The 15-minute staff lunch that actually moves a decision
You bought lunch for eleven people, six of whom have no influence over anything you sell, and the two who do arrived late and ate standing up. This is the most common wasted hour in field sales.
Decide the one outcome before you order
Lunches fail because they have no objective. Pick one: identify who runs the workflow, uncover the real barrier to trial, or get a date for an in-service. One outcome per lunch. Everything else is a bonus.
The office manager is the meeting
In most clinics the physician sets clinical preference and the office manager decides whether anything new can survive contact with the schedule. If patient compliance, prior auth burden, or staff training time is the barrier, the physician cannot answer you. The manager can.
Arrive early, ten minutes before food is out, and spend that time with the manager. That is the actual meeting. The lunch is the reason you were allowed in the building.
Talk about their workflow, not your product
Try: "Walk me through what happens after the physician decides a patient should be on this. Who makes the call, who chases the paperwork, where does it stall?" You will hear the real objection in plain language, usually within two minutes, and it is almost never price.
Close the room, not the individual
End with something the whole staff can agree to in front of each other: a 20-minute in-service on a named date, a single patient to start with, a one-page workflow sheet you will bring back. Group commitments are harder to quietly drop than a promise made in a doorway.
Take this in
One objective, ten minutes early with the office manager, and a commitment the whole room hears.
Walk in knowing what to say
RepBrief turns your next meeting into an opener, three prioritized questions, confident objection responses and one clear next step.
More field notes
- RepBrief vs generic ChatGPT prep: what a medical-sales brief addsSame scenario, two answers: a generic AI assistant's prep versus a RepBrief brief for 90 seconds with a cardiologist.
- 90 seconds with a cardiologist: what to actually sayA hallway window is not a shortened sales call. Here is how to structure 90 seconds so you leave with a next step instead of a brochure hand-off.
- Raising reimbursement without making it awkwardReimbursement is the conversation reps avoid and clinicians worry about most. Here is language that keeps it clinical instead of commercial.