Brilliant Sales Force Effectiveness Requires The Proper Approach

A sales force must be incentivised if it is to be truly effective. However, the methods of incentivisation are often misinterpreted, poorly devised or glossed over, ultimately leading to low levels of efficiency and morale, poorly motivated individuals and lacklustre results. The pharmaceutical company may be a leader in its field, be very creative and with cutting-edge solutions, but the organisation will only be truly effective if its sales and marketing team is well prepared and trained. Such a team must be comprehensive, well balanced, able to employ different strategies and techniques and perform to a high-level of efficiency within a tough commercial field. The sales team must be well established and managed and pharmaceutical consultants have the experience, knowledge and background to enable this objective.

Far too often the act of a sale is construed as a perfect result. While winning a sale is undoubtedly important, as after all without sales nothing is achieved, there must be tangible and measurable value attached to the sale, from every point of view. The sales executive may appear to be very efficient, but unless a meaningful relationship has been created between the buyer and the seller, the overall or net value of the transaction can be questioned. In this analysis, incentives must be prepared and deployed selectively, with the aim of achieving a “win-win” solution all around.

Productivity generally increases if an individual is incentivised, as this is within our nature. This will require the creation of sensible goals related to existing benchmarks. If this is handled correctly it will create a volatile and effective environment, but it can also be detrimental if handled poorly. The goals set should represent a journey rather than the destination and multi-tiered targets should encourage, but always lead to a “carrot” which is just out of reach. This will ensure that the sales executive is constantly engaged.

Feedback from pharmaceutical consulting firms will tell us that sales executives are often engaged with mundane and administrative work and spend only a small amount of their time directly communicating with productive targets. Due to this amazing statistic, time management should be a top priority and executives should do whatever they can to cut down on the ancillary or administrative work necessary. Indeed, if these boring tasks get completely out of control, certain personality types can rebel and this can have a serious, knock-on effect on creativity and achievements.

A sales force will only be really effective if a comprehensive training process is in place and the team member must feel that he or she is part of a dynamic organisation. While administrative burdens should be kept to a minimum as we have said, training must nevertheless be prioritised. Generally, pharma consulting firms can help to roll out the latest in procedures, educate in technical issues and methodology and focus on product awareness. Such companies have been proven to raise morale, cut out negative emotions, inject just the right amount of enthusiasm and draw on their extensive industry background.

Alan Gillies is the Managing Director of L2L Consulting, specialising in enabling pharmaceutical companies to achieve new heights of productivity and performance, throughout all levels of management and revenue generating activities.