Pharmaceutical sales, Building Sales Relationships usually start with product presentation to an individual or group of medical practitioners with subsequent follow up to ensure brand prescription and dispensing. This aspect of the job is often times frustrating. Success at this level is propelled by lots of interwoven factors which include sound product and industry knowledge, physical presentation, communication abilities, negotiation skills, interpersonal relationship building skills and of course persistence. With all these aforementioned qualities, a salesperson will mostly likely perform courageously in the field.
A product/market development strategy concerns developing new products or modifying existing products and offering those products to current or new markets. These strategies typically surface when there is little opportunity for growth in an organization’s existing market.
A revenue model strategy (or more casually, a business strategy) is a strategy usually focused on forming a product or service whereby advertising or licensing revenue can be generated subsequently, or more broadly, a strategy focused on generating revenue.
Magazines and publications follow this strategy, albeit on different levels where a customer-base is usually built to be leveraged. In this case, the editorial team is commissioned to write content that is packaged into a printed publication, as well as for an online audience that can subscribe, that is then used to drive advertising revenue from organizations that wish to advertise to this audience. Co-branded promotions and list rentals are hugely popular in this respect and are not limited to media and publishing organizations alone, as many organizations outside of this space can adopt this strategy to reach its business goals.
Building Sales Relationships will involve an element of targeting. Targeting enables organizations to narrow their focus and aim marketing campaigns and messages at a specific segment of the market, thus becoming more relevant to the audience and increasing the chances of conversion into a customer or client. Essentially focusing on customers that an organization can serve best.
A targeting strategy often involves focusing on organizations via one or more of the following attributes: Most profitable customers, larger or smaller organizations, loyal customers.
How often do you allow your sales person access to the existing accounts before hammering on new leads? Imagine a situation where no existing client was transferred to salesperson on resumption. Imagine where his/her newly established big buyers are confiscated by the head office in the name of proper handling when there is no case of poor channel management. Imagine lack of field coaching and clinical presentation by the management team. In all these scenarios, the sales person is bound to be discouraged and in most cases will be on the lookout for new opportunities in a competing company or eventually leave the sector.
