L2L Group

The deployment of the sales force can be broken down into several categories and performance in each category should be used to determine the effectiveness of the force. 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. The sales force may not be as effective as they could be subject to poor designation of individual territories, bad alignment or excessive travel times. 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 anything else.

To start off with, the pharmaceutical company should ensure that it has a complete understanding of all the constraints and issues that could stand in front of its 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. The goals and objectives should be fully audited to make sure that the target is realistic before any other work is completed. 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.

A significant part of a sales force deployment program going forward is a critical assessment of what is in 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. Optimal alignment can be a rather subtle exercise and it's important to remember that relatively small changes can sometimes result in big gains in efficiency and potential profits.

The sales force should always be optimised as it can present a significant cost to the pharmaceutical company. Pharma consulting suggests how these levels should be set and are based on experience, prior knowledge and benchmarks, which may then be fine-tuned.

Effective sales force allocation is crucial to maximising sales potential or increasing revenue. Traditional approaches may be found to be too costly and may have produced inferior results. In the modern pharmaceutical and healthcare industry, competitive pressures are too great to allow for the under-utilisation of resources in this way.

The goal should be to optimise the amount of face-to-face selling time that the sales force executive is able to spend with both 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.