Does Your Sales Team Think in Three Dimensions?

When it comes to identifying which customers they should be focusing their time on, most sales people are trained to think in only one dimension. Who is treating the most patients in my therapeutic area now?

It is a good place to start but not necessarily the best way to decide where to focus your time.

In my experience, some of these very busy healthcare professionals (HCPs) can be quite set in their ways and nothing short of the medical discovery equivalent of a tactical nuclear device is going to change the way that they practice. I suspect that you have encountered some of these HCPs.

The more successful sales reps can think about their customers in asecond dimension which is, who is growing (and equally important to pay attention to, decreasing) the number of patients that they treat in your therapeutic area?

If you want to increase the number of patients helped by your medication, these are often the HCPs with whom it is the most beneficial to spend your time with. They have evolving needs as they treat a greater range of patients and will be looking for solutions that you can potentially provide.

The reps who are consistently successful year after year are the ones who can think about their customers in a third dimension. These reps know not only which HCPs treat many patients now and which are increasing the number of patients that they treat, but also who will be treating more patients over the next two to three years.

They start to establish relationships and provide support to HCPs who are just beginning to develop busy practices in their product’s therapeutic area. This pays big dividends later.

In my experience as a sales manager, if you want to know whether the members of your team are thinking in one, two or three dimensions, the best exercise that you can do is to sit down with them individually and review their top customers.

Is your rep’s list made up of people who have a lot of patients but have not changed how they prescribe in a long time? If it is, they are probably thinking in only one dimension.

On the other hand, if their top customers list is made up of HCPs who are increasing the number of patients that they treat in your therapeutic area, they are two-dimensional thinkers.

If your salesperson talks about HCPs that they are developing and who will be important in the near future, you have a three dimensional thinker.

We all want to help the HCPs identify and treat the patients who will benefit the most from our medications.

If we want to do this well, we need to be aware not only of where our HCPs are now in their practice, but also where they want to be in the future.