Who Drives Change on a Pharma Field Force?

Had a beer with an ex-colleague of mine last night. One of the best minds in the industry, I always learn a lot from him whenever we sit down together. Last night was no different.

Among the topics that we covered was the dilemma faced by many pharma organizations around how to coach the people in their sales force to adapt with the times.

The pharma industry has changed and doing the same things the same way that we did them even five years ago is no longer good enough.How do you train and coach an experienced sales team to change their habits and look at their customers and business in a new way?

The challenge, and itaffects any organization with a field force no matter what their industry, is that human nature is a very powerful thing.We run these great meetings with amazing sessions to inspire and train our field force on new techniques and approaches to their business.Everyone leaves the meeting energized and totally bought in to the new approach. One month later, everyone is doing exactly what they were doing before the meeting.

No one has ill intentions. It is just that human nature is such that we easily fall back into the rut of thinking and doing things the way that we always did them.Make no mistake, human nature is an incredibly powerful force and very hard to overcome.

So, our discussion was, who is best positioned to inspire real long-term change on a sales team and how do you do it?

One thing that we covered was that business and sales skills are not like product knowledge. You can learn about a product sitting in front of a computer or from a manual.

Business and sales skills however, are a lot more like learning how to drive a car. You can read all the manuals and see all the slide presentations in the world but you don’t really know how to drive a car until you have done it more than a few times. Even then, speaking for myself at least (…), there is always room to improve on those driving skills.

And like driving, whether it is the first time or for an advanced driving course, it really helps if you have someone with you as you are learning those new skills to guide, coach and provide feedback.

So, with all of this said, it is your sales managers, the people who interact with/coach the members of a sales team on a regular basis, whoare the ones best positioned to lead any change initiative.The sales managers willcoach, nudge and push your reps back on track when they start to slip back into their old habits.

It is the work of the sales managers that will make or break the success of your initiative.

So,my question to you is, what are you doing within your organization to ensure the success of change initiatives for your field force? How much effort is put into making sure that your sales managers have the training that they need and are fully bought in and up to speed on your new initiatives?

If you are training your sales managers at the same time that you are training the rest of your field force but are still expecting them to be able to lead and reinforce yourchange initiative, think again.

Even more than the regular field force, the sales managers need coaching and support, which they in turn will have to deliver to their own sales teams.In addition, your sales managers will need training on the skills required to coach that change initiative.

Bottom line, if you want your field force to change the way that they are doing things, your sales managers are absolutely critical. You need to ensure that they have the tools and are completely bought in to what you are doing.

Anything less and the success of your change initiative will go the way of so many others.