I’m sure you have heard, as has most the world, that Derek Shepard, AKA Doctor McDreamy from Grey’s Anatomy, is dead. It has figuratively shaken the world to its core. Yes, I am one of those avid viewers that has watched over the past 10 years, and I absolutely love McDreamy. I went through an entire box of tissue, ugly crying that he is gone and has left behind a wife and kids. There was something that really stood out for me in the whole situation.
For those of you who missed the episode, let me give you a little background. (Spoiler Alert!) Dr. Shepard is a world-renowned neurosurgeon, and is incredibly dreamy (hence the name). Being the perfect man that he is, when he witnesses a horrible wreck in the middle of nowhere outside of Seattle, he stops to save everyone from the wreck. He is the hero of the day until he gets in his car to leave. His phone rings and he gets hit on the driver’s side by an 18-weeler. They take him to a little hospital that is not a trauma center, which does not have the best doctors available. A young female doctor wanted a head CT while an older male doctor took charge and wouldn’t listen. Then the neurosurgeon took 1 ½ hours to get there because he was at a dinner! Because they did not have the knowledge of what they were doing, and weren’t ready for this type of trauma, they killed him.
Later on in the show, the female doctor is crying and apologizing to his wife, Meredith, explaining how sorry she was and telling her she wasn’t good enough to be a doctor.
Meredith replied with this:
You weren’t good enough. But do you know what tomorrow is? It’s Friday. There’s gonna be more patients who come in who need you to save them. Someone’s mother, someone’s kid, someone’s husband. They need you to save them because they can’t save themselves. So learn from this, better yourself, and you will be better for next time.
He will haunt you, the hard ones always will. And it only takes one. But that one will make you work harder, and they make you better. Or they make you quit.
So this really had me thinking about those of us in sales. We need training to be better, to be prepared for situations that we aren’t ready for. We are going to have bad days where we lose a sale, and probably a big one that we will not forget, but tomorrow is another day and we move on! We learn from it – what to do and not to do next time, and we become better for next time. There isn’t room to quit; we can only get better. In order to do that, we need a strong foundation– and that foundation is training! I mean, could you imagine being a general manager, a chef, a mechanic, a team member, or even a doctor without having the proper training? No way! So how can we expect our sales team to be ready when they don’t have the proper training?
So this is a new week. I’m not as sad, but will certainly miss McDreamy. As they say– the show must go on. And sales must go on too!
