All Medical Sales Executives & Account Managers should be trained as Coaches?
I was at a meeting today when I made the comment that I firmly believed that all sales reps and account managers should be trained in performance coaching skills as in today's market
By on Jul 15, 2009
I was at a meeting today when I made the comment that I firmly believed that all sales reps and account managers should be trained in performance coaching skills as in today's marketplace the old traditional style of 'structured' sales training didn't work . It doesn't work as it is 'representative focused' as opposed to 'customer focused'. Well, you could have heard a pin drop! Once the comment sank in a debate ensued with a couple of life coaches voicing their disgreement quite vocally. "Coaches should never sell" and "Coaching could never be used to influence customers - it is unethical!" were two of the quotes. On the opposite side of the debate was a man who stated that in his opinion coaching was "too airy fairy" and in sales you had to be assertive to "drive the benefits home". So who is right?
My rational for stating that sales reps should be trained in coaching skills is that today we have to listen to customers (even more than we used to!) and we have to fully understand what their treatment goals are and what challenges they face in achieving these goals. This is a coaching process and we can use the coaching process to help them analyse their treatment options so that they are more informed and can make good quality decisions. This follows the G.R.O.W basic coaching process where G - Goal, R - Reality of the situation, O - Options available and W - the Way forward. So a rep can coach! The reality is though that where a 'pure' coach would allow the client or customer to make their own decision, the rep narrows the options down to their particular medicines and product options and is thus, in effect, limiting the customer's overall choices. This is selling and if a sales rep has got his far then the customer won't really realise (and feel) that they are being sold to.
The challenge today is that representatives still 'detail' in that they come 'armed' with a number of benefits (marketing messages) that they then relate to the customer and then hope that the customer responds. Very little attention is paid to the customer's primary intangible needs and using the product benefits that meet these needs. The customer needs to be listened to; needs to outline their challenges; needs the rep to understand their challenges and they need to make their own decisions based on the relevant information presented to them. If they can't achieve this they won't be motivated to change.
Training reps in coaching skills will build their listneing capability and enable them to question more effectively so that they can pick up 'buying' signals more quickly and thus tailor their sales message to the customer's specific needs.