No amount of creativity or product superiority will be advantageous unless the pharmaceutical company is able to get its product to the market and into the hands of the end user. The selection of a productive sales and marketing team is critical to the survival of the company and this team must be adequately trained in not only the value and benefits of the product, but the techniques, initiatives and strategies necessary to go out into the marketplace and actually sell. Sales force effectiveness is of such critical importance, yet it is often poorly reviewed or supervised. Generally, pharmaceutical consultants have the desired levels of training to be able to motivate the company sales force, resulting in considerable financial gain due to elevated efficiency.

One well-known football coach once claimed that “winning isn’t everything, it’s the only thing.” Remember to keep this mindset engaged at all times. After all, a sale is either won or lost and a lost sale is of no value whatsoever, experience gained and contacts made notwithstanding.

It is essential to correctly motivate a team and one of the first things that a pharmaceutical consulting firm will help initiate is the creation of meaningful measurement tools. It is important to remember that activity levels are not the “be all and end all” of sales. It should be remembered that sales volume by itself is not an indicator of efficient activity by the sales executive, as it must be related to value. The creation of the account must foster a value relationship between all the principals, quite apart from the raw dollar amounts involved. Of critical importance is the alignment between the company and the buyer’s strategy. A correct level of incentive is very important and sales people must clearly understand that both the client and the company must achieve value before any deal is consummated.

Levels of incentive must be tied to achievable and attainable levels and goals. There must always be something for the salesperson to reach and always a further incentive throughout the sales structure. In other words, there should never really be an “achievable” end result for the sales executive, or a target that, once achieved, promotes a lack of further engagement.

The adoption of time management cannot be underestimated and the company should strive to ensure that the sales manager is not bogged down with too many administrative elements, through the provision of the latest, cutting-edge tools to streamline work. It is sobering to realise that on average, sales executives can spend only one quarter of their time communicating directly with clients.

We can see that for the sales team to be effective, each member must be adequately trained and furthermore must engage in a process of ongoing training. Such training will include education in the products to be sold, latest sales techniques and delivery processes in addition to management of time and the vital elements of interpersonal communication. Bring in pharma consulting experts to get the mix right.

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.