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Over the last decade, several trends have impacted the life science industry. The most notable changes have occurred in the behaviours of healthcare providers (HCPs), and their feelings towards the industry and pharmaceutical sales reps (PSRs).

Face-to-face trust-based relationships are very important for pharma sales and marketing success, but HCPs are increasingly inaccessible for in-person sales presentations. Worse still, many HCPs distrust the sales content and communications that they receive from pharma.

Today we explore what this means for the pharma industry, and how pharma can turn the tables on these trends.

In today’s market, sales diminution is one of the critical issues that can cause a company to lose its foothold in the market. There are various facets because of which sales decline and whenever that happens, management’s top priority should be to identify the root cause and eliminate it. This week we examine the top 10 reasons sales can decline in the face of effective content marketing.

The effective sales coach can improve ROI by being present and nurturing their team of reps. If you go and ask a Sales Rep about whether their Sales Manager(s) embody these characteristics, you’ll probably hear a laugh. Unfortunately, more often than not, Sales Reps are stuck under the thumb of the following ineffective Sales Manager archetypes.

In this 5th piece of our 5 part series, you'll find a lighthearted guide to enabling sales reps to close more deals.

In this section, we want to discuss the age-old debate about sales reps; are they born or are they made? You would think that the best sales reps are extroverts who are able to hold up a conversation with just about anyone. You might even go as far as to say that they show poise and confidence in any situation and become the focal point in any environment. However, are these the requisites for being able to successfully pitch to a client? Doesn’t being more concise, and saying less with more, ultimately win over lip-worship?

Behind the times,

Marketing and Sales have changed, in fact, they’ve evolved over the last generation. A lens of production volume and high quantity product movement is now marketing customer centricity and relationship selling. Yet, even with the huge shift from product/ion-centric to customer-centric, the flow of traffic has continued to be unidirectional.  

That is to say, Marketing is primarily focused on continually understanding the marketplace, refining a value proposition, and integrating communications to deliver that value. Sales receives MQLs generated from those communications, guides the leads through the sales process, and captures the final sale. End.

Now you see the problem… the two are operating like 18^th century firefighters, passing along buckets of water and showering it into the fire, hoping that more buckets will lead to more success. At no point does the information flow come full circle to let Marketing know about what is and isn’t working, leaving Sales to make do with what they receive. We call this a lack of sales and marketing alignment. 

Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL) waterfall,

As a sales rep, you’ve probably already felt the disconnect between the plethora of leads that marketing gallantly throws your way, and the qualities that a prospect must exhibit before you would even consider engaging that contact.

You’re not alone, and it’s not your fault. More likely than not, Marketing is working with a different set of goals and targets than you are, and though it may seem that a little sales and marketing alignment is in order, a quicker and less complicated solution is in dire need.

Earlier this month, Salesforce presented a good article which addressed the importance of using high-quality data to impact revenue and ROI head on. In the article entitled ‘6 Ways to Grow Your Business Faster with Quality Data’, Amanda Nelson,the Director of Marketing at RingLead, had come back from the Salesforce1 World Tour where she says “It seemed that everyone was talking about data.” In the article, Amanda talks about 6 key ways to grow a business with quality data. 

Let’s take a look at her round up.

One of the big struggles for sales organizations today is that the sales cycle continues to get longer because of the growing amount of options available to consumers. We’re overwhelmed with how many different companies are offering the same products. And if the sales cycle continues to lengthen, then revenue streams have the potential to decrease because sales aren’t being made as quickly as before. How can organizations combat this?