Occasionally my worlds intersect and I find myself applying lessons from my different roles to my other life: from hospital trustee to running a customized overwrapping machinery builder.

Today it was about patient satisfaction, in my role as a trustee of a hospital. Satisfaction is about meeting or exceeding expectations. Patients have expectations about what will be done to them, what outcome the healthcare will provide, how they will be treated. Most times the practitioner is expected to make expert judgements. Clear expectations on both sides are called for, especially since the patient has to have a role in his/her own health and recovery. Yet many health care delivery organizations treat the patient like a cherished object. The patient can feel helpless and take no role in assisting him or herself to a better and healthier life. Together the health care deliverers and the patient can work together for the best outcome for that patient.

How does healthcare apply to selling and building a custom wrapping machine? When we sell an overwrapper, we are experts on our machine, its features, its software controls, its speed.  What we need to learn more about is the setting the machine is going into: the people who will take care of it, the type of product that will be run on it and the material that will be used to wrap the product. Sometimes even the climate control plays a role in the outcomes. We also need to engage the buyer in the decision-making about all of those factors they can control.

When do we fail?  We fail when we assume. We fail when we do not engage the buyer in the decision-making and they assume.

When do we have best outcomes? We succeed when we engage the buyer so that they are part of the decsion-making and setting of expectations, when they have expectations of their own to meet and we are helping them to that goal.

Read about what you should expect when buying a servo wrapper from Package Machinery.