Building Cancer Registry Relationships

Cancer Registrars have heard, at some point in their career, someone say, “It’s who you know that counts.”  It is also said in business that it is not what you know, but who you know that determines your success.  Jim Cathcart, a widely known sales coach, asks this question: “Who is glad they know you?”

(To watch a short video on this same topic, click here.)

This is exactly why people do business with others that they know and trust, cancer registrars included.  When you offer value to another person they will have a reason to care and stay connected with you.  Cathcart has given five tips for building better business relationships that cancer registrars should implement right away:

1. Approach each person you come into contact with as though you are building a long-term high-value relationship.  Expect success for the long-term and do your part to help each of you achieve the desired outcomes.
2. Plan, and practice, loyalty to your customers and business associates whether they are loyal to you or not.  Prove that you are trustworthy and they will be loyal in return.
3. Continually ask yourself, “What else can I (the cancer registrar) do for them without asking for something else in return?”
4. Give each person the option to have an occasional “bad day” without getting upset or judging them.  Nobody, including the cancer registrar, is exempt or is always at their best.
5. Do not always ask, or expect, something.  Occasionally just give your associates something or just listen to them without trying to “fix” them, convince them of something, or sell them on an idea or process.

The cancer registrar’s business associates include: physicians, administrators, allied health and other cancer program staff.  Anyone, regardless of their title or role in the organization, who comes into contact with the cancer registrar during the course of the day is a customer and should be treated as such.

By daily practicing these five tips the cancer registrar will not only transform the success of the cancer registry, but she/he will transform their own success and happiness.  These same tips can be used to develop the cancer registrar’s personal and departmental mission and value statements to focus the registry’s activities in the right direction.  Ultimately, cancer registrars want to leave each person they come into contact with feeling as though they are glad that they know the registrar and pleased with the value and service that the cancer registrar provides.

Cancer Registrar training is an essential component of Michele Webb’s website, http://www.RegistryMindset.com.  Michele is a 25+ year veteran certified Cancer Registrar who is committed to Cancer Registry leadership and professional education as a coach, mentor, motivational speaker and author.  You have permission to repost this article as long as do not alter it in any way and give a link back and credit to the author on this website.

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