Becoming Masters of the Sales Call

Moving a sales team from a traditional sales approach to a relationship -building one.

Client

The Irish branch of a leading pharmaceutical company with activities in over 40 countries and thousands of personnel worldwide.

Brief

Against a background of a poor economic climate, increased competition and substantial changes in hospital purchasing methods, this client saw a need to address how their sales, marketing and medical people conducted their business. In particular, they wanted to address how they interacted and communicated with their customers. The objective was to develop each member of the team so that they would become Masters of the Call i.e. masters of themselves, masters of their disease area, masters of their product knowledge and very well informed in research data and competitor information. In addition, the objective was to encourage them to aim for excellence which knows no limits rather than settle for targets which have limits no matter how high they might be.

Challenges

The first challenge relates to sales people in general and it is this: sales people tend to establish a very mechanical approach which works but only up to a point. They tend to adopt an habitual way of going about their business which makes it very difficult to shift thinking and behaviour.

The second challenge was that each member of the team in question was actually delivering on their targets. So, we were going to be working with people who were already relatively successful. It is easy to move from mediocre to good, but moving a team from good to excellent is another story.

The final challenge concerned the team’s product knowledge. In general, or at least when we are meeting targets, we can have a tendency to settle for just enough product knowledge to get by rather than comprehensive product mastery. But there is a cost in this and the cost is that if we settle for ‘getting by’ than that’s where we will stay.

Insight

The client’s vision was for their people to conduct themselves in such a way that all customers without exception would always welcome the prospect of engaging with their sales team. Since integrity is the key factor that every customer looks for, the question was how could we ensure that integrity became central to the ways of working of this team? The solution was to bring the team to shift the aim of all of their negotiations to “success for all”, i.e. (hospital, pharmaceutical firm, patient, government) rather than the widespread alternative which is “win-win”, i.e. (sales representative, purchasing department). These are two very different worlds. In a negotiation where the aim is “success for all” the reference point is “all” not “us and them”. This shift changes everything about how the negotiator thinks, communicates and relates to the different parties involved. By changing the reference point, we are suddenly working in an arena that fosters integrity, self-management, true listening and big-picture thinking – in other words, an arena that demands we look at how we ourselves are behaving and thinking. Finally, it means we are no longer focused on targets, but on excellence. We are open to negotiation outcomes that we may never have envisioned. And this is exactly what happened.

What we did

Step 1: Preparatory Meetings with Senior Management

Initially, a number of fact-finding meetings were held with the senior management team exploring precisely what they saw as the development needs of the different individuals and the team as a whole. In light of the challenges around the development of product knowledge, a ‘dovetail’ approach was suggested. It was agreed that one member of the Senior Management Team would assist with the programme delivery in the area of product knowledge. We would then be free to focus on the link between product mastery and successful negotiation.

Step 2: Developing the Sales Teams

We designed an Advanced Negotiation Skills programme which consisted of both group workshops and individual coaching sessions. The programme was delivered in a number of sessions over a six-month period and it addressed the needs highlighted in the initial meetings which included the following:

• Self-Awareness which was essential for change and individual development
• Moving away from ‘egocentric’ communication
• Shifting the reference point from ‘me’ to ‘all parties’.
• Developing listening and questioning skills
• Exploring the part ‘conviction’ plays in negotiation
• The link between our strength of product mastery and strength of conviction
• Making Integrity central to every customer engagement
• The hazards of adopting a ‘fixed position’ in negotiations
• Overcoming fear and building confidence
• Aiming for excellence rather than settling for target.

Results

Despite the fact that the team had previously received considerable training in communication and negotiation, they claimed that our programme was like nothing they had ever experienced before. The programme had an immediate impact on how they conducted their business as well as their personal lives. Participants cited many benefits including improved communication and relationships with customers that they had previously found challenging. Management expressed a high level of satisfaction and reported complete transformation in certain individuals. We eventually rolled out this programme to subsequent teams in the organisation. We were told by management that at a recent global conference, the individuals who had participated in the programme stood out both in terms of their sales performance and how they conducted themselves.