Some enterprising individuals are put off by the thought of buying an existing business for sale, as they see it as a veritable leap into the dark. If they have never been involved in such a transaction before, it can seem to be very alien. After all, it is not like buying a more tangible product like a vehicle or a house, where in many respects “what you see is what you get.” A business valuation can be composed of several intangibles as well as inspectable assets and in many cases goodwill factors into the equation. In a service related business, goodwill and a maintainable client list can be critical elements, but the process of due diligence involves the revelation and exploration of numerous areas and documents.

It’s important to remember that there are two distinct and different viewpoints. The seller will have a clear indication of the worth that he or she places on the business. This may often be inflated by a natural enthusiasm and the sheer amount of hard work and dedication that may have been put into the business to this point. While you should always maintain an element of respect for the sellers’ point of view, you must look at all documentation and evidence in the hard light of day and understand that it is up to you to determine if you should buy business interests according to the specific value you set.

After you decide you need to move forward and you have really determined whether you want to buy a business of interest, get ready for a very lengthy process. At this time, you had better have a good level of common sense and humor and be ready to communicate at length with the seller.

It is highly recommended that you bring in expert advisers and utilize proven resources, especially if you have no real experience of running a business in this line, or niche. This is not to say that you will simply hand off all the work to these advisers, barely looking at the documentation presented to you, as the decision-making must in the end be made by you and you alone. The financial documents and all of the paperwork must be reviewed by you first to be sure that you have a great feeling initially before you hand them over for further processing by your experts.

Always be wary if some of the financial documents are either missing or incomplete, or are not balanced and reconciled correctly. Certain precedents must be maintained and accounting procedures completed. You may be asked to sign some non-disclosure or non-compete documents before these are made available, but the financials are the rock upon which everything else is built.

No two businesses are alike and every operation is dynamic in its own right. So many external influences are involved and any number of different events can come to bear to create a variety of different situations. You will undoubtedly uncover some surprises and come across unusual figures and facts, but remember that while industry benchmarks are definitely of interest, you are focused on real-world information here.

Richard Parker is the President and founder of the Diomo Corporation – The Business Buyer Resource Center. His inspiring materials, seminars and consulting have assisted thousands of business buyers with achieving their life long dream to buy a business.

To buy business assets can be a daunting prospect, especially if you have not done this before. While it may be somewhat easier than establishing your own operation from scratch, understand that you are taking on, in many respects, the liabilities of somebody who is a complete stranger to you. To start off, you will be presented with many internal documents and will be able to look at the inner workings of the business for sale, but you must essentially be able to read between the lines and must not veer off-line, so a due diligence checklist is essential.

Many of the business owners you will come across are diligent and enthusiastic people, are justifiably proud of their creation and really want their baby to be nurtured and cared for by a new and careful owner, but you cannot assume that this is always the case. Please don’t think that this means you have to assume the worst in all cases, but it does unfortunately mean that you cannot take any statement at face value and you must look for proof in all cases to back up claims made. Always ensure that you employ the services of expert analysts as required when you buy a business, including accountants, financiers and business experts.

Primarily, you are now engaged in the process of setting value. Both parties concerned, the seller and the buyer, will undoubtedly have a different interpretation of the business’ value. You will not come to an agreement or deal unless both parties are happy, but always bear in mind that you have to set the specifics under which a deal is likely to be made.

If you buy a business, a number of steps have to be taken as you go through your due diligence checklist and as you proceed, all the inner workings of the business will be revealed to you. You may hear references made to industry benchmarks, and they may be useful for information gathering but you should not rely on them. In the majority of cases you will always want to rely on the most recent data and while there are many documents to check, the financials are of paramount importance. Never be tempted to gloss over some of the less palatable financial figures, if a specific business asset appears to be of particular interest to you.

When you’re looking at the value of a business for sale, some of the more important factors include the scale and the level of services available, the potential for business expansion, the age of the organization and the reputational impact in the marketplace. Get a good impression of the competition in the industry and in the local area and understand that location may be the most important asset of all. You may be considering purchasing an Internet-based business or one that does not have a “bricks and mortar” location. While the physical location in this case may be of no consequence, make sure that you understand the importance of conducting a thorough “due diligence” process, come what may.

Reveal as much as you can as you work through this process and understand how important your due diligence checklist really is. If part of your due diligence process involves the analysis of daily operations, staff behaviour, client interaction and so on, this will invariably take many days if not weeks. As such, you should never be overly anxious to go ahead to close a deal and should be prepared, rather, for the lengthy process you are likely to endure.

Richard Parker is the author of the How to Buy a Good Business at a Great Price series. As President and founder of Diomo Corporation – The Business Buyer Resource Center, his materials, seminars and consulting have helped thousands of business buyers realize their dream to buy a business.

To determine whether a sales force is truly effective takes a certain amount of skill, quite a lot of information and the ability to accurately determine potential. Essentially, the amount of selling time available, based on a realistic allocation of hours and multiplied by the number of people on the team, can be combined with an assessment of market potential to create a market response matrix. In the past, this was often a time consuming and error-prone process, conducted with a spreadsheet around the table, but there are far more productive ways to approach this issue these days.

For a sales force to be truly effective, territories must be aligned properly at the very beginning. This will involve the definition of boundaries, bearing in mind balanced workloads, compact and contiguous territories and a minimisation of travel time. Even though this may sound fairly clear, it’s often not so, and unless the sales executive’s time is protected from waste and fully optimised, the company simply won’t achieve its full potential. Unless the territory is correctly aligned, a sales executive could find that he or she is faced with the prospect of too many potential customers. Thus with such a high workload, the employee will likely not be able to interact effectively with all those clients, resulting in a loss. Conversely, if there are too few customers according to the allocated executive, the potential of the executive can be wasted in this situation and this can be aggravated if some of the people with the best track records are underutilised.

Without a comprehensive roadmap showing it the way to go, the pharmaceutical company should not deploy its sales force. This can be especially challenging for the business executives as they have so much on their plate to start off with. While sales force effectiveness is obviously on the top of the list, they would do well to engage external assistance from pharmaceutical consultants to help them prioritise. A pharmaceutical consulting firm is fully cognisant of the need for adequate preparation, planning and optimisation of a sales force workload. Building on years of experience, industry insight, education, training and street smarts, pharma consulting will certainly help the parent company to prepare for battle.

There are several criteria to bear in mind relating to the deployment of a company’s sales force, including the auditing of initial objectives and goals, the establishment of current and future strategy, a realistic assessment of constraints, incorporation of available data and extrapolation of resources, both human and otherwise. This is where an honest assessment should be made of the potential, along with the anticipated workload for each individual. Any current deployment of resources should be highly criticised to expose any inequities in territory alignment.

All members of a sales force should have a great track record of productivity. Remember that it’s not up to the sales executive to solicit improvements in territories or necessarily to find new clients. Rather, with help from pharmaceutical consultants, the pharmaceutical company executives must set targets and goals and have created the perfect matrix to enable them to solicit the greatest gains, whether profit or otherwise.

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.

It’s no longer acceptable for a pharmaceutical company to operate according to the mantra that “bigger is better,” based on the concept that the more people engaged in the marketplace, the better the return. At one time, pharmaceutical companies used to look at each other and judge effectiveness based on how big the workforce was, as more volume would undoubtedly lead to enhanced revenue and a more than fruitful rate of return at the bottom line. However, in many respects this approach has led to saturation in the market, even as the market itself changes its characteristics. Today, much more emphasis must be placed on marketability and the promotion of niche products, with an accompanying rise in demand for specific training, rather than the use of a ‘broad paintbrush’ to accomplish everything. As we come to the stark realisation that sales force effectiveness is far more important than sales force size, we realise that if we don’t take action, such inefficiency could prove highly detrimental.

In our current economy, pharmaceutical sales training must have two distinct components — the all-important product education and the dispensation of latest, cutting-edge techniques and approaches, to ensure that the salesperson is able to survive in this new era. The salesperson should not forget that the ultimate goal is to win, but it’s no good accepting a signature on a sales contract at whatever cost. Rather, a new contract value is also reliant on its position in terms of logistical benefit and strategy, quite apart from financial measurements. It’s quite possible that a profitable sale, when viewed narrowly, could be far from as beneficial when all the other factors are taken into consideration.

With margins so narrow, the difference between success and failure so thin, sales force effectiveness is one of the most important metrics an organisation can study. Knowledgeable consultants understand how important this element of pharmaceutical sales training is and how they should focus on high levels of morale, productive engagement and less waste among the sales force. Remember that correct motivation involves far more than just the establishment and availability of monetary bonuses. All individuals are different and certain people in the sales force may be more motivated by another style of reward, rather than viewing financial compensation as the be-all and end-all. More often than not, a goal must not be infinitely achievable, or the sales person could be subconsciously held back as progress is made.

Sales force effectiveness can have a high impact on not only volume, but thin margins and high costs, so individual performance can have a ‘knock on’ effect in other areas. An organisation can start by assessing its current situation, looking at the metrics used to determine success or otherwise and how these very metrics may, by themselves, be contributory to the problem. Size the sales force correctly, so the territories are adequately serviced and the company’s voice is heard to best effect. How many sales calls does the salesperson make on any given day and is an inordinate amount of time spent travelling or on other non-productive activities?

Every moment that a salesperson spends with the client, whether detailing or otherwise, should be optimised as part of a revised approach to key account management training.

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.

It’s very difficult to get ahead of the game in the pharmaceutical sales business and a training consultant must be able to look at a whole list of different criteria in order to motivate the sales force to succeed. It’s certainly possible to achieve significant and top class performance, so long as the client listens to the consultant and defines important benchmarks and abilities. Without the ability to measure these competencies, goals cannot realistically be set and individuals may not aspire to meet them. It is therefore important that the pharmaceutical company understands and helps to develop the framework at the outset.

When certain sales targets have been identified, marketing positions that are specific to those goals must be designed. It is important to understand what is expected of each role and to clarify the individual’s responsibility and methodology. There are almost always core principles within each identified role within the company, but any competencies that are very specific must be made clear to the attending individual, so that they may be understood and mastered.

Not surprisingly, pharmaceutical sales training uses the latest strategies and theory, as well as experience gained by the consultant and his organisation in the process of building ability. Selling skills have become more advanced and rely less on pure number crunching and goal orientation, but rather focus on personal interaction with the buying entity. To pick up specific product knowledge, pertinent to the individual’s objective, requires a salesperson to have a clear understanding of the buyer’s position and the variety of external factors that could influence his or her decision, when it comes to decision time.

These days, pharmaceutical sales training will help to instil the company’s brand strategy and overall objectives, so that the salesperson fully understands what the company is trying to achieve from a broader perspective. The consultant imparts to the salesperson how the market is made up, how certain levels of strategic marketing can best push the brand and how the most modern communication methods can help.

Today’s salesperson must be very good at communicating and understand the intricacies of public relations. We could go so far as to say that the relationship between the buyer and seller in the modern pharmaceutical industry is based more upon an exchange of information. Often, very subtle and difficult to determine factors may influence the buying decision, and the salesperson must try and understand these.

If an account is determined to be principle and essential to the pharmaceutical company’s existence going forward, key account management training must ensure that the individuals responsible for handling these accounts are up to speed. These individuals will require specific skill sets, which will undoubtedly extend far beyond typical sales and closing skills. The pharmaceutical company must understand that the key account is looking for more than might be immediately obvious and that a straightforward, two-way interaction is not sufficient for success. Everyone involved in servicing this account must be consciously aware of the special techniques applicable, whether or not a particular individual is actually responsible for hands-on deployment.

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.

While the pharmaceutical market may be in a constant state of flux and change, it seems that there is a definite trend away from the marketing of big brand, wide reach products to more “niche” medicines and that this change seems to be accelerating. An additional challenge is thus presented for the pharmaceutical company sales staff, most especially in the area of education.

All-important product branding must now be determined at a very early stage of the development cycle and pharmaceutical companies must be even more aware of how volatile the market can be and how constraints can emerge as the company seeks to enter, penetrate and extend into niche markets, which are often more focused and narrow minded. The branding exercise must take into account potential resistance or the need for additional clarification at an early stage of the marketing cycle.

Increasingly so, pharmaceutical markets are overcrowded. So many choices are presented to a consumer and a wide variety of external forces often come into the purchasing decision, including advice given by the petitioner or front-line professional. We live in an age when information is instantaneously available and we are, in increasingly surprising numbers, spending our time interacting on social networks. As a consequence, we are becoming much more educated about every aspect of our existence. While the consumer becomes more educated and the market becomes more crowded, the efficiency of a marketing program must be in sharp focus for a company’s senior executives.

Pharmaceutical companies are spending a great deal of their time moulding and shaping the market so that it is ready for the product when it is released. This underlines the need for early marketing efforts during brand creation and the need to ensure that educational channels are engaged.

While niche product areas are the subject of greater marketing emphasis, more emotions are involved in the end-user decision process as well and the professional is less likely to advise the consumer to go down the more beaten track. The pharmaceutical company must be fully in control of its marketing message and methodology, or it will not be able to differentiate itself from competitors in the marketplace. Consequently, the company’s sales force members are under even more pressure now than they were before, as they must penetrate an increasingly sceptical barrier at the practitioner level with an even more targeted and stronger message accordingly.

A company cannot succeed without a strong sales force and senior officials are in close contact with pharmaceutical consultants and pharmaceutical consulting firms as they train and develop their sales forces appropriately. As an organisation identifies its marketing focus, pharma consulting plays a great role, especially when talking about niche concentration. The distant professional must be the subject of more attention and sharper skills will be needed, with more training required to ensure that the sales executive breaks through all barriers and achieves the results. Effective implementation requires an equal amount of experience, ability and training.

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.

Sales force deployment can be segmented into a number of different areas and should be analysed, category by category to see how effective the force actually is. Executive training is of primary importance to ensure that the individual is fully up to speed with details on the product, has great personal inter-communication skills and the company should always ensure that it has set up an effective territorial allocation as well. It is not possible for a sales force to be truly effective if territories have been badly designated or aligned and travel times exacerbated accordingly. While it is true to say that the interaction between the sales executive and the client or potential client is more an art than a science, the creation of the battlefield owes more to planning and technology than to anything else.

A pharmaceutical company must be fully in possession of all the information, the issues and constraints that could stand in its way when it comes to optimising its sales force. It should have clearly set objectives and goals and these should be established based on prior history, realism and the input of adequate intelligence. The company should not be afraid to seek the services of a pharmaceutical consulting firm to provide first-hand knowledge, targeted experience and to employ the latest information and data to best effect. Is the overall target realistic and have objectives and goals been fully audited before work is engaged? While on the subject of being realistic, the potential of each individual within the sales force must be understood. Most sales executives in this situation will come with a track record and a prior history should be a good indication of how each individual person may perform. Assuming that the company has employed the services of the best in their field, territory allocation may follow.

Sales force deployment requires those in control to look back into the past. Input from the executives should be a core ingredient of this assessment and a comprehensive time management snapshot should be required of each member. It is rather difficult to come up with an optimal alignment and subtle changes are often necessary, but remember that even the smallest change can result in a big potential gain, whether in profits or otherwise.

Due to the sheer cost of running a sales force, it should always be optimised effectively, as needed, to maintain maximum productivity. To enable this to happen, pharma consulting can help to reveal benchmarks and to use prior knowledge and experience to fine tune everything accordingly.

To maximise revenue potential and increase sales, effective sales force allocation is absolutely essential. Traditional approaches may be found to be too costly and may have produced inferior results in other instances. In the modern pharmaceutical and healthcare industry, competitive pressures are too great to allow for the under-utilisation of resources in this way.

At the end of the day, a sales force executive must be able to optimise the amount of face-to-face selling time he or she spends with existing clients and prospects. Individual time management skills are very important within an optimised territorial area and pharmaceutical consultants stress that training in this area must be an intensive ongoing process. By maximising individual time and minimising travel time, administrative burdens and other unproductive interferences, the sales executive will have every opportunity for achieving their goals.

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.

Whether you employ your Denver IT consulting in-house or bring one in from the outside, there are some important steps to take to ensure that you get the most pleasant experience with them. You are paying a substantial amount of money and should expect top-notch service. This article explains how to make sure that you get the most from your new employee.

Start by considering the size of the project that you need completed. If you have a large project requiring a high level of management skills it’s best to use a consultant who has experience in pulling together large projects.

If the job you need done requires that the consultant interact closely with other people in your company, make sure the IT services consultant you hire has experience in direct customer service. Be sure the consultant you choose can deal with people in a positive manner; hiring any person with technical experience doesn’t mean you’ll hire someone with people skills.

After these considerations, you should narrow down the list of qualified applicants and schedule in-person interviews. This is the staple of the job interview process and rightfully so – you will be able to tell how well the IT services in Denver firm will mesh both with you and your existing staff, which is a very important trait to look for in any employee.

Picking an individual or firm based solely on how they look on paper will provide you with the person who is technologically superior but you may find yourself dealing with a difficult personality or trying to communicate with someone who is unable to explain things in a way you fully grasp. It is much better to hire someone with good qualifications who is easy and pleasant to deal with day after day.

While you want a great IT consultant, you should also be a good client for the consultant to work for. Always give them precise instructions about what you’re looking for and when you’d like to have it done by. You want to keep tabs on the work but you don’t want to take control over what he/she is doing. If the technology consulting employee you hire asks you questions, make sure you give them definitive answers.

It is always wise to keep in touch with your new IT consultant in order to keep things running efficiently. Weekly phone conferences or meetings in person will eliminate the need for written reports – it is often more efficient to conduct updates this way and generally results in questions being answered quicker and better for both parties.

Remember that you have hired this person to help you improve your operations which means they will be talking with you about problems they identify. We don’t like to be told our business isn’t being run efficiently even when we hire someone to tell us that. Let the consultant know you value his opinion and advice. He will be more likely to become engaged in the job and become personally invested in making the project yield the best results possible. The relationship with an IT consultant is not an employee-employer relationship but one of two professionals working together to yield great results.

As it’s estimated that the marketing of pharmaceutical products accounts for up to $25 billion of spending each year, there is a lot at stake for healthcare professionals everywhere. In recent times, there’s been much talk about the methodology used by pharmaceutical companies and the tactics they utilise as their sales force members contact and try and convince professionals. Indeed, some advocate that the industry should be more tightly regulated and the U.S. Congress has been strongly urged to take an in depth look at how business is conducted in this arena. With these dynamics in the background, the pharmaceutical company must take a highly focused and professional approach to the very way that it acts and how it reaches the people responsible for buying products and generating revenues enabling it to survive in the first place.

Certain countries around the World have been quick to introduce legislation and restrictions governing how pharmaceutical companies may interact with professionals. Some countries such as Australia, for example, have established certain codes of conduct, setting standards for ethical marketing and insisting that member organisations comply with the requirements.

Pharmaceuticals sales executives will spend a lot of time involved in what is known as “detailing,” by visiting front line professionals and explaining how the product might work, giving market suggestions, likely product availability, how it should be dosed, side effects that could be expected and other details. Their communication skills must be absolutely excellent and sales executives must be able to systematically break down barriers that may have been built up over years of suspicion. The sales executive has a pivotal role to play in helping to give the professional supplemental educational information. The pharmaceutical company must pay a great deal of attention to these methods of marketing.

If additional new regulations or restrictions develop in the near future, this would put even more emphasis on the need for effective marketing by the organisation. A company should engage pharmaceutical consulting firms due to the fact that they have direct experience and can as such help to train and educate the sales force so that they do not stumble at a vital time, make mistakes or negatively interact with professionals and spoil any potential gains.

Disclosure may be called for in future, detailing hospitality provided or suggested, levels of assistance given or gifts related and a clear indication of the style and type of education imparted. Not only will it be necessary for the sales executive to be highly educated in the product itself, fully understanding of restrictions and implications, but the executive must also be fully able to market to their highest ability.

Generally, pharmaceutical consultants will focus a great deal of their available time on striving to balance training between methods and product awareness. Time management is an essential skill required and staff must be trained to make best use of it, just as traditional marketing skills must be a point of focus and any latest developments or new legal requirements included. In most cases, pharma consulting outsources these important areas, enabling company chiefs to focus on other core areas of concern. With ineffective marketing, reputations can be compromised and there can be other implications, including problems with regulations and authorities; consultants must steer the organisation carefully.

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.

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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More than $25 billion per year is spent on marketing pharmaceutical products, showing the size and importance of the industry and underlining the need for the pharmaceutical company to be highly effective in this arena. The organisation can be as creative or as ground breaking as it likes as it brings new products to the marketplace, but without sharp attention to its marketing operations it may falter in an ultra-competitive marketplace. There is no doubt that the healthcare industry will continue to grow even in a downturn, but increasing amounts of highly motivated competition is evident and the company overlooks its marketing initiatives at potentially high cost.

The healthcare industry touches almost every individual in the country at some stage and due to its sheer size, drug spending is always a subject of great attention. Within the healthcare industry, the total amount spent on pharmaceuticals accounts for 15% of the entire budget and it therefore follows that due to the high stakes associated, a lack of marketing proficiency can have significant repercussions.

For the pharmaceutical company, its sales force is at the sharp end and spends much of its time interacting directly with the professional, the practitioner and the advisor. It is so important for the sales executive to interact successfully with a professional if progress is to be maintained. The executive spends a lot of his or her time detailing and providing information to the professional, yet this is often a tough wall to breach, as the practitioner is somewhat detuned to marketing advances.

Indeed, a healthcare professional can have a lot of other sources of input, being focused and highly educated to start off with, including first-hand experience, personal training, scientific paper research and advice from colleagues. There is a significant danger that the professional could view the advances of a pharmaceutical company sales executive as single-minded, so the executive therefore needs highly-tuned marketing and communication skills to be able to break through.

The pharmaceutical industry is maturing constantly and with advances in medicine comes the need for a much higher level of education at the sales executive team level. This level of complexity can be worrying to the senior management of a pharmaceutical company, as they have enough to worry about with regard to political lobbying, the enforcement of regulations, development of products and numerous economic issues. It is at times like these that they should turn to pharmaceutical consulting firms not only to advise them, but to help educate and direct their sales forces.

Generally, pharmaceutical consultants have a great deal of first-hand experience within the market and specifically with regard to dealing first-hand with professionals and end users. Advice can be imparted about layers of motivation, multiple layers of training and the best way to approach client interaction. Most pharma consulting experts will help to ensure that the sales staff member realises the urgency required, while bringing all members of the team together into a cohesive unit. The executive must not only work with the best interest of the employing company at heart, but must seek to engage the acceptance and trust of the end-user professional at a critical stage in the product life. True balance is required to ensure that motivation works through training to reveal the correct way forward.

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.

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To buy business assets can be a daunting prospect, especially if you have not done this before. While it may be somewhat easier than establishing your own operation from scratch, understand that you are taking on, in many respects, the liabilities of somebody who is a complete stranger to you. You can certainly reveal many of the inner workings of the business for sale and consult numerous documents to help you understand what it is all about, but you must be able to read between the lines, and this is exactly why you need a due diligence checklist.

Many of the business owners you will come across are diligent and enthusiastic people, are justifiably proud of their creation and really want their baby to be nurtured and cared for by a new and careful owner, but you cannot assume that this is always the case. This is not to say that you have to assume the worst at all times, but you can never take any statements at face value and always have to be sure that there is proof to back up any claims made. Always ensure that you employ the services of expert analysts as required when you buy a business, including accountants, financiers and business experts.

Primarily, you are now engaged in the process of setting value. Both parties concerned, the seller and the buyer, will undoubtedly have a different interpretation of the business’ value. You will not come to an agreement or deal unless both parties are happy, but always bear in mind that you have to set the specifics under which a deal is likely to be made.

When you buy a business, there are numerous steps that you have to take as you proceed through your due diligence checklist, and all of these will help you to reveal the inner workings of the business in question. Never rely on industry benchmarks, even though they may be useful for your information gathering purposes. In the majority of cases you will always want to rely on the most recent data and while there are many documents to check, the financials are of paramount importance. You may look at a particular business asset and think it is very interesting to you, but you should not skim over some of the less palatable figures that you are presented with under any circumstances.

When you’re looking at the value of a business for sale, some of the more important factors include the scale and the level of services available, the potential for business expansion, the age of the organization and the reputational impact in the marketplace. Calculate the level of competition, both industry-specific and geographically and in many cases the most important of all, its location. If the business you are considering is principally Internet-based, it may not even have a “bricks and mortar” location. Certainly, a physical location is not important in this situation, however you may have to undergo an even more thorough process of due diligence.

Reveal as much as you can as you work through this process and understand how important your due diligence checklist really is. This entire process may take you weeks rather than days, especially if you need to analyse daily operations, client interaction and staff behaviour, for example. Be prepared for a lengthy process and you will not become overly anxious to consummate an early deal.

Richard Parker is the President and founder of the prestigious Diomo Corporation – The Business Buyer Resource Center. His celebrated materials, seminars and consulting have encouraged thousands of aspiring business buyers from around the World to pursue their dream to buy a business.

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If the pharmaceutical company designates one of its clients as a key account, what criteria is it using to determine this? All too often, this prognosis is based on an analysis of financial data alone and as such, it can be said that the entire account management philosophy is based on a poor foundation. Why not look at this from the opposite view, as if you were a designated key account? This client is clearly able to see if the association is based on a dollar value and is not based on strategic importance or the provision of services over and above the standard. No matter how hard the executive tries at an interpersonal level, it is not possible to mask how a pharmaceutical company designates the true meaning of this relationship.

The key client understands why it should be designated as “key,” whether that is purely to do with revenue levels or not or whether, as more likely, it is a product of strategic positioning as well. As such, it will be looking for a special level of attention from the company and an element of leadership in the industry.

A relationship between a company and its client must be a two-way street. Where competition is rife, options are always available and the company must ensure that it is always doing more than could be expected of it. Within the very make up of a company, all staff should be infused with this philosophy, but this can be a difficult position to achieve. This is why a pharmaceutical consulting firm remains a good investment for the company. The pharmaceutical consultants can often speak from a position of experience and strength and may well directly understand the requirements of the client better than the company. As such, the consultants can help the training of staff at all levels with regard to the intricacies necessary when dealing with clients.

A typical client these days is looking for a pro active company engagement, interested in any ways possible to improve a relationship and will be looking for privileged information and data to help them in their day-to-day business. This will not necessarily directly result in an increase in revenues, and if the front-line executives are only motivated by bonuses according to revenue figures, then they may not be correctly incentivised to handle the client the right way.

Remember that these situations are often far more subtle than this would suggest, and even the most sophisticated incentivisation schemes can fail to meet their targets. These types of situations call for a lot of experience and a dedicated approach to the handling of each and every key account.

Hidden costs are often involved and the pharmaceutical company must understand that it should be very sparing in its designation of “key” account status. Always read between the lines and assess how strategically important the relationship could be, far above bottom-line figures and revenues. These days, pharma consulting firms can help reveal these points of reason and can in certain circumstances help the company to understand that a particular client may not in fact represent the company’s best interests.

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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Clients of a typical pharmaceutical company often have a choice when it comes to selection of business partners and may look for a distinct type of relationship in return for further patronage. Therefore, the pharmaceutical company must really comprehend the value that the business of that strategic account imparts and must realise that when it designates “key account” status, a certain level of quality control should ensue and measurable results be expected.

Key account management is not something to be designated and reviewed at some later stage. It must be essentially dynamic and while certain elements of such an association will mean different things to different staff members, the overall goal must be the same – to ensure that the client and all its executives are happy and wish to remain.

It is a shame, but clients are often disappointed by what they see as a failure to embrace the importance of key account management and by the organisation’s inability to cross the line. For example, the key account wants the pharmaceutical company to be impactive and not just to be visible, to be proactive and not reactive. It’s important for the client to see that the company is acting in its best interests and, most especially in this field, keeping abreast of developments within the industry.

Sometimes, the client will be expecting the pharmaceutical company to be involved in the development of strategies. While there can be many different levels of key account designation and there can and should be variations across client levels, the pharmaceutical company must ensure that its staff at all levels are trained to recognise particular needs. A company must get to know the client first hand and in many respects this does not necessarily mean at the social level either. For example, the company may want to send some of its appropriate staff into the field to work directly with the client and should remember that this can also help to provide an element of in-depth knowledge about the client, intelligence which could be used in the future.

The pharmaceutical company should never be afraid to perform a certain amount of work at no charge for truly key clients and this once again points to the need for each client to be treated as its own entity. The moral is that there should be no such thing as a textbook approach to key account management and pharmaceutical consulting firms fully realise this and can help to educate all staff levels in the intricacies of such an approach.

When it comes to the release of information that could be seen as proprietary, pharmaceutical companies may find themselves in a difficult or delicate position. It is certainly true that information at these levels can be very powerful and while the client may expect to be given some additional “value” in this respect, the most senior levels of the pharmaceutical company management should discuss this issue with the company’s pharma consulting firm to be sure of the best approach.

The pharmaceutical consultants will help ensure that the company is going above and beyond, over-delivering its part of the equation. If the key account truly is key, all the way down to the bottom line, then a fruitful relationship for the future can be assured.

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.

Do you see the prospect of buying an existing business for sale as being a leap in the dark, as this discourages many an enterprising individual? The entire concept can be very alien if you’ve never been involved in these types of transaction before. After all, it is not like buying a more tangible product like a vehicle or a house, where in many respects “what you see is what you get.” A business valuation can be composed of several intangibles as well as inspectable assets and in many cases goodwill factors into the equation. In a service related business, goodwill and a maintainable client list can be critical elements, but the process of due diligence involves the revelation and exploration of numerous areas and documents.

Always remember that there are two different viewpoints here. The seller will have a clear indication of the worth that he or she places on the business. Expect to see a certain amount of natural enthusiasm, as a lot of hard work and dedication has undoubtedly been put into the business by the outgoing seller. While you should always maintain an element of respect for the sellers’ point of view, you must look at all documentation and evidence in the hard light of day and understand that it is up to you to determine if you should buy business interests according to the specific value you set.

When you decide that you want to move forward and investigate whether to buy a business of interest, understand that this may be a lengthy process. At this time, you had better have a good level of common sense and humor and be ready to communicate at length with the seller.

This is where expert advisers will come into their own and if you have no real experience with this kind of business, its related market or niche, utilize proven resources and get as much help as you can. This is not to say that you will simply hand off all the work to these advisers, barely looking at the documentation presented to you, as the decision-making must in the end be made by you and you alone. The financial documents and all of the paperwork must be reviewed by you first to be sure that you have a great feeling initially before you hand them over for further processing by your experts.

Always be wary if some of the financial documents are either missing or incomplete, or are not balanced and reconciled correctly. Certain precedents must be maintained and accounting procedures completed. You may be asked to sign some non-disclosure or non-compete documents before these are made available, but the financials are the rock upon which everything else is built.

Each and every operation is different in its own right and no two businesses are the same. There are so many different events that can come to bear to create such a variety of external influences and situations at any time. You will undoubtedly uncover some surprises and come across unusual figures and facts, but remember that while industry benchmarks are definitely of interest, you are focused on real-world information here.

Richard Parker is the President and founder of the Diomo Corporation – The Business Buyer Resource Center. His inspiring materials, seminars and consulting have assisted thousands of business buyers with achieving their life long dream to buy a business.