Hear and THere

Hear and There

By Batteryjac.com

By breaking any process down to its component structures, it’s easier to look at each step in the process to not only determine if there are flaws, but areas within that process that are open to improvement. No process is more important to dispensers, than the hearing evaluation and its associated presentation of hearing aids. Evaluations and presentations seem to change continuously as technologies advance for both testing equipment and hearing aids.

Still, in reality, there are four steps or areas that always have to be kept in mind during the presentation and they follow a simple sequence:

Pain-Claim-Gain-Brain

The underlying rationale for this process is the ever famous pleasure-pain principle. Enhance pleasure and avoid pain.

Savvy marketing and advertising people for many products follow this line of reasoning. It lends itself particularly well to live as well as video presentations.

Spend a week or so critically looking at commercials that come across the television screen. Pay particular notice to commercials (in reality stories) that have anything to do with the health or pharmacy industries. You will see the Pain, Claim, Gain and Brain sequence continuously. The reality of the situation is that as a seller of a product you are always addressing an emotional issue. Any product purchase always addresses the pleasure-pain principle. Aside from flight or fight, the emotions (pleasure-pain) form the bedrock of human experience. After the pain and claim sequence of any presentation, the gain section, automatically flows to an emotional issue in the old brain, the emotional brain, not the analytical brain.

PAIN
Probably more time is spent on the Pain part of the presentation than any other part. We have all learned the testing procedures and how to conduct the case history after the test for maximum impact. As scientific as the air, bone, masking, speech analysis are, they go along way in explaining patient’s pain to them if the time is taken to properly explain the results. The emotional pain must be emphasized during the testing procedure as much as possible. Think of the Hertz commercials. In every new ad that comes across the TV screen, Hertz emphasizes the different aspect of the pain of not renting a car from Hertz.

CLAIM

The part where we state our claim (we have a solution for your pain) and the particular benefits associated with any hearing aid(s) can be the trickiest part of the presentation procedure. This is the area where in many cases you have pre-determined (technology level) what you want to sell to the patient. You have to be sure that the patient is receptive to that solution and capable of paying for it. You probably want to make your claim as broad as possible so as not to paint yourself into a corner. Your claim must alleviate the pain. It is here where you are building expectations for your product. The overstatement of your claim can only lead to failed expectations with associated results.

NOTE: It is here where we have to recognize the possible limitations of amplification for the patient without losing them, unless of course you don’t want them as a patient, which is entirely possible. In some cases, where amplification can only have very limited benefits, it’s probably best to refer them for expert medical (probably an ENT or neurologist) advice so that they don’t reflect poorly on your practice because of the limited benefits of amplification. Look at the rate of success that you have had with those patients that have limited speech comprehension. That should be your guide. Sometimes it’s better to let a fitting go. You must consider the possible impact on your business of having this person for a patient, i.e. positive, neutral or negative.

GAIN

The gain section of your presentation must fit directly into how your claim alleviates the pain. The more specifically that you can tailor the gain into your claim, the easier it is to provide the solution that eliminates the emotional pain. You cannot sell technology. You can only sell to an emotion. Analytics do not count. Nobody buys technology. They only buy solutions to get rid of pain (pleasure-pain). Nobody cares how an aspirin works. Nobody cares how the drive train works in a Hertz rental and nobody cares how a hearing aid works. It doesn’t matter whether you use the master hearing aid function on an audiometer or a demo model of a hearing aid. You have to demonstrate how amplification can provide the necessary information within your claim. Just as in any commercial, you have to get that smile that shows the alleviation of the pain and how much better life (emotional brain) can be with the acceptance of your claim.