Habla usted Español?

Habla usted Español?

Didn’t manage to get through my list again today. Don’t know why I bother making them. This morning I made a list of jobs for today and added on all the things I didn’t get done yesterday. Tomorrow I will have to do the same. Not sure what will happen if I ever finish my daily job list, perhaps my role will then be redundant. I don’t think there’s much chance of that happening though, not if I keep waking up in the middle of the night with ‘brilliant’ ideas to add to the list like last night’s: “Become fluent in Spanish so you can sell to Dr Fernandes in his own language” – that was worth keeping pen and paper on my bedside table for.

Saw Dr Fernandes this morning and told him about Sofalex, a new treatment for stress. It was my first ever call to sell Sofalex after my training last week and I was really tense and nervous. Wasn’t sure how much I would remember and was sure that Dr Fernandes would know more than me. He didn’t. He hadn’t heard of Sofalex and was interested to learn about it. I told him everything I thought he needed to know and then he started asking questions. I dealt with the first couple okay, but then they started getting more difficult. Definite buying signals, but I didn’t know the answers so I tried to come up with something convincing. It didn’t work. I flushed bright red and began to sweat. I pretended to be ill. Dr Fernandes handed me a towel. He told me I should take some Sofalex. At least he’d learnt something.

I came straight home after that call. I was really cross with myself for not admitting that I’d only just been trained and agreeing to find out the answers before coming back to see him. I would have got an extra call agreed and would have had a great chance of convincing him to use Sofalex. Instead, I have lost credibility and will need to build it up again. On the plus side, he should remember who I am. Best not to take my manager to see him on my next field visit.

I spent the afternoon improving my Sofalex knowledge. I’m determined never to be caught out again, and I’m determined to get Dr Fernandes to use Sofalex after today’s failure. As long as I make sure it doesn’t happen again then today’s experience won’t have been a complete disaster. I also added two things to my list for tomorrow – “Continue to improve product knowledge” and “Buy teach-yourself-Spanish book”.