Pharma Reform

As we have discussed professional representatives may not be as focused on sales numbers and are less responsive to incentive pay than the traditional sales representative.  This alone can make it frustrating for a traditional sales manager.  But professional representatives are self motivated and driven by personal performance excellence.  They strive to be the best that they can be and never seem satisfied with the level of skill or expertise they attain.  This includes selling skills, persuasive techniques, and managing their territories.  So why do so many pharmaceutical sales managers hate managing these people?

I believe it is because it takes experience and a much higher level of coaching skills and management expertise to leverage the value and satisfy the performance expectations of a professional representative.

You may have heard the term “high maintenance rep.”  Well, they can exist on both ends of the performance spectrum but it is probably used most often to describe professional representatives.   The reason is that professional representatives will push sales managers, sales training, and marketing to their limits of technical and scientific competence, coaching skills expertise, and management capabilities.  When the skills and expertise of the professional representative exceed the management competence of the sales manager, it becomes personally threatening to the manager and makes their job much more difficult and sometimes even impossible.

Professional representatives are so good at what they do and they have such an instinctive sense for what is going on in their market that they are often the ones that ‘complain” about the crappy marketing materials and boring marketing messages they are being asked to use.  When they point out that they really don’t have the data to support the claims or the efficacy implications of the marketing materials they get labeled as trouble makers.  Professional representatives also expect insightful post call coaching for improvement not just critique of what they did wrong.   And, despite being less driven by numbers, when they point out that their sales forecast makes no sense as it applies to their territory, professional representatives are frustrated by the lack of rationale for their increase, especially in the context of other conspicuously low territory growth rates.

Experienced, skilled sales managers with expertise treasure and nurture professional representatives.  They lean on them for help. They tap their technical and scientific expertise for the benefit of the district or region.   Experienced and skilled sales managers know how to inspire and help professional representatives achieve their seemingly impossible expectations for excellence.  They have the exceptional coaching skills necessary to identify the nuances of interpersonal and presentation skills that can make the difference between an impactful discussion and merely delivering another marketing message.  It takes a confident (not arrogant) manager to hear what is really being said in the “complaints” of the professional representative.  You have to be a much better, more experienced sales manager to appreciate and effectively manage a highly skilled professional representative.

If you lack experience, sales management skills, coaching expertise, and technical competence, you will hate managing a professional representative.

mike@pharmareform.com