There are TWO scenarios that assessments are normally used:

1. As a hiring tool in the hiring process.
2. As an employee development tool for sales managers.

In the hiring process, you normally take an assessment at the very beginning of the interview process or towards the end.

An assessment that’s used in the beginning is usually used to screen out people that wouldn’t fit in the job. When I say fit, maybe it’s a very technical scientific job and the candidate didn’t have a science degree. The employer may be using an assessment that focuses on abstract reasoning because that is seen as a nice measure of intelligence and they are trying to gauge if the candidate will be able to grasp their new technology quickly. If it’s an accounting position, maybe the employer is focused more on the candidate’s ability to work by themselves with no direction.

A nice manager believes “Where there is smoke, there is fire” and if the assessment comes back with more than 2 points of contention, they may think they are better off passing on you and moving on to the next candidate.  They don’t wanna gamble with their new hires.

It’s much less likely to keep you from getting the job if you are taking the assessment as a final step to receiving an offer—unless your assessment comes back with anti-social behavior patterns, the manager will probably move forward.

People who vociferously disagree with their results are almost always a personnel issue waiting to happen. They think they have all the skills needed for their career opportunity and they are great. The truth is that is they don’t have the needed skills and probably won’t change.

Personality assessments work similarly in terms of employee development.  As a manager, sometimes you have a really wonderful employee who wants to move to a different role. Maybe they are in a technical staff position and they would like to transition to a line sales job. You like the employee’s values and work ethic and you want to help them advance in their career, but you don’t wanna set them up for failure by putting them in a career opportunity that doesn’t match their skill set.

So what happens when they take the test and it shows they don’t like to communicate with people and are introverted?

A good manager will handle it correctly by sitting down with the team member and having a conversation about the assessment and try and understand how the team member perceives and interprets the results.

The conversation should be warm and focused on the individual. As you go through the assessment with them and ask their feedback, you will start to get a picture of how that team member sees his or her self. When you start reviewing some of the needed skill sets for the new position and how their results compare to that, often the team member will see that where they wanna go doesn’t utilize their strengths and it would be a really difficult transition.

What happens next?  Are they doomed to stay in that role forever?  No.

The manager and the team member work together to assemble a plan that will develop or supplement the areas they have to be successful.  If they are poor public speakers, maybe Toastmasters is a worthwhile idea for ‘em.  If they have no clue what a day in the life of a sales rep is like, what about scheduled ride-along days in the field?

If the assessment and the review is done right, both parties leave with a better understanding of the team member and where they wanna go in the organization and what skills they will got to be successful in a new role.

Your thoughts?  Comments?  Put them in the comment section or e-mail me at:  kraig@phcconsulting.com

Kraig McKee

Snr Recruiter

Article courtesy of  Peggy McKee - Owner / Senior Recruiter at the nationally
recognized medical and pharma sales recruiting team of PHC Consulting.
© Copyright 2008 PHC Consulting | All rights reserved

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Personality Assessments Help Hiring and Employee Development

What does a well-executed field trip plan look like?

Let’s talk about your Plan A for voyage (the ideal situation you can have if you prepare properly), Plan B (the “duck plan”) and Plan C (if your day falls apart, do this).

Having your boss or someone from the corporate office field travel with you is a total positive and an territory for you to establish a relationship and also to distinguish yourself among your peers.

History says that people that hate, postpone, whine about, and dread field trip are losers that won’t last long.  Why so harsh?  Because it is the truth.  If you are doing a good job, you want the recognition and attention.  Why are winners so jazzed to get to go up on stage at national talks for recognition/performance awards?  It’s recognition of a job well done!  If you aren’t proud of what you’re doing and your performance, you want to be “on the down low”.  Successful sales people are self-promoters.

The A Plan with A accounts.

What is it?

The A Plan is a well-thought-out tour plan that hits your most important accounts and is a model of planning and execution.  Here’s how to do it:

1. You anticipated your guest’s hotel needs.
2. You have a Tour Summary (paper) in their hands when they walk off the plane.  I always wanted paper so I could put the summary in my portfolio and take notes on it in my lap while I was in the account.  They are also handy to help if you space on a customer’s name.  At the end of the voyage, you can make notes on the summary and pass it on to an assistant for a follow up note or maybe someone else in the organization for follow up on a customer’s issue.
3. You had already sent an email with a brief outline of the accounts to be visited and the objectives for each call.
4. You ask when they would like to be at the airport for their return and if you got to schedule any one on one time with them.  Your schedule for the following day’s voyage should include some time on the morning for you to chat.  That time may come over a cup of coffee on the drive to your account or at a formal sit down meeting in the hotel.
5. The Journey Summaries are a contained in a presentation folder that contains the following:

• Cover Page (Prepared For, Prepared By, Date, Travel Guest with name and title spelled correctly–check it twice)
• Territory Summary-Brief, concise-2-3 paragraphs.
• Account Summaries
  • Name
  • Contact name and title
  • Role they play (Technical Buyer, Economic, User, Coach)
  • Excellent account issues or red flags
  • Role you would like the visitor to play
• A screen shot from his/her hotel that shows directions and phone/fax numbers.
• Account info from your CRM program (Salesforce, Seibel etc.)
• Strategic Selling “green sheets” for the accounts you will be calling on if you use Strategic Selling.
• Maybe a page or two dedicated so some issue important to your territory, a product show, early release of a product to a thought leader in your territory, etc.

Preparing for well-executed field tour takes some time, but the rewards are worth it.  Poorly planned and executed field trip is hard to escape and can haunt others’ perceptions of you in the organization and at review time with your boss.

The A Plan represents the best image or picture in your territory that you would like to present to your manager.  You’ve confirmed appointments for all customers on the schedule and specific objectives in each call (a single call objective).  If you’ve done all of the things outlined above, you have already projected the image of an organized, motivated individual.  Anyone that has traveled or managed at all knows that stuff happens and the mark of a winner is the ability to pivot on the new information/scenario and drive forward.

Remember, you aren’t trying to “fake out” your boss.  Sometimes even a poor rep can pull together fantastic field travel.  They know the right things to do; they just tend not to do Them unless someone is around.  While they may fool some people some of the time, they won’t fool their competent manager much of the time.  How so? People are creatures of habit and if you are a slacker, those slacker habits show up in other ways over time.  The moral of this part of the story is if you’re filled with dread about traveling with anyone, you may be in the wrong role.  I swear I don’t know a single high performing rep that doesn’t enjoy showing off by demonstrating their product knowledge and account control/management through field travel. 

Plan B

The specific person you’ve an appointment with in one of your largest accounts becomes unavailable—sick kid, called in to a meeting, sick themselves, emergency etc.  Hopefully they have left you a message or said you when you’re verbally confirming your appointment with Them the day of the call.  If not, don’t freak.  If their assistant tells you that he/she is sorry and will have to reschedule, you may ask if he/she (the assistant) is available or if there is someone else that she had directed you to see.

No matter what the case, handle it with style and grace.  Visualize the duck….smoothly gliding through the water seemingly effortlessly until you look below the surface and see it paddling like eager.  Since you are a sales professional, you’ve already anticipated this possibility, hence THE B PLAN Accounts.  There is no one else that can see you in the account and you’ve 90 minutes until your next call.  The B Plan in action.

The B plan is simply a backup plan for your original call plan and it can take many forms.  In this scenario there are 2 immediate things that come to mind.

• Tell whoever is traveling with you that there has been a cancellation and ask if they would like to go somewhere (maybe the lobby of your next call) and chat or he/she can make calls and check emails.  Now before you freak, competent managers know that a fair amount of success in revenue comes from adaptability and driving forward.  Even Mr. Rigid Manager will be ok with this.  The fact that you don’t freak and reflex to Plan B will score points.  Drive forward.
• Tell your guest that your customer cancelled and you’ve a maintenance call that you are going to squeeze into the schedule. 

Before offering the second option mentioned above, you’ve surreptitiously called the account and confirmed that it’s ok to stop by.  This is more of a “howdy doody” call, so you will have to formulate you single call objective on the fly.  Most reps have customers that like to see ‘em and will welcome the attention.  In the lab world, many customers will take great pride in offering your boss a trip of the medical laboratory.

In summary, The B Plan could be called the duck plan.  Your original plan/schedule blew up.  You remain calm and smooth (like the duck on big of the water) but immediately begin paddling to fill the time with productive sales calls.  The major thing to focus on here is that you have already thought about an alternate plan and how to execute it if your A Plan explodes.

Plan C

• My boss is in town, my schedule exploded and I was hoping we could come by and show you the new X.
• My boss is in town, my schedule exploded, you’ve a pulse and won’t throw things at us—will you see us?
• My boss is in city, my schedule exploded and I will buy pizza for your lab if you can see us and show us X.

Get the picture?  Plan C accounts are accounts that will see you on short notice and generally like you.

The message here is planning.  By investing the thought and effort into well planned field journey, there is no obstacle or circumstance that can make you look bad.  You just flex from A to C if needed.

–Kraig McKee, Senior Recruiter, PHC Consulting

PS – Are you trying to break into medical revenue?  Get a picture of what life will really be like on the position with the Ask a Pharma Sales Manager posts.

Article courtesy of  Peggy McKee - Owner / Senior Recruiter at the nationally
recognized clinical and pharmaceutical revenue recruiting team of PHC Consulting.
© Copyright 2008 PHC Consulting | All rights reserved

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Ask a Medical Sales Manager: ABC’s of Field Travel and Training (Part 3 of 3)

Hear about how to buy a costume, all the details about what’s appropriate in terms of attire, jewelry, hair, and more.  And get the inside scoop about what all these details tell the hiring manager about you in your job interview.

For additional information, check out this survey of what hiring managers expect you to wear in the job interview.

If you have a topic that you would like a manager’s perspective on, let us know in the comments below.

Article courtesy of  Peggy McKee - Owner / Senior Recruiter at the nationally
recognized laboratory and lab sales recruiting team of PHC Consulting.
© Copyright 2008 PHC Consulting | All rights reserved

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Medical Sales Job Interviews: What Hiring Managers Really Think About What You Wear

As a clinical sales rep, your boss will always be evaluating you, looking for how you handle issues and approach problems, and expecting constant improvement.  During the call is when you go into action.

First, ask him/her for the dates being considered.  If he/she only gives you one option, that means he/she wants to travel then, so make it happen.  The only possible valid reasons to inquire if you can schedule another date are scheduled surgery, a death in your family, vacation or you being out of your territory.  Their schedule is more complicated than yours most times, so they might not have much flexibility with the dates, even if they would like to.

Discover out if they would like hotel suggestions from you.  Before you give ‘em a suggestion, call their assistant and ask what kind of hotels they like.  Keep in mind that your manager’s needs for a hotel are kind of specific, so suggesting the cheapest isn’t always a win.  They most likely aren’t going to have a car, so their hotel needs a restaurant in house or nearby and probably a decent workout room.  Sometimes they need a suite-type hotel because they are interviewing or need additional work space.  Choices are often determined by the company journey policy, but most are OK with mid-range hotels like Marriott Courtyards or Hampton Inns.

If you are offering hotel suggestions, do it within a couple of hours.  Your boss is probably in the process of laying out her schedule for the next few weeks, so getting the info to her sooner makes it easier to finalize and confirm her plans, which might even involve trying to coordinate travel with an event or show or field travel with another rep.  Respond with an email within 2 hours with the name and address of the hotel closest to you.  Pasting the info from the website is a nice touch—directions, numbers etc. at your boss’s fingertips.

Show that you pay attention to detail.  The hotel is probably near your house, so you stop by in the afternoon in business attire and ask to speak to the manager.  Be valuable and explain that your boss is coming to voyage with you and you wondered if the manager of the hotel could take some special care with your boss.  That can mean everything from a nicer room to a goodie basket in the room to just greeting them by name.  A $10.00 Starbucks gift card and a pleasant demeanor can go a long way to enlisting the hotel manager’s help.  Maybe your boss is a runner.  Is there a good health club nearby that you could get her a guest pass to?

Wait a minute, you say:  Did I sign on as a host or a revenue rep?  Remember that you should always use the same skills internally as you externally.  And the difference between precious and great is only 10%.  Don’t both of those apply here?  Your boss is going to be helping you be successful, so why wouldn’t you want to make her life as easy as possible as it pertains to traveling with you?  By doing these small things and having an awareness, doesn’t it career opportunity you as a winner?  History says yeah.

These same skills–asking the right questions, doing the research, going the extra mile, and making life easy for the manager who can make your life better are the same ones you got to help you get a position within clinical sales.  All of these skills will help you stand out as a great candidate who gets the position and a sales rep who continues to make a excellent impression on your boss.

–Kraig McKee, Senior Headhunter, PHC Consulting

PS – Don’t miss the ABC’s of Field Travel and Training Part 1

Article courtesy of  Peggy McKee - Owner / Senior Headhunter at the nationally
recognized clinical and pharmaceutical sales recruiting team of PHC Consulting.
© Copyright 2008 PHC Consulting | All rights reserved

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Ask a Medical Sales Manager: ABC’s of Field Travel and Training (Part 2 of 3)

Sales goal planning needs more than a crystal ball.

The Rule of 78 is used in the diagnostic industry to calculate how much new business you need to close to hit your annual sales goal. It allows you to recalculate that increment or growth as the year unfolds.

You say, “Why do I have to recalculate, I have a sales budget that breaks down my goal by the month?”

I say “That’s great, tell me what new business you got to close for the remaining 9 months of the year if you missed your goal and didn’t sell enough in the first quarter.”

That’s why you need the Rule of 78.  It allows you to calculate how much new business you need to close to hit your growth budget based on where you’re at that time.

This tool is very worthwhile for reps formulating tactics to help ‘em achieve their goals. It is also very helpful for managers to help reps realize that there is a point of no return, i.e., a point in the year that they cannot “catch up”, even if they get a big order. The reason being, there aren’t enough selling opportunities in the year.

Before we work through an example, consider these facts:

1) The Rule of 78 (Ro78) assumes that you maintain your base business.

TWO) The “increment” is the amount of new business you need to sell to add to your base business to hit your sales goal.

Base business + New Business (growth or increment) = Your sales goal for the year.

THREE) The Ro78 allows you to calculate in “real time”.

How much will you’ve to close to make up for an account that you lost in March?

Let’s look at some simple examples now:

Your revenue goal for the year is $122,000 and your territory finished at $100,000 last year…so, $22,000 is your growth or increment.

The company wants you to grow your opportunity $22,000 larger than it was last year.

$100,000 + $22,000 = $122,000
Base Growth/increment Annual Sales Goal

$100,000-your total last year’s production.

It seems like you have to sell $10,166.67 (base +increment/growth) per month, starting in January (122,000 / 12 = $10,166.67)

That seems simple enough—but hold that thought.

This is where they get The Rule of 78.

January 12

February 11

March 10

April 9

May 8

June 7

July 6

August 5

September 4

October 3

November TWO

December 1

The numbers to the right represent the number of selling opportunities in a year. You start in January with 12; February has 11, March 10 etc.

That equals 78 selling opportunities.

Now to the fun part.

It is the end of March and you have only sold $2,000 and you should have sold $30,499.98. ($122,000/12=$10,166.67 per month. $10,166.67x THREE = $30,499.98)

Tell me how much new business you got to close every single month for the rest of the year to achieve your sales goal?

First, I need to calculate how many selling opportunities I have left in the year.

78 Total Selling Opportunities in a full year

-33 (Selling opportunities lost-Jan-12, Feb-11, March-10=33)

45 Remaining selling opportunities

Your annual growth budget divided by the remaining selling opportunities equals the new increment or growth that you got to sell each month for the remainder of the year.

$22,000(annual sales growth goal)-$2,000(your actual sales for that period) / 45 = $444.44

Since you sold only $2,000 in January, February and March, your increment/growth went from $282.05 per month (total growth goal for the year / 78) to $444.44. That means that you can still hit your annual revenue goal if you maintain your base business and add $444.44 of new business each month for the remainder of the year.

Try one yourself:

Use the same annual sales growth goal of $22,000.

You sold $8,000 worth of new business by June.

How much new business (while maintaining your base) do you need each month to hit your annual sales growth goal of $22,000?

1) Calculate the selling opportunities left in the year after June.

78-57(12-11-10-9-8-7) =21

2) Subtract the new business that you have done through June from your annual sales growth goal ($22,000-$8,000=$14,000) to derive the amount of new business you have to add each month for the last six months of the year ($14,000).

3) Divide $14,000 by the remaining selling opportunities (21) to get your new growth/increment-$666.66.

What does the $666.66 represent in this example?

That represents the amount of new business you have to add each month, beginning in July to hit your annual sales goal of $122,000 while maintaining your base business.

It assumes that you sold $8,000 through June, when you needed to sell $11,000 to be on track to hit your annual growth budget of $22,000.

So, if you maintain your base business and add $666.66 of new business per month beginning in July, you will hit your annual revenue goal. Did you notice that your increment more than doubled because you missed you goal for the first six months of the year?

This example is a little misleading, because technically, the rep could close a top order in December and hit his growth goal—but that’s a major gamble. I kept the numbers diminutive to make the math easier. Realistic growth goals in today’s diagnostic market are somewhere between 8-30% and make the “Point of No Return” in June or July.

This model only applies to reoccurring consumables and doesn’t apply to capital sales.

Here is a visual representation of The Rule of 78 based on needing to generate $22,000 growth for the year:  Click here to view the Rule of 78 Chart

Your thoughts? Questions?  Put ‘em in the comments or email me at: kraig@phcconsulting.com

Kraig McKee
Snr Recruiter

Article courtesy of  Peggy McKee - Owner / Senior Headhunter at the nationally
recognized pharma and lab sales recruiting team of PHC Consulting.
© Copyright 2008 PHC Consulting | All rights reserved

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Sales Forecasting: Use the Rule of 78

When managers voyage with new clinical sales reps, their focus is not just on what they know.  They’re trying to help identify what you have to be successful and point you in that direction, and evaluating how you take charge on your own of pursuing the information and the resources you got to be successful.

In other words, they want to know if you’re you a seeker.  Do you have the info I need? Do you know who might be able to help?  How do you take steps to resolve issues or needs?  Sometimes it’s a complex customer problem, but sometimes it’s as simple as:  How do I get my car fixed?  How often can I get it washed?  Am I allowed to take customer to lunch?  How do I sign up for direct deposit?  How do I buy a plane ticket for a customer?

Being a “seeker” is one of the key attributes that is always present in winners.

If you’re not a seeker, it shows up like this:  When you’re questioned about your actions, it’s someone else’s fault:  “Why is your car so dirty?”  You answer:  “No one told me how often we could get it washed.”  A seeker would have asked.

One of my favorite dirty car stories:

Our organization had just gone through the J.M.O. (Junior Military Officer) phase and hired a training class full of JMO’s.  The new hires went through 90 days of in-house training and were sent to their territories.  The sales trainer then field traveled with ‘em in their opportunity.  One new hire was an ex-Army helicopter pilot and a really pleasant man.

He shows up at the airport to pick up the trainer (who flew from Boston to the Northwest to journey with this man) and sees him at the curb.  We’ll call the trainer Bob.  Bob sees the newbie, waves and heads for the car.  He opens the door, sticks his head in the guy’s car and says:  “Take this car and have it washed and the interior cleaned and then come pick me up.  I’ll stay here and make calls.”

Ninety minutes later the newbie is back at the airport and picks up Bob.  Bob gets in the car and tells the newbie, “If you ever have your car that filthy again when someone from the organization comes to tour with you, it could mean losing your position.  It goes without saying that you should never have a customer in a car that filthy.”

The newbie was rattled, but tried to pull it together for the rest of field travel.

What is the end of the story?  The trainer reported that the newbie would struggle and was ill-suited to a selling role.  The manager said she didn’t sense that the newbie was pursuing (doesn’t that mean the same as seeking?) the info and resources he needed.  He seemed to be in a bit of paralysis.

Well, this newbie resigned about 60 days later.  When he resigned, he told his manager, “Everyday out there is like a war”. “Out there” was defined as selling in his opportunity for an internationally known diagnostic company! Really priceless man that had been very successful in the Army, but just wasn’t right for sales.  He was not a seeker!

A seeker understands that the end responsibility to acquire/identify information, resources or services he/she needs to be successful is theirs.  They understand that if they are unsuccessful in the efforts to acquire that information or resource, they are ultimately responsible for the outcome.  They apply that same logic to sales success in the field and they’re focused on eliminating barriers to success.  Not just identifying them and whining about them.  Eliminating Them.  When the task/what needs to occur are beyond their career opportunity, they sell their manager on the concept and then solicit support from management.  They actively seek the resources they need.

The “seeker” attitude that’s going to help you be successful as a medical sales rep is also what’s going to help you land a job in pharmaceutical revenue in the first place:  You’ve to be aggressive and go after the things that you got to succeed.  You solicit support, you tap resources, and you focus on identifying and eliminating the barriers in the way of your goal.

–Kraig McKee, Senior Recruiter, PHC Consulting

Article courtesy of  Peggy McKee - Owner / Senior Recruiter at the nationally
recognized medical and medical sales recruiting team of PHC Consulting.
© Copyright 2008 PHC Consulting | All rights reserved

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Ask a Medical Sales Manager: ABC’s of Field Travel and Training (Part 1 of 3)

But if I boil it down to the 3 essential things you need to know, it would be these:

1. Be there.  You must utilize social media.  The safest thing would be to say the more sites the merrier, but for those in a time crunch or just wanting the most bang for their buck, concentrate on the major 3:  LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter (although Google+ is coming on strong).  Not only does it help you actively search, it also helps you shape what potential hiring managers will see when they Google you.  You have tremendous power here to control their perception of you as a candidate.  Use it.
2. Post a professional photo–preferably, the same photo for all your profiles.  Many position seekers shy away from this one, but it will hurt you if you don’t have a photo.  If you want more details than that, check out this post on LinkedIn photos.
3. Use your social media resources to skip HR and contact hiring managers.  Take advantage of the networking you’ve got here.  Going straight to hiring managers will get you way more interviews than going through HR applications ever will.

Want more in depth info on this subject?  Click to go to this video post on The Secret to Standing Out in Your Clinical Sales Career opportunity Search.

Article courtesy of  Peggy McKee - Owner / Senior Recruiter at the nationally
recognized medical and laboratory revenue recruiting team of PHC Consulting.
© Copyright 2008 PHC Consulting | All rights reserved

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Here’s the truth:  I’ve worked with hundreds of pharma sales hiring managers and been one myself.  They like candidates who (1) have some sort of clinical or scientific background (not necessarily a complete degree); and (2) someone who’s proven they can SELL.  (I’ve placed many candidates with only one of these two.)  I’ve never had one ask for a training certificate.

Prove your sales skills through your results at other jobs (see backgrounds that can lead to pharma sales jobs).  If you’re a science geek with little sales background, you can turn yourself into an attractive candidate by position shadowing, reading sales books, watching YouTube, writing a great RESUME and polishing your interview skills (the interview is a revenue call–you’re selling yourself).

Right here on this blog are over 700 articles FULL of awesome tips from a very experienced pathology sales recruiter.  If you feel that you must have training (don’t get me wrong, I can see why you would), I have 4 options for you:

1. Right on my PHC Consulting home page, you can get a no cost 2-hour audio conference full of tips and insights on getting a medical sales career opportunity.
2. Sign up for a NO COST training webinar that will give you lots of insight into How to Land a Medical Sales Job.
3. Get my How to Get Into Pharmaceutical Sales Kit.  You do have to pay for this one, but it’s hundreds (and maybe thousands) of dollars less than a typical training program–and it’s got a full one-year money back GUARANTEE.  How many certification programs offer that?
4. Set up an appointment with me.  I’ve been placing candidates for over 12 years.  You can hire me as a career coach, and I will waste no time telling you exactly what you need to do to appeal to medical sales hiring managers.

Get more tips for landing a pharma revenue job.

Article courtesy of  Peggy McKee - Owner / Senior Recruiter at the nationally
recognized clinical and pharmaceutical sales recruiting team of PHC Consulting.
© Copyright 2008 PHC Consulting | All rights reserved

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Medical Sales Training Programs: Career Investment or Waste of Money?

Life after the first 90 days as a clinical laboratory sales rep

Welcome to the major leagues!  By now, you better be very familiar with your company’s CRM program (e.g. Salesforce.com) and used to the constant conference calls and/or Facetime calls.  If you own or have a company-issued Iphone or Ipad, your regional manager is likely to use that as a tool to update the region’s forecast.  What does that mean to you?  Don’t be sitting in your jammies at the time the call is scheduled and always have your information and your office area organized. 

You’ll probably have very little in-person time with your manager (maybe once a quarter field travel plus national meeting time), so the time you do have with him or her counts.  Your manager probably didn’t get to be the manager of your team by not being observant and judgmental, so when you are around your manager, the recorder is running:  evaluating your words, actions, and presence.  When he/she gets worthwhile data and feedback, your life and how your manager deals with you will get better. 

Perceptions are reality, so make sure your manager’s perceptions of you create the reality you want.  A painting is composed of many brushstrokes, and every interaction is a brushstroke to your manager.  Always remember to use the same skills internally as you do externally.

Your hiring manager’s perceptions of you have a major impact on your reality–your life on the job.  Some of the rules he has to implement are dictated to him by the company, but on a lot of other stuff, he has discretion on enforcing.  For instance, in my experience as a sales manager/director, the rule was that everyone starts out even and everyone does everything for the first 90 days.  If you were at or above plan at the end of the Ninety days, you got some reprieve based on your performance and compliance.  That meant that you had longer to turn in your forecast, your pick of check-in times, your choice of projects to lead, etc.

Will you be a big clinical sales rep?

Influence your hiring manager’s positive view of you

Your attitude and interactions have a leading impact on your manager’s perceptions of you, too.  (Brushstrokes, remember?)  In my 20 years of managing sales reps, I noticed that players always like to have attention and contact.  Big reps enjoy chatting with the manager and gaining his or her perspective.  Because they’re good, they most often have thought through their situations and have already formed a plan of action, but they believe “two heads are better than one” and are interested in the manager’s input.  Reps that are scarcity-based don’t like working in a team environment and rebel at authority.   They will have a very difficult life in the corporate world.  It doesn’t mean they’re bad, it just means that maybe they’re an entrepreneur and don’t know it yet.

How will your boss measure your success?

My rule was always “Constant Improvement,” and that’s likely to be your manager’s rule, too.  As a new rep, that means you should constantly be making strides toward meeting or exceeding your sales goals.  So this month is better than last month, and the month after will be better than this one.  If you’re doing the right things, the right things will happen to get you to that goal.

There are always exceptions and it’s true that if you took over a territory at 65% of plan and after two quarters in the field you’re at 70%, your manager is not likely to be pleased.  An improvement of only 5% in 6 months just isn’t fast enough.  At that rate, it would take almost 3 years to turn around a poor-performing territory–and if it takes that long, your manager will not likely survive.

10 critical checkpoints to help you stay on track:

1.  Have you made face-to-face calls for all of your Best Few prospects in your sales funnel?

     a.  Have you documented the status of these accounts in your CRM records?

     b.  Is the sale on track to close?  By definition, a Best Few prospect is a 90/90 prospect, meaning 90% is will happen and 90% it will happen in the specified time frame.

     c.  If it’s off track, have you developed a plan for correction and gained your boss’s input?

2.  Have you met all the thought leaders in your territory?

3.  Are there any special events/shows planned in your opportunity?  If not, what do you got to do to get one?

4.  Have you called Marketing and asked for one of the product managers to field journey with you?

5.  Have you corrected any customer satisfaction issues?  If it’s a longer-range issue, do you’ve a plan in place with the buy-in of your boss and the service/technical organization?

6.  Have you identified who you can develop as a positive reference/demo site in your territory?

7.  Have you met your service engineers and taken Them to lunch/breakfast? 

8.  Are you using a “blown up day” to use as your office day to set appointments?  (You haven’t set a particular day like Monday or Friday as your office day every week, have you?  You shouldn’t.)

9.  You’re focusing on accomplishment instead of activity, aren’t you?

Ten. Are you being a seeker?  (Seeking these with information you need.)

Keep a great attitude

Don’t associate/commiserate/communicate with team members that are always negative and complaining. 

90% of selling is mental and the rest is in your head.

Kraig McKee

Senior Headhunter, PHC Consulting

PS – Got queries that only a medical sales manager can answer?  Put them in the comments section below.

Article courtesy of  Peggy McKee - Owner / Senior Recruiter at the nationally
recognized clinical and pharmaceutical revenue recruiting team of PHC Consulting.
© Copyright 2008 PHC Consulting | All rights reserved

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Ask a Medical Sales Manager: How will my boss measure my success after my first 90 days as a medical sales rep?