7STEPS MPC summary from your 5P Negotiation Coaches in Health Care

#2 OPTIONS

As I am writing this next part on a Sunday morning about the power of OPTIONS within the Multi-Party Collaboration 7steps framework, the story of the father with his two sons and one orange comes to my mind.

This is how it goes:

The father wanted to prepare a surprise Sunday brunch for his two sons but had done kind of a poor job with his grocery shopping and only brought home one orange instead of two - although he knows that the boys love oranges! So what should he do now? What would you do?

Most likely, many people would say "Let's cut it in half so each one gets a bit of it." Is this the best solution? Is this the best for what each of the boys actually wants? Most of the time this scenario depicts pretty precisely any of us sitting in some kind of a 'selling' job - be it medicines & drugs as a pharmacist, PBM retailer or pharma rep; be it a doctor prescribing a pill or therapy to their patients; be it a policymaker deciding on this new health care policy bill. Always with the best intentions for our 'customer' - right? Well, as it happens, many times we totally miss on what that customer really wants.

The father's two sons became really angry at the face of having only half of an orange on their plates. Why? "Dad - what did you do? I needed the entire zest of the orange for my orange cake I was planning as a gift to my buddy's birthday this afternoon! I look stupid now!!" says the older son. "I don't want to eat that orange, I wanted to squeeze it and drink the juice of it !" screams the other.

Learnings?

Stop selling products. Start selling outcomes.

To do that best: ask questions, listen and try to understand the other person's real underlying needs, problems and INTEREST. Engaging in a dialogue and co-creating the best possible OPTION together. Could the father have been courageous enough to admit that he simply forgot to buy enough oranges and pose the problem jointly on the table by asking: "Guys, what shall we do now? Do you have any good ideas to fix this together? Tell me what you actually want to do with that orange." You get it, right? They could have peeled the orange together, give the outer zest to the older boy and squeeze the entire rest to make a juice for the other.

Try it out - We're looking forward to hear about your experiences !