March 27, 2010

Excellent Suggestions For Improving Productivity And Performance

A pharmaceutical company can spend a considerable amount of time and effort developing and bringing new products to the market and be rightfully proud of its contribution to the healthcare industry. Such a company can spend enormous sums of money and many a late-night hour as it deals with the necessary consultation and lobbying, just as it puts up with endless layers of bureaucratic red tape. Ultimately, success boils down to the importance of effective implementation at the sales level. At the highest level of a pharmaceutical company, resources should be set aside to engage a pharmaceutical consulting firm, enabling you to focus on implementation and the achievement of meaningful results. The senior executives of the parent company are much better off allocating their precious time to product development and legal issues, leaving pharmaceutical consultants to help with specific training and methodology.

When a sales team member fails to ink a deal with a prospect, this is often to do with a poor understanding of the prospect’s problems, concerns and/or issues. The financial repercussions of a sale should be almost last on the list, yet it is often the principle concern. There is much competition in the market and sales do not happen just because a product is available. There may be many questions to answer and there will almost certainly be specific issues to address before the professional will be ready, willing and able to trust and engage with the business. This arena is very delicate, a hard approach to selling will always fail and as such, a sales executive who isn’t very familiar this type of business approach should be specifically counselled by the pharmaceutical consultant.

Client interaction must go through a series of phases, and product presentation and the explanation of benefits must await a certain time and place. Due to unwelcome hard sales tactics deployed by old style salespeople, a certain lack of professionalism and the emergence of years of distrust, a degree of hostility can be expected in any potential relationship at a primary stage. This is a significant barrier to overcome and the establishment of trust is one of the primary keys to help build the executive’s ratio of effective implementation.

In our society, pharma consulting firms have current practice in the industry and know what it takes to break down the barriers that will certainly be addressed. This will require a focused approach, the training of adequate sales techniques, an understanding of territorial application and time management and, of course, product education, as without all these the sales closure ratio will be poor. Against all these difficulties, margins are still narrow and so the company must ensure that its pharmaceutical sales team is as ready as possible to get out in the market and bring results, with little margin for error.

A sales force must be correctly motivated, but a significant part of that motivation must be the dedication to the job and the satisfaction of actually performing, rather than any kind of financial remuneration or fancy bonus structure. Financial remuneration alone will always tend to skew the executive’s approach to the task and he or she may not view the consummation of the deal as a two-way and ongoing relationship with a new client.

Alan Gillies is the CEO of L2L Consulting, a cutting-edge pharma consultancy firm which specialises in optimising productivity and performance within international companies by applying tailored organisational strategies.


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