Look your best. Know your products. Feel free to draw on your sense of humor. Respect your customer’s time. Do these things and you might get a hearing - and a sale - from the veterinarian. Do them repeatedly, and you’ll gain a loyal customer.

At least that’s what one veterinarian says. And he should know. After all, he’s been practicing veterinary medicine 45 years. What’s more, he is a consultant for Welch Allyn, a real estate agent in the winter months, and a purveyor of River Rat Cheese (made in the St. Lawrence River Valley) at a Saturday morning farmer’s market.

45 years in the same practice
A native of Upstate New York, Barry Quinn, DVM, is a 1960 graduate of LeMoyne College in Syracuse (biology major), and a 1964 graduate of the Cornell University College of Veterinary Medicine in Ithaca, N.Y. Upon graduation, he joined a practice in DeWitt, N.Y., a suburb of Syracuse, in partnership with two other vets. In 1972, he bought them out. He practiced on his own until 1992, when he brought in an associate. Then, five years later, he sold the practice to his associate, for whom he continues to work on a part-time basis.

Most of Quinn’s work for the past 45 years has been with small animals. That said, he has had some large-animal experience as well. For example, from 1964 to 1975, he was New York State veterinarian in the town of Fabius. Among other duties, he conducted TB tests on cows and vaccinated calves against undulant fever, or brucellosis, which is transmitted to humans through contaminated and untreated milk and milk products, and through direct contact with infected animals. To support a growing family, he helped a Cornell classmate for a time at Vernon Downs, a harness-racing track in Upstate New York. “In those days, we’d treat the animals right as they came off the track,” recalls Quinn. “But it fit right into my schedule. I would work until 9 in the clinic, then go to the track.”

For Welch Allyn, he places new equipment at Cornell’s small animal clinic, which is located just 50 miles south of the manufacturer’s Skaneateles Falls, N.Y., headquarters. He solicits feedback from the students and reports back to the manufacturer how the product might be improved. In addition, he travels on the company’s behalf to the North American Veterinary Conference, Western Veterinary Conference and Wild West Veterinary Conference in Reno. “So I’ve been on the other side of veterinary medicine when it comes to writing an order rather than giving one,” he says.

Sensitive to sales
Indeed, the experience with Welch Allyn has made Quinn more sensitive to the sales process than he otherwise would have been, he says. “If nothing else, I’ve learned how tough it is to be a salesperson,” he says. “The good ones make it look easy.”

Just as important, being on the sales side has given Quinn the opportunity to learn a lot about people. It has also taught him the importance of humor in selling. “I’ve found that humor is the very best way to get close to a person,” he says. “Self-deprecating humor is always good.” Even if a rep can’t tell a good joke (something Quinn himself can’t pull off, he admits), he or she can draw upon the humor in life itself to lighten the day for sales rep and customer alike.

The first impression
Quinn is convinced that 45 years of practicing veterinary medicine has shown him what it takes to succeed in sales. First and foremost is the importance of making a favorable first impression. “You don’t want a guy coming in with Bermuda shorts,” he says. “They should look like they’re making a buck. I like to see a guy in a shirt and tie when he’s working.” Women should wear equivalent attire.

The rep’s first visit with a potential customer should be brief and informative, he says. “Just introduce yourself and ask the customer to keep you in mind, as you’ll be stopping in to see them from time to time.” Give the people in the practice a little time to size you up, he says. “There’s a period of adjustment, kind of like meeting a friend anywhere.” And, in a sense, the relationship between veterinarian and sales rep is akin to a friendship. Ideally, “When [reps] come in, you’re glad to see them,” he says.

Proving yourself
After that initial ice-breaker, the veterinarian will quietly ascertain the rep’s qualities - integrity, knowledge, ability to present products. Can the rep make a case for the usefulness of a new piece of equipment? Can he or she show how that equipment will benefit the practice? “The big thing is the rep’s desire to help the practice instead of just looking at [the veterinarian] as a commission,” says Quinn. “That’s when it comes to partnership - when the rep is just as involved as you are in making this thing work.

“Some reps never get over the first hurdle,” he continues. “They’re way too cocky, or they think they know more about your practice than you do. Meanwhile, you [that is, the vet] are looking at your watch.”

Instead of running off at the mouth, the successful rep is sensitive to the vet’s needs at any given moment. Referring to a Webster rep whom he knows, Quinn says, “You can tell right away he knows what’s going on. He knows when you’re upset, when you have time to listen to him, when to leave, and when to detail you on something.”

Another word of advice: Don’t knock your competitor’s products. “If the rep comes in and knocks the competitor’s products, he might not know I’ve been using [one of them] for 20 years. And he’s telling me it doesn’t work.”

Challenges for young vets
Quinn is too busy with his veterinary practice - not to mention his work with Welch Allyn, his real estate business and River Rat Cheese- to lapse into nostalgia. Yet he does commiserate with new veterinarians coming into the field today.

“One of the biggest problems for new graduates is debt,” he says. “When I graduated in 1964, I didn’t owe anybody a thing. I worked myself through eight years of school. You can’t do that nowadays. You can’t make enough money part-time or after school to dodge that debt bullet.” Consequently, burdened with a $60,000 or $100,000 debt, newly graduated veterinarians might find it difficult to get a business loan. Ironically, they need that loan even more than their predecessors.

“They have to build a practice that costs four times what it cost me when I got started,” he notes. Large, multi-vet practices with expensive equipment and rising wages are difficult to maintain. “They’re going to bed worrying about escalating costs,” he says of today’s veterinarians. “It’s the overhead that’s constantly worrying you.” When Quinn graduated from veterinary school, he did so without ever having taken a business course. “We went out there cold turkey.” He recalls not even realizing he had to send quarterly tax payments to the government. “The accountant came in the following year and said, ‘We have to get you squared away,’” Quinn says. “I said, ‘What quarterly payments?’”

Advances are plenty
All that said, the practice of veterinary medicine is far more advanced than it was in 1964, he says. One of the biggest advances is in anesthesiology. Forty-five years ago, the anesthesia machine consisted of a tomato can stuffed with cotton and soaked in ether. For longer procedures, the vet would administer Sodium Pentathol through an IV, which would keep the animal out for hours. Today, trach tubes have improved 100 percent, says Quinn, and a lot of good pre-anesthetics are on the market that didn’t exist 45 years ago. “Back then, treating a vicious dog was a tough deal,” he recalls. “It was basically a matter of fighting with them. You had to be fast on your feet and get an arm around their neck or whatever it took to get them under control.”

Advances in thoracic surgery, abdominal surgery and cranial surgery have been dramatic. And much has been learned about anastomosis of the intestinal tract, lung biopsies, tumor removal, correction of heart murmurs, etc.

Today’s vets have another advantage that their predecessors did not - lab tests that can be performed in the office. “Back in the day, it was a good day before you got anything back,” he says. “And a lot of things could have happened to that animal in that 12 to 16 hours.” Today, the vet can have results in his or her hands in 15 minutes.

And the advances will keep on coming, he says. Ultrasound, for example, will increase in popularity, he predicts. “Right now, it can be very difficult to read the results. As time goes on, it will get much easier for the practitioner to read.” Quinn anticipates advances in laser surgery, antibiotic treatment and oncology treatment as well.

Yes, today’s vets face some competition from mail-order pharmaceutical houses, he admits. In response, they must try to stay close in price to these competitors, and focus on collecting revenues not from the resale of drugs, but from delivering services, he says. Provided they do so, vets have a major trump card - their relationship with their clients. “They appreciate their association with us,” he says.