rules.
During one of my calls on a doctor, I noticed a variety of elephants in his office. No,
I wasn’t hallucinating. Some elephants were wood-carved and others were ceramic
and plastic. This doctor, although a nice guy, was not writing many prescriptions
for my product. Every time I would start a product presentation, he would cut me off
and tell me he was using my product.
During this call, rather than start with a product presentation, I asked him about the
elephants. “Hey, Doctor, who was it who fought wars on elephants?”
His face lit up and I knew I had him. “It was Hannibal,” he said.
After discussing Hannibal for about ten minutes, we then briefly discussed my
products. That night, I researched Hannibal and printed out a few pages about his
war strategies. The next day, I left the pages with his secretary (who was also his
wife). I told her I would like to return the next day to discuss Hannibal and
elephants with the doctor. When I walked into his office the next day, the Hannibal
printout was the only thing on his desk. No patient charts, no drug information, just
my Hannibal printouts. We discussed Hannibal and elephants for about a half hour
and I still had time to sell my products. As a result, he wrote an elephant-sized
share of my product—a 50% market share!
You can learn a lot about a person by simply observing their surroundings. Train
your eyes to absorb everything in an office. Look for pictures, paintings, props and
degrees—anything that could spark a conversation and use to sell.
After I’d made several visits to one of the top-prescribing doctors in my territory
(let’s call her Dr. D), Dr. D still didn’t even know my name. One day I noticed a
picture of her and her husband ballroom dancing. The receptionist told me that Dr.
D loved ballroom dancing. I had friends from high school who were well known in
the dance community. I decided to mention my high school friends to Dr. D at her
annual Christmas party. After competing with twenty other reps for a seat next to
Dr. D, I asked her if she knew my friends. Not only did she know them, they were
also dance instructors for her and her husband! She even reacquainted me with
my high school friends. I began to attend dance contests and other social events
with Dr. D. As a result, I gained access to her on every call. She would even
sometimes stop her discussion with other reps and run over to me. This didn’t
make the other reps happy, but, hey, it’s war out there. As happened in many
other cases, I owned this office!
Dr. McCampbell was another busy and hard-to-see doctor in my territory. But like
Mackay, I did my homework. I learned that Dr. McCampbell had written a novel and
was hoping to publish it. I had just self-published my first book, Bodybuilding: A
Realistic Approach. When I finally met with him, I said, “I heard you wrote a book.”
He looked up and smiled. We discussed his novel and eventually my products. I
was one of the few reps who knew he had written a book and who had read it! Of
course, I gave him a signed copy of my book and some tips on self-publishing.
Speaking of writing, Dr. McCampbell wrote many prescriptions for my drugs. And
better yet, we became great friends.
THE DANGERS OF NOT KNOWING YOUR CUSTOMERS
Knowing birthdays and hobbies and using that information can help build
relationships with your doctors and office staff. Not knowing the most obvious
things about your doctors can jeopardize sales.
In the book What They Don’t Teach You at Harvard Business School, the author,
Mark McCormack recalls a meeting with the famous John DeLorean. At the time,
DeLorean was head of Pontiac and one of the most powerful men in the
automobile industry. McCormack was selling a marketing campaign that would
associate Pontiac with the U.S. Ski Team.
DeLorean sat at one end of the table and McCormack at the other. A group of
young sports entrepreneurs sat scattered around the rest of the table. Between
were all these nervous-looking ad-agency executives. As McCormack recalls, “I
had the deal in my back pocket—I was feeling invincible.” The idea was to use
Pontiac’s logo—an Indian head, which had been the company’s symbol for many
years—to tie in with the U.S. Ski Team..
“I totally winged it,” said McCormack. As McCormack spoke of Indian heads and
logos, he noticed many nervous eyes darting back and forth from him to
DeLorean. McCormack sensed that no one was impressed with his idea and finally
decided to shut up. After a long moment of silence, DeLorean smiled and said,
“Mark, you really researched the hell out of us. Pontiac’s just spent a little over $3
million getting rid of the Indian head symbol and developing a new logo.”
Invincibility just went out the window. The deal went through anyway, but
McCormack admits that, after that, he was never so unprepared for a customer.
I experienced something just as embarrassing with one of my doctors. Soon after
training, I was ready to discuss with my doctors what I had learned about my blood
pressure drug. I thought I had perfected my presentation. I had studied all the
literature my company had provided and practiced my presentation in front of a
mirror. It was time for the real thing.
I was delivering a beautiful presentation to a doctor. After about one minute of
flawless presenting—hitting on every major feature, benefit and advantage—I
moved in for the close. “Doctor, will you use this drug on your next newly
diagnosed hypertensive patient?” I was so proud. If only my manager could see me
now. I was closing!
As in the DeLorean and McCormack meeting, there was a moment of silence. The
words left the doctor’s mouth as if she were speaking in slow motion. “I’m a
pediatrician,” she said.
I always wondered just how red my face glowed that day. How many four-year-old
children do you know with high blood pres-sure? At the very least, I should have
known her specialty. All I had to do was look at her business card, or even the
word “pediatrician” plastered all over her walls and degrees. Like McCormack, I
vowed never to be so unprepared for my doctors again.
I require all my salespeople to know and include the doctors’ specialties on their 2-
week and daily schedules and to review that information as part of their Precall-
Plan (See Targeting and Planning and Pre-call Planning in Chapter Three).
Knowing something as simple as the doctor’s specialty could make a big difference
between a good call and a bad one. I told you about a bad one. Here’s a good one:
During a pre-call planning session with my one of my salespeople, we learned the
doctor was not only a gastroenterologist, but also an oncologist (a stomach doctor
and cancer doctor respectively). Our heartburn drug was not known to interfere
with any other drugs. That’s important if a doctor has a patient who is taking
multiple medications—especially a cancer patient.
During the pre-call plan, my rep and I were strategizing how to drive home the no-
known-drug-to-drug interaction feature of our product. I asked my rep what she
knew about her doctor. From studying her previous call notes, it appeared the
doctor thought that all the heartburn drugs worked the same. I kept asking her
questions until she figured out that cancer patients are on many drugs. Since our
heartburn drug was the only one with no known drug-to-drug interactions and
since the doctor thought they worked the same anyway, why would he choose
another drug like ours that might interact with other drugs? That was the selling
message and the close.
My salesperson executed the plan and it went something like this: “During our last
call, you said that you thought most of the heartburn drugs work the same. No
doubt all the drugs in this class are very effective in relieving heartburn. However, I
sometimes forget that you are an oncologist, and I would imagine that many of your
cancer patients are on multiple medications. HeartburnX differs from the others in
its class because it has no known drug-to-drug interactions. So when you choose
to write for a heartburn drug for your cancer patients who are on multiple
medications, will you choose HeatburnX?”
The doctor looked up at me and said, “Now, that is a good job of selling and that is
why I have been prescribing more of your drug.” I beamed with pride.
I grill my reps with questions about their doctors before we make a call. Most of the
time they have the answers and sometimes they don’t—this I find unacceptable. If
you don’t know the types of patients your doctors treat, then how on earth will you
sell to them?
During the last several years, pharmaceutical companies have established
guidelines and restrictions about what salespeople can and cannot do with their
doctors. Most companies have done away with golfing, sporting events, and other
forms of entertainment. Most events must include an educational component. Be
sure to check with your manager if you are uncertain of your company’s guidelines.
It’s not worth losing the job that you worked so hard to get!
Excerpt From Pharmaceutical Landing