Physicians today are reluctant to meet medical representatives, some have even banned entry. The average time in metro cities given by a physician is a minute or even lesser. And the challenge for these sales professionals is to make the physician prescribe his brand by communicating the superiority of his brand versus the competitors, build relationship in that very little time and ensure that he meets the monthly targets
Todays rep despite so much time saved with technological advances finds it difficult, almost impossible to have a conversation with the physician and the gap between the physician and pharma sales force is widening to the worst extent possible. The gap is of knowledge, expectations and priorities.
Todays rep also has to understand the influence of non-physician customers such as patients and payers are increasing. This brings an additional challenge for the sales representatives to add promotional sales efforts towards these new customers.
Training can be a challenging aspect of the role as some modules can be intense and require a substantial amount of studying. Also most of the training focuses on skills and product knowledge which is unfortunately most of the training is not transferred into application in the demanding real life situation faced by the rep.
So to sum up the challenge is how does a rep get a minute more in the physician clinic every call and he can develop himself continuously to increase his value in the physicians mind.
In my opinion need of the hour is the mindset training to enhance his ability to think win-win, communicate win-win and maintain resilience in most of the challenging situations.