Guidelines For Clarifying Sales Force Effectiveness With Skilled Pharmaceutical Consultants

No amount of creativity or product superiority will be advantageous unless the pharmaceutical company is able to get its product to the market and into the hands of the end user. The selection of a productive sales and marketing team is critical to the survival of the company and this team must be adequately trained in not only the value and benefits of the product, but the techniques, initiatives and strategies necessary to go out into the marketplace and actually sell. Despite its importance, the effectiveness of the sales force is often given poor attention. Invariably, pharmaceutical consultants are highly skilled in training and motivating and can bring a company's sales team up to a high level of effectiveness, with considerable potential gain for the organisation.

One well-known football coach once claimed that “winning isn't everything, it's the only thing.” Remember to keep this mindset engaged at all times. After all, a sale is either won or lost and a lost sale is of no value whatsoever, experience gained and contacts made notwithstanding.

It is essential to correctly motivate a team and one of the first things that a pharmaceutical consulting firm will help initiate is the creation of meaningful measurement tools. It is important to remember that activity levels are not the “be all and end all” of sales. A sales executive is not necessarily highly efficient, even though his or her volume of sales may be high, as ultimate value must be assessed. If a valuable relationship is not established between all principals concerned, then the account may not necessarily be seen as successful, as we need to judge more than the actual dollar amount involved. It is important to align the buyer's strategy and position with the company's. A correct level of incentive is very important and sales people must clearly understand that both the client and the company must achieve value before any deal is consummated.

Levels of incentive must be tied to achievable and attainable levels and goals. There must be a tangible carrot at the end of the road and achievable targets should lead to further incentives on a structured basis. In other words, there should never really be an “achievable” end result for the sales executive, or a target that, once achieved, promotes a lack of further engagement.

The adoption of time management cannot be underestimated and the company should strive to ensure that the sales manager is not bogged down with too many administrative elements, through the provision of the latest, cutting-edge tools to streamline work. It is sobering to realise that on average, sales executives can spend only one quarter of their time communicating directly with clients.

In summary, a sales team can only be highly effective if they have been trained well and are involved in an ongoing process of training. This will include not only product education but also sales technique and delivery elements as well as time management and application theory, with the science of personal inter-communication. To help get this right, engage pharma consulting experts.

Alan Gillies is the Director of L2L Consulting, an elite pharmaceutical consultancy firm which specialises in Strategy Development and Implementation Excellence for prestigious multi-national organisations.