Identifying best practice in sales force effectiveness
Alan Finkelstein, training director at Schering-Plough animal health, on how to achieve operational excellence in sales and marketing.
By on May 24, 2010Alan Finkelstein, training director at Schering-Plough animal health, on how to achieve operational excellence in sales and marketing.
Alan Finkelstein, training director at Schering-Plough animal health, realized some time ago that his company needed to define best practice in sales force effectiveness.
A project was set up with two top objectives: Identify and share best practices, and achieve operational excellence in sales and marketing on a global scale.
This required identifying the key effectiveness drivers (KEDs) of an optimized business, to review the performance of the KEDs, and to identify areas for improvement.
Finkelstein is very emphatic as to the role of top management in such a project team.
Too often these teams have insufficient authority. In this case, the four core members comprised the VP sales and marketing as well as directors of sales force effectiveness, sales and marketing analysis, and business development.
It was particularly important to have an analyst on the team, Finkelstein says, because of the need for accurate and reliable data.
Key effectiveness drivers
The project was piloted in a four-day program in four countries in Europe.
Results were tracked using monthly progress updates and biannual follow-up visits.
The scope was limited to the companion animal (i.e. domestic pets) business units, which mirror human pharmaceutical businesses quite closely.
The pilot began with a visit to the business unit management to review the current working plan and results, the CRM system, and current key performance indicators and action plans.
Next, KEDs were defined and agreed, including market profiling and targeting, sales manager effectiveness, and training.
Finkelstein believes sales manager effectiveness is the most critical driver: Whatever you do, if the first line managers are not reinforcing and doing the follow up everything falls through the cracks.
The importance of field visits
The next step was to identify disconnects between intentions (especially KEDs) and what was actually happening in the field.
Each member of the project team made field visits with one or two reps to assess KEDs and KPIs and to draw up plans for improvement.
The project team assessed its findings with marketing and sales managers, following a list of previously identified KEDs.
Starting with market segmentation and targeting, the team was surprised to find very little documented on the reps' customers.
Looking at field force productivity, the team expected to see a correlation between what little market information did exist and the pattern of customer contacts actually made.
This and sales force effectiveness can be benchmarked against external data sources for the market segments involved, Finkelstein points out.
According to Finkelstein, brand managers don't get out into the field enough.
Similarly, first line managers commonly spend too much time at home doing administration rather than coaching their reps.
Most people leave organizations not because of the organization, but because of the manager they work for, Finkelstein says.
So staff turnover rates are a useful indicator of line manager effectiveness.
Line managers effectiveness
The project team also reviewed field visit reports, especially for the manager's assessment of the rep's performance.
This was then compared with what the team actually observed during accompanied visits.
If there was a disconnect, then the line manager's effectiveness had to be questioned.
Sales and marketing coordination was assessed using simple metrics, such as the number of days a marketing manager spent in the field.
The integration of brand messages between marketing and the sales teams was checked, and the sales force surveyed for the amount of support they received from marketing.
Training effectiveness was evaluated in detail, along with compensation and incentives as well as staff selection and retention.
Simple is better when it comes to the incentive plan, according to Finkelstein; you shouldnt need a PhD to understand how you are going to be paid!
The final day of the program was a revisit with the general manager and business unit director.
The approach reflected the way objectives are agreed with the reps, by focusing on two or three areas only.
These formed the basis for an action plan, which must include a system for tracking, monitoring, and reinforcement as well as regular review meetings.
This article was adapted from a talk given at the 2009 Sales Force Effectiveness conference. For information on SFE Japan 2010, click here; for Sales Excellence and Business Intelligence Australia, click here.