Top 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. The team must not only be knowledgeable about the product, its features and benefits, but must be infused with the knowledge, techniques and strategies needed to exist and produce within a highly competitive commercial environment. Most pharmaceutical consultants have a wide range of experience themselves and know full well how to motivate, manage and process a sales team.
The achievement of the sale is not the end of the story. It is true to say that without sales nothing happens, but many different factors must be used to judge the absolute value of a sale. However efficient the executive, without the creation of a good relationship between both parties, the long-term baseline value of the transaction is questionable. As such, it is important that the company applies incentives very carefully and selectively, so that a “win-win” situation is always achieved.
It is human nature for an individual to likely be more productive if he or she is incentivised. This will require the creation of sensible goals related to existing benchmarks. Correct incentivisation will enhance the effectiveness of the sales force, but the opposite is also true. Rather than setting a goal, the incentive path should be a journey with multiple tiers and an endpoint that is always just out of reach. In this way, the sales executive will be always focused.
In most cases, pharmaceutical consulting firms tell us that sales executives spend the majority of their time on ancillary and sometimes mundane administrative work and a minority of their time in direct communication with prospects or engaged with client management. This is why time management should be considered as a top priority and company executives should never put onerous administrative and accounting burdens in front of their productive sales team. 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.
If a comprehensive training program is practised by the organisation, each team member will get the feeling that he or she is dynamically engaged with the overall goal. While administrative burdens should be kept to a minimum as we have said, training must nevertheless be prioritised. This should include product awareness as well as methodology and techniques, and the latest procedures can be implemented through pharma consulting firms. 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.
