Top Sales Force Effectiveness Requires The Proper Approach

Proper incentivisation is critical to the effectiveness of an organisation's sales force. 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.

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. However efficient the executive, without the creation of a good relationship between both parties, the long-term baseline value of the transaction is questionable. In this analysis, incentives must be prepared and deployed selectively, with the aim of achieving a “win-win” solution all around.

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. 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. 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.

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. This should include product awareness as well as methodology and techniques, and the latest procedures can be implemented through pharma consulting firms. These companies can bring a lot to the corporate table, using an extensive industry background, a variety of different perspectives, pep talks and rallies at just the right time to eliminate even the traces of negative emotions.

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.