L2L Group

There is far too much at stake to take a passive approach to the organisation of a company's sales force, and senior management should ensure that they are well aware of the effectiveness of the operation and are adequately placed to make changes as and when necessary to improve. With the typical cost of a sales call estimated to be anywhere in the region of about $400 or more, a lot is at stake if the sales executive is not being as efficient as possible.

While it goes without saying that the sales executive should be a highly skilled individual, trained in the intricacies of closing sales, a first-class communicator and people person, if poor methodology is used by the pharmaceutical company, all his or her skills could be wasted. In other words, poor deployment could make the difference between a company just surviving or pushing ahead, celebrating the fruits of its labour.

The good news for the pharmaceutical company is that by leveraging existing assets, a significant difference could emerge. It's amazing how small improvements in significant areas can result in big profit gains. Very often it may not be immediately obvious to the untrained eye that the sales force is working inefficiently, and this is where highly skilled pharmaceutical consultants can really help the organisation move forward.

Sales force effectiveness is about many different facets. For example, optimal sizing of the workforce, optimal allocation of individual efforts and optimal alignment of sales territories, all play the part. The pharmaceutical consulting firm can draw on experience gained from many different case studies over the years, first-hand experience “on the streets” and constant reviews of policies, procedures and the latest technical help. While sales force optimisation was once left as a paper and pencil exercise, these days powerful digital products and software solutions can be used to help set up the entire program. There is always room for internal intelligence, however, and this should be incorporated into the plans as they are being prepared and before they are rolled out.

Historical sales performance and workload allocation data from previous years is necessary information and helps to dictate the size of a sales force required by the company for moving forward. This should be engaged with market conditions, both current and projected and also fine-tuned according to the company's product mix and plans for expansion.

Pharma consulting is multifaceted and can be of particular value to the pharmaceutical company in terms of establishing time management practices to help augment the newly optimised sales force. One of the first tasks should be to ensure that schedules are optimised as well as theoretically possible, and individual operatives within the sales force team are trained to take advantage of every moment of time available to them. Once the company can be sure that it has eliminated travel overlaps and balanced its workloads, it can be ready to send out its focused sales team on the road to best effect. The cost of a sales call is only going up, so it only makes sense to rein in these costs as much as possible.