Tips For Determining Sales Force Effectiveness With Skilled Pharmaceutical Consultants

All the work that you put into creating and positioning the product will be of no use unless the pharmaceutical company can successfully market its products to the end-user. It is so important to choose a top notch sales and marketing team, training them in the overall benefits and value of the products, as well as the fundamental strategies necessary to be able to achieve a desired result in the market. 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. Within sales, the measurement of activity levels is only part of the equation. 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. The creation of the account must foster a value relationship between all the principals, quite apart from the raw dollar amounts involved. It is important to align the buyer's strategy and position with the company's. Sales people should not be incentivised unless there is a clear gain for the company and the client achieves value, thereby cementing the relationship.

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.

We can see that for the sales team to be effective, each member must be adequately trained and furthermore must engage in a process of ongoing 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. Bring in pharma consulting experts to get the mix right.

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.