by Joe DiDonato | Chief of Staff | Baker Communications
The ability to present the right content to the right people at the appropriate point in time is one of the 21 crucial competencies of top sellers. This competency isn’t about how good a presenter they are, but instead is about how effectively they identify who they are presenting to and when they should make that presentation to leverage the power of that presentation.
One of the best examples of this skill that I can think of comes from someone who wasn’t in sales at all, but who ended up changing the lives of millions of people because he was able to ‘read’ his audience and change his presentation to fit the situation he found himself in.
This is about a presentation that was given by Dr. Donald Berwick who found himself in the tough position of being on the afternoon speaking roster at a conference of senior hospital executives. The morning was filled with speakers who used the typical PowerPoint-heavy presentations that contained thousands of facts, figures, and charts. But just looking at the weary audience, Dr. Berwick could tell that he needed to do something different. His decision and ‘read’ on his audience turned out to be 100% correct, and a pivotal moment for a healthcare project that would save millions of lives.
Before going on stage, he looked around at his peers in the audience and decided to change his presentation in its entirety. He threw out all of his slides that contained facts and figures about wrongful deaths that occurred in hospitals, and to go on-stage with only 2 slides. When it was his turn, he put a picture of a child named Josie King up on the big screen and then began.
On January 30, 2001, Josie King, an 18-month-old little girl was admitted to Johns Hopkins Children’s Center for burns. Josie had brown eyes and light brown hair and loved to dance. She just learned to jump on a trampoline with her older siblings and to say, “I love you.”
Josie climbed into a bathtub of scalding hot water and suffered first and second-degree burns. She started to heal well, and to her parent’s relief was transferred to the intermediate care floor, with the expectation that she’d be released in a few days.
That’s when Josie’s mom Sorrel King started to notice that something was going wrong. When Josie saw something to drink, she screamed for it. When Sorrel and a nurse gave her a bath, Josie sucked furiously on a washcloth.
Sorrel asked the nurse to call the doctor and tell him that Josie was very thirsty. Both that nurse and a second nurse Sorrell petitioned for help, assured her that everything was okay. That second nurse also gave Josie some medications which Sorrel said were against the doctor’s orders, but the nurse said it was a recent change.
Josie’s mom called back twice during the night and was at Josie’s bedside at 5:00 AM the next morning. By then, Josie was in full crisis. Two days before Josie’s scheduled release, Josie died of thirst. Despite Sorrel’s pleas for help, little 18-month-old Josie died of misused narcotics and dehydration
That was the story that Dr. Donald Berwick told that audience of 800 healthcare leaders after they had already been listening to a steady parade of graphs, charts, and statistically based presentations. His second slide was his call to action.
Berwick freely admits that he’s not as skilled as others when it comes to giving speeches. But in this case, his ability to read his audience and to give the right presentation at the right time to the right people was an instinct that only top sellers possess. Dr. Berwick’s purpose was to ‘influence’ this body of leaders to leave that auditorium with the intent of taking immediate action to stop the rise in-hospital deaths from occurring.
This is how Dr. Berwick launched the 100,000 Lives Campaign[1], where he set a goal and a deadline for improving healthcare safety. He set a date of 18 months out for the goal to be reached and even proposed an exact time of day for this goal to be accomplished.
Twelve years later, over three-quarters of all of the hospitals in the United States have enrolled in the 100,000 Lives Campaign. The Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) continues to lead this charge, with a phrase borrowed from political campaigns: “Some is not a number. Soon is not a time.” Their new campaign is the 5 Million Lives Campaign[2] with countries like Canada, Australia, Sweden, Denmark, the UK, Japan, and others joining the effort.
[1] Berwick DM, Calkins DR, McCannon CJ, Hackbarth AD. The 100,000 Lives Campaign: Setting a goal and a deadline for improving health care quality. Journal of the American Medical Association. Jan 2006;295(3):324-327.
[2] Berwick, Donald M. IHI. 5 Million Lives Campaign. www.IHI.org. December 12, 2006 to December 9, 2008
