Using Triage In Sales

In Extreme Measures, a 1996 film, a harassed surgeon has to decide which of the emergency cases get to use the only available OT. Hugh Grant, who plays the surgeon, is faced with this dilemma when after a shootout that goes awry, a badly battered cop and an injured gangster yelling in pain are brought to the hospital. The injured cop’s wife is sobbing away next to her husband’s unconscious body. The surgeon takes a quick look at the scene and decides to wheel the cop into the OT.

The cop was so badly hit that despite the surgeon’s best efforts, they couldn’t save him. When after a couple of hours, the surgeon walks out to check on the gangster, he had bled himself to death. A colleague rightly accuses the surgeon of having used his judgment wrongly. The crying wife of the cop, and the fact that he was a cop seemed to have affected the doctor’s decision, although it was very clear that the gangster had a better chance of survival, if attended to, in time.

The cop is a defender of the law, a pillar of the society. In this case, he is also a family man. In comparison, a gangster is a low life. But, should such considerations form part of a doctor’s decision? The only thing that should concern a doctor is the chances of saving a life, and then to go do it.

The decision, as it always becomes when left to the judgment of a single individual, quickly becomes subjective. That is the way it will always be. More so in times of high pressure, as in war times, Emergency Room procedures or global pandemics. 

In the ongoing Covid crisis, there are reported shortages of resources in all parts of care and treatment of the afflicted. There is a shortage of beds, isolation facilities, doctors, care givers, PPEs, masks, ambulances and even medicines. In triage, doctors became the arbiters and decision makers on battlefields, in real time, to spend the available resources on those with the best chances of survival.

Lot of the decisions can be driven by morals, biases and beliefs that overrule experience. In Italy today, stories abound on how younger patients were allowed to jump the queue for treatment, while some aged patients and those with co-morbidities (high BP, cardio-vascular issues, other respiratory ailments) died on the sidelines. Are younger people more valuable to society than the older ones? We will probably never find an answer to such questions.

In Triage, a 1999 movie, Colin Farrell, playing the lead character, goes into deep trauma when the injured friend he was carrying on his back while swimming across a fierce river to escape the bullets of a marauding enemy in Afghanistan had to be left to sink and die in the process. That was the only way he could save himself. But that decision ruins him for life.

Such split-second decisions have (however unarticulated) triage as the basis in all our lives. These are the moments that reveal our own values to ourselves.

 As Rokeach (1973) puts it: “A value is an enduring belief that a specific mode of conduct or end-state of existence is personally or socially preferable to an opposite or converse mode of conduct or end-state of existence.”

Triage is a strong concept, when applied well. One area where it can do great service is in qualification of prospects by salespeople. A salesperson’s primary responsibility to the territory he/she is given, is Coverage. Every inch of the sales territory must be ‘covered’. A salesperson needs to do this as against the basic instinct to go cherry-picking from the word ‘go’. Coverage is great practice for Qualification of revenue opportunities.

One of the most precious commodities in sales is a salesperson’s Time.

Like in Triage, we need a pre-made list of parameters that helps us choose those we understand the best, and/or those who will get maximum value from our products and services. (The classic definition of good Qualification.) If not, we will chase whatever our competitors are chasing, or go after ‘glamorous’ prospects. When we do that, sales will continue to be a pathetic gamble.

Like a doctor who is acutely aware of the limited resources, a salesperson who respects his/her own time as too valuable to be wasted on the marginals will apply perfect triage at work. Again, like the doctor, the decision will have biases.

A good salesperson will be aware of these biases and will stand up to defend his/her choices. That defence will reveal one’s values, and hence candidates who are fit for greater responsibilities.