Dear Colleagues! This is Pharma Veterans Blog Post #197. Pharma Veterans shares the wealth of knowledge and wisdom of Veterans for the benefit of Pharma Community. Pharma Veterans Blog is published by Asrar Qureshi on WordPress, the top blog site. If you wish to share your stories, ideas and thoughts, please email to asrar@asrarqureshi.com for publishing your contributions here.
Dear Pharma Veterans. This series of Blogs is to have a summary view of Pharma Business in Pakistan. It will be a series spread over several parts covering the entire spectrum of Pharma business.
Pharma Business – Sales – SALES PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT
We shall roughly divide Sales Management into following broad categories.
- Sales Planning
- Sales Operations
- Sales Team Management
- Sales Performance Management
- Customer Management
- Sustainable Business Growth Management
TECHNOLOGY IN SALES PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT – 2
We looked at the basics of technology-based solution and what they offer for customer relations management and sales tracking. Major modules of these systems are given below with the information these provide.
- Call logging – customer call record, customer coverage and analytical reports
- Work planning – based on customer coverage requirement, plan and actual
- Product focusing – customer, team, region
- Expense management – field force expense statements, history, analysis, management
- Customer services – tracking, reporting, Return-on-Investment calculation
- Sales analysis – products, teams, regions, trends
- Sales vs Promotion – tracking, reporting, analysis
- Pharmacy level information on sales
- Ex-Distributor sales and stocks updating on daily basis
As mentioned in the last blog, the benefits of these solutions should be sold to stakeholders.
The salespersons can get the following benefits.
- Better and more targeted work planning
- Access to sales data anytime, anywhere
- Access to customer data in real time
- Access to updated achievement vs budget in real time
- Virtually no paper work for reporting and expense charging
- More time to work for results
The sales managers can expect the following benefits.
- Timely access to information
- Daily Measuring of team working and performance against KPIs
- Monitoring of market dynamics
- Ability to analyze the trends, input-output ratios
- Keeping tab on distributor stocks
- Ensuring pharmacy coverage
- Keeping control on expenses
With greater understanding, more can be achieved.
The management is likely to get the following benefits.
- On-time, effective decision making
- Real-time access to a full suite of information – sales team working, sales, distributors stocks, expenses etc.
- Evaluation of marketing plans – execution, results
- Effective management of multiple, large sales teams
- Evaluation and adjustment of business plans
- Increased performance and productivity
- Better profitability – judicious spending on sales team expenses and customer services
- E-detailing – improve communication, get better customer attention, get better results, save on printed materials, add to profitability
There is another way of looking at it which is equally important. Use of Technology-enabled solutions can help to change the fundamentals of sales and customer management. It will change the way the work is done today. You may consider the following positive changes.
- Bring greater organization in overall working
- Integrate activities together to enhance effectiveness
- Improve customer development, relations and satisfaction
- Get better handle on promotional activities
- Sensitize all stakeholders to adopt result-oriented process
- Reduce wastage of materials, money, effort, motivation and morale
- As they say ‘Do The Things Right rather than Doing The Right Things’ because even the right things cannot give results if not done right.
The technology is here to stay. The ‘early-adopters’ shall build competitive advantage which may become huge for ‘late-adopters’. Pakistan pharma market is already extremely unevenly divided with 90% share with only 7% companies. Technology may tilt this balance further and threaten the very survival of 93% companies.
Effort takes anyone far, but only as far. After that, technique matters. Many of our brilliant cricketers reached their peak quickly with their natural talent. However, they could not get enough technique training and fizzled out in front of more skilled players. Same story is repeated in several other areas.
It is high time for the entrepreneurs and professionals to understand what technology is offering. All reasons for shying away are questionable; all fears in adopting technology are unfounded; and all concerns are resolvable.
Happy Learning and Adopting.
Continued…….
