Connecting your sales force Part III Prediction markets, cooperation and competition

A connected and collaborative sales force is a smarter, more effective sales force.

By Editor on Oct 16, 2007

A connected and collaborative sales force is a smarter, more effective sales force. With that in mind, eyeforpharma recently hosted a webinar (Sales Force Effectiveness: Collective Intelligence) on ways to keep sales reps together despite geographical distance. Joe Miles, sales force effectiveness project director of eyeforpharma; Paul Moravec, sales effectiveness manager at Quest Diagnostics; Binyah Kesselly, director of enterprise improvement and process excellence at Johnson & Johnson; and Carol Gebert, account manager at Thermo Fisher Scientific Laboratory Automation and Cellular Imaging, all took on the subject of the collective wisdom of front-line sales forces and how that wisdom can be tapped to improve the effectiveness of the team as a whole.

So, how do you tap the individual knowledge of sales force members who often work in isolation, separate from the rest of the team? In the first part of a three-part article, Joe Miles the Web 2.0 tools that address this question. In part two, Paul Moravec looks specifically at online message boards. In part three, Binyah Kesselly discusses prediction markets and how they can bring sales and marketing teams together, while Carol Gebert addresses collaborative sales tools and the motivational components that must be built in to them.

To read Part I, Web 2.0 tools that bring the team together , click here . To read Part II, Message boards, the new water cooler? click here .

Part III Prediction markets, cooperation and competition

Although prediction markets are not new, they are relatively new to pharma. And Binyah Kesselly of Johnson & Johnson thinks it's time pharma and pharma sales forces took a closer look.

Forecasting is a familiar practice to pharma companies. Forecasts attempt to answer key strategic and financial questions: What is the expected level of sales for a new product? Will marketing promote new products to the detriment of older ones? Forecasting, says Kesselly, can be a new weapon for the sales force, allowing sales and marketing staff to work in tandem to create sales tools that get used on the front lines.

One complaint among sales reps is that marketing departments set unreasonable goals which the sales force is expected to fulfill. If sales reps had input sooner in the target-setting process, companies could set more realistic goals. Prediction markets, a forecasting method based on the collective wisdom held throughout an entire company, make this possible.

Why use prediction markets?


Prediction markets, according to Kesselly, are useful when an organization wants to

determine the volume of product X that will be sold in a given time frame

test the strength of product X in the market

find weaknesses in the selling strategy and allow for correction

involve the sales team a priori in the process (i.e. helping to set more realistic goals)

If the participants are diverse enough (what Kesselly calls cross-functional), the forecasts that the group makes can be astonishingly accurate. It's important to remember not to limit the group to just sales: if you use only one group of people, you invite the bias of that group and potentially generate a very polarized output. The more diverse the team, the broader the range of knowledge and experience they bring to the process, and the better the result. Says Kesselly, value is driven by more effective cross-functional communication, awareness and understanding.

If you elicit responses from a wide range of people in your organization, what you get is the distilled opinion of the average consumer. This can be gold when you have a new product for which little or no historical information is available. Armed with this knowledge, marketing teams, in cooperation with the sales force, can design sales tools that will be both useful and used.

Making sales tools more attractive

Tools available to the sales force may come with all kinds of bells, whistles and other accoutrements, but without proper motivation attached, all the whistles in the world won'st prompt someone to actually use a tool. Thermo Fisher Scientific's Carol Gebert spoke on the issue of designing tools with motivation in mind.

Many networking sales tools depend on a flow of information: sales professionals, sales managers and reps all feed and are fed by information portals. Gebert gives the examples of lead sources, people and activity trackers (CRM), content portals and wikis, and reporting pipelines. But often there is not sufficient motivation or they may be actual counter-motivation for people to participate. For example, a sales professional may not want to share his or her predictions for future sales, given the volatile nature of the marketplace and the high possibility that things can change and predictions can backfire.

So what qualifies as motivation? Gebert gives the example of making participation a job requirement, but, she says, other motivations may serve just as well or better.

Having a good reputation on a social network can be very motivating. Think of eBay and its rating system for both buyers and sellers, says Gebert. This method of assuring sellers and bidders that they are dealing with someone reliable has been very successful, and people attach considerable importance to their own ratings.

Ego may also explain why some participants are happy to contribute time and effort to social network systems. Blogs, wikis and bulletin boards generally don'st offer monetary compensation, but they do give contributors the satisfaction of their name in print.

But currency, says Gebert, is the prime motivator among the corporate world. And this is where prediction markets can be highly effective. Prediction markets offer not only compensation but also competition two things many sales forces thrive on.

In order to get good results from prediction markets, says Gebert, you need three things: you need a prediction worth making, you need a community with good insights, and you need a strong reward system to juice the game. Sales teams are ideal for prediction markets with their long history of rewarding with cash and motivating with competition, according to Gebert.

A sales force that is motivated to share information, to pool wisdom and experience, is a smarter, more effective sales force. With the invention of Web 2.0 and all its forums for collaboration and cooperation, it's easier than ever to connect sales reps to each other and to the group as a whole, no matter how far apart they may be. Now is the time for pharma to explore and exploit all the new tools and technologies that tap into the enormous wisdom of pharma professionals.

To read Part I, Web 2.0 tools that bring the team together , click here . To read Part II, Message boards, the new water cooler? click here .