The Course of Life - Part III
The Problem Child
Problem - Identify the problem. Consider life impact. Decisions are driven most often by two emotions: hope and fear. Both are emotional reactions to problems. If describing the problem does not draw emotion, either a problem does not exist or you have not described it well enough.
Soak that in for a second before you read further.
Some musicality to go with this read.
AC/DC - Problem Child.
That is another label that has been put on me.
Solving problems is my strength. It has been since I was a child.
Not by choice.
I am going to start with this portion of the C²PS framework from my years working with chronic pain patients at the spine surgery center.
I wrote in Part II:
Problem is where the framework stops being preparation and becomes an act. You are going to locate the thing that hurts in the life of the person across from you, and you are going to help them feel it clearly enough to move.
Done right, it is close to the most useful thing one human being can do for another.
Done wrong, it is the most efficient method ever devised for taking something from someone who is already suffering.
I have done both.
I was good at both.
Understand - I am not writing any of this like it is a badge of honor.
For most of the time I spent working in healthcare, the work I did had patients calling me after their treatment, or seeing me in the waiting room at post-op, and thanking me and everyone else involved in their care. I worked with some incredible clinical minds over the years. I am blessed to have contributed to the impact made in their lives.
I have also worked for organizations I deeply regret having ever been a part of. I carried that weight for years.
Fortunately, it was lifted about a month ago.
That is all that need be said.
Now let’s talk about problems
Remember this.
You do not talk about problems until you have earned trust. Credibility.
You do not talk about problems until you have discovered that one exists. Commonality.
If you miss those parts - walk away and come back better prepared next time.
I have always found that the weakness of most sales professionals is not product knowledge, and it is not the ability to communicate it effectively.
Sales professionals talk too much.
The key is listening.
Lawyers spend countless hours on discovery because they are trying to win an argument. They ask questions. They gather evidence. The lawyers who are most effective in discovery often end up the most successful in the courtroom.
Sales is no different.
Particularly in healthcare, and definitely with patients living with chronic pain, you let people talk.
I did not always have that emotional register in me. It grew.
The call review
I have always been surrounded by great leaders. People who saw something in me and pointed me in the right direction, because they knew that once I was pointed, I was going to get where they wanted me to be.
Early on, one of my directors - an assassin with a spreadsheet, who will know exactly who he is when he reads this - reviewed one of my calls with me.
Elderly man. Living with neck pain for decades. Loved to box. Couldn’t do it anymore because of radicular pain from foraminal stenosis.
I paid absolutely no attention to that on the call.
He did end up deciding to seek treatment with us. But that wasn’t the point.
That was hope and fear on the table, and I did not hear either one. His fear was that boxing was finished. His hope was that it wasn’t. The neck pain was just the thing he had words for.
At the time, I thought my job was to help people find relief for their neck and back pain.
On that day, my job changed forever.
My job was to get him back to boxing.
My job was to get her back to gardening.
My job was to help a grandfather enjoy time with his grandkids.
My job was to remove the burden of pain so that it did not become the burden of existence.
Life impact.
Once that seed was set in me, I listened.
To be completely transparent, on the day that call was reviewed, I felt awful about it.
I know what it feels like to try to tell someone that you are hurting and have them completely disregard it. I have known that feeling for a very long time.
That call review changed me.
The problem was not the pain.
The problem was the life the pain was eating.
The levers
It is here that I need to talk about emotions again.
Hope and fear are drivers in the decision-making process. There is a responsibility in operating those levers. I did not always fully appreciate the gravity of working them.
I do now. I will tell you why.
Hope at the spine center was a date on a calendar, so a woman had something to look forward to. Hope in the wrong room is what you sell to someone who has run out of options.
Fear at the spine center was a life shrinking around pain. Fear in the wrong room is a thing you amplify until it moves money.
I have been in both rooms.
One of them, I am never going back to.
It is the reason I built a room for me, and for others who want to build better rooms.
The coffee
The next part is the coffee. It is for the closers.
Blake was the villain, by the way. People quote that scene like it’s a motivational poster. It’s a horror film about what men will do to each other for a lead card.
Want to know something funny about the close?
The product matters far less than the person selling it.
If you have earned credibility, found real commonality, and identified the actual problem - the solution closes itself.
That is not a brag. It is mechanics. By the time you get there, the person across from you has already decided. You are just handing them the words.
Which means the C²PS framework never checks whether the solution is any good.
It has no opinion. It never did.
Run those three steps properly in front of someone who is suffering, and they will move - toward the thing that helps them, or toward the thing that takes from them.
The system can’t tell the difference.
Only the person operating it can.
Think about what has happened by the time you arrive at step four. They trusted you. They told you about their life. They named the thing they are most afraid of losing.
Every piece of vulnerable work in that room was theirs.
And you are the only one who knows whether what comes next deserves it.
That is the job.
Not the close. The check.
In one room, an old man went back to boxing.
In the other, I stopped being able to believe in what I was holding.
Same four steps. Same skill. I was good at it in both.
The difference was never the framework.
It was whether the solution deserved it.
So - Part Four.
How to present it, which is the easy part, exactly as promised.
And what I have spent this year building, now that I finally get to point all of this at something that earns it.
I am not the solution.
But I am a good head start.
— Matthew J. Adams
ad astra per aspera