Sales Force Effectiveness And Incredible Pointers On Its Optimisation

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March 31, 2010

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. While plenty of time should be spent in training the executive, both in ongoing personal inter-communication skills and in direct product knowledge, adequate time should always be allocated by the pharmaceutical company to establish as near a perfect territorial picture as possible. 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. A sales executive must call on all his or her artistic skills to ensure that the interaction between the executive and the client is as effective as possible, but the “battlefield” needs to be established through technology and planning, first of all.

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? In addition to a realistic assessment of goals, how realistic is each individual’s potential within the sales force? 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. Once the very best individuals have been selected, territorial allocation should follow.

A significant part of a sales force deployment program going forward is a critical assessment of what is in the past. Executives should be counselled as this assessment is being compiled and each should be required to contribute time management snapshots. 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.

The sales force should always be optimised as it can present a significant cost to the pharmaceutical company. 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 ways of approaching this might simply be too costly and also may not produce the intended results reliably. The pressures evident in the modern pharmaceutical and healthcare industry are just too substantial to allow an organisation to overlook the underutilisation of its resources.

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. Within optimised territorial planning, individual time management skills will be stressed by pharmaceutical consultants and training in this area should be an ongoing process. The ultimate goal of the sales executive is to maximise individual time with the client and to minimise administrative burdens, travel time and other unproductive interferences.

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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