7 Ways to Boost Medical Reps Productivity & Maximize Sales Force Effectiveness

Once there’s an inquiry about improving pharmaceutical sales representatives’ performance, there’s a need to ask a simple question: “What does it mean to be a pharmaceutical representative? What is exactly a pharma rep’s responsibility zone?”. 

Looking for the answer, you may find that the key role of a pharma representative is to deliver the pharma company’s ideas and messages to the health care reps in a most efficient, understandable, and intelligible way. So, the best way to help pharma reps improve their service is to provide all necessary information, equipment, and opportunities to improve strategies relating to health care professionals. 

Let’s explore relevant ways to boost pharma sales performance. 

Who Is a Pharma Representative and How to Become a Pharmaceutical Rep? 

The pharmaceutical sector stands as one of the most significant assets in many regions worldwide, rendering it among the most promising industries to pursue a career in. And while there are many great opportunities for scientists and doctors, one role truly stands out: a pharmaceutical representative. 

A pharmaceutical representative, or ‘pharma rep,’ markets pharmaceutical products to healthcare professionals (HCPs) and educates them about new medicines. Typically employed by drug companies and manufacturers, their main goal is to build long-term relationships with HCPs, serving as a key source of information about new medications available in the market. 

Obtaining a degree related to this job is a crucial initial step toward becoming a professional pharmaceutical representative. The degree can be in any pharmaceutical-related field, such as chemistry or biology. However, earning a degree is just the beginning; there are several additional steps necessary to pursue a career as a pharmaceutical representative: 

1. Getting a certification. Many certifications provide learners with the knowledge and skills of a professional pharmaceutical representative, including information about laws, regulations, and standards. Certification is usually not required to get employed, but it will help your resume outshine your competition; 

2. Expanding a network. Attending events in the pharmaceutical industry, connecting with experts on social media, and making your account public are good ways to become acquainted with other professionals in the field and discover potential job opportunities; 

3. Acquiring the necessary skills. A professional pharmaceutical representative understands how to present to the public and swiftly build relationships effectively. This doesn’t necessarily require being extremely extroverted, but it does entail being adept at engaging with different types of audiences. 

The role of a pharmaceutical representative is an ideal career path for individuals intrigued by sales and eager to have a job in the pharmaceutical domain. By honing such skills as salesmanship and effective communication and gaining as much field experience as possible, individuals who aspire to excel as pharmaceutical representatives can quickly become the experts in the field. 

How to Increase Sales in a Pharma Company in 7 Steps?

Now, it is time to delve into specific strategies to take Medical Reps’ effectiveness to another level.

Start With a Customer-Focused Pharmaceutical Sales Strategy

The professional market situation is the driving force behind business as well as industry communication. So, in order to not spend countless hours trying to reach the doctor, pharmaceutical sales rep needs to shift focus toward the consumer model.

That said, sales reps utilizing the latest methods of extended interactions between customers in order to see success come their way tend to be on par with their strategy to reach HC providers.

One should not underestimate the power of free individualized interaction between pharmaceutical companies, providers and patients. So, there is a need for companies to make structural changes and research new driven approaches to the customers.

Integration of technology resources and insights can be of great help in many ways for a sales representative to turn to the patient-oriented system, to reach the target audience at any time, and deliver required information. In addition, it influences the knowledge building process. Not to mention the prolonged, continuing relationships with customers.

Equip Pharmaceutical Sales Representatives

The level of tech equipment shows the level of preparedness for companies in the industry. When the medical rep is standing at the doctors’ door, ready to knock and start the communication process, they should feel prepared in the way of presenting information and receiving feedback from providers. There’s no need to overload salespeople with tech stuff for every possible moment of life. However, providing a useful CRM solution and presentation platform is an absolute must-have.

CRM allows gathering HCP’s data more effectively, whether it is contact information, job description or specific feedback on a product currently on the market. The high-quality CRM solution should be able to provide med reps with a number of relevant communication opportunities, from making calls via VoIP to scheduling emails and messages. All of it makes the communication between med reps and HCPs more effective and efficient at any time and place of choosing. The smart presentation platform is also a necessary part of the communication technology stack for medical sales representatives. The eWizard platform is the best solution that allows both to manage presentations and show them remotely.

Prep Pharmaceutical Representatives

Your content database contains many different materials for doctors: interactive presentations, learning platforms, web conferences, training, and many more. It works great for HCP involvement and education, so it should also be available for medical pharma reps. You can provide reps with these materials daily as an educational measure to increase their knowledge by making surveys, videos, presentations, and more.

As well as the company’s materials education, you should provide them with the latest information about the pharmaceutical industry and sale tactics. It is urgently important for the medical rep who has not more than 3 minutes with the health care provider but must bring some results afterward. The main idea of improving your representative’s involvement level is never to let them say: “let me check this for you. I’ll get back”.

Motivate Pharmaceutical Sales Reps

Like any other sales representative, medical representativess highly depend on motivation and feedback. A representative’s work consists of many hours spent gathering information and trying to deliver it in the short term to someone who barely wants to listen. A typical sales representative nightmare looks like this: a lot of time and attention spent on something without getting any positive result. Unfortunately, this is not unusual and may lead to employee burnout, which is unacceptable for everyone.

Remember that your med reps’ team is a tool for delivering your message to the audience of the pharma industry. You may want to keep this team as healthier as possible: create a motivational ladder, give promotions, share your business plans, and look for a way to inspire every member. An inspired and motivated employee will look for solutions on his own.

Raise Awareness Among Pharmaceutical Sales Reps

As everyone has access to the internet — and, accordingly, the ability to self-develop — nowadays, HCPs are no exception when it comes to the pharmaceutical industry. Therefore, it’s critically important to gather intelligent data about HCP’s digital activities, responses, and feedback and provide your sales team with it. It works great even for strategic purposes — tracking med reps’ efforts in the chosen region (for example, by geographical criteria) might be made in a few clicks by just opening the correct sales data.

Each team, department, and person in the company should clearly understand their responsibilities, tasks, and how they are expected to perform them. Driving more alignment, agility, and productivity into the team conducts ongoing changes and meets the pharma market’s conditions.

Let Pharmaceutical Sales Reps Be Brave

Another serious motivational factor is the ability to hear ‘no’ and keep going to the next HCP’s door. Accepting failure is extremely important for every medical representative; no matter how experienced they are, they will always have a deal with the client’s denial. Missing a good potential sale leads to frustration which accumulates and, in turn, leads to burnout — this is a traditional way for any pharmaceutical sales rep to quit their job.

So, make your team learn from their failures and how to overcome them. The truth is the more you fail and learn from it, the better salesperson you become. Spend time to each your sales representatives to find a lesson in every rejection, so their delivery flow can be flexible and personalized for any difficult circumstances their customers have. Keep in mind that flexibility goes a long way, too many penalties for not making a plan, your employee will mostly think about how not to be fined instead of looking for effectiveness.

Keep The Sales Representatives Motivated

Great piece of motivation is always inspiring for every person. Try to motivate them in all possible way. There is no better thing, that the belief of team leader in colleagues. A good manager should be able to motivate people to work and be sure of future results. Colleagues are peers and the whole company – a community, a family.

Turn everyday work in enjoying process. Indeed, if to inspire employees to see real future goals and results, they will, undoubtedly, work harder, paying attention to every detail.

Takeaways

As you can see, there are many ways to influence your medical representative’s sales process, make it more profitable and increase pharmaceutical sales force effectiveness. In a nutshell, the best you can do for your team is to try to walk in their shoes and see this sales process from their perspective. This way, you can learn more about what they need, discover more about the inner world of pharmaceutical marketing and get new ideas to increase pharmacy sales. Does it sound good enough to try?

Please fill out the form below to contact us and learn about our approaches that will help you be a champion in healthcare engagement and bring your pharma sales force effectiveness to a new orbit. 

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