5 common bad habits in medical sales jobs

Posted on August 22, 2008



I was a medical
sales manager for several years. Quite often, the best performers
were simply those who were disciplined in doing things the right way.
Unfortunately, the medical reps job seemed to lull people into bad
habits which destroyed their performance. If you are new to the
role, here’s 5 of the most common bad habits to look out for.

  • Repeat
    calling on the same group of core customers. Repeat calling on
    customers is, of course, necessary to generate growth in medical
    sales. In fact, statistically, you won’t get any real benefit until
    you’ve seen a Doctor 3 to 4 times. However, what many do, often
    driven by call rate targets, is resort to a circuit seeing the same
    group of people over and over again, some as frequently as once a
    week or more. This is clearly not going to generate business.
    Indeed what often occurs is that reps get too close to the customer
    to be able to sell to them.

Call rate
targets are daunting, but be brave and challenge yourself to achieve
them by constantly attempting to call on new customers. Ultimately
this will win you far more business.

  • Not selling
    to customers! There can be a number of reasons for this, the first
    of which is point one. The second most common reason is the fact
    that pharmaceuticals in particular are a more technical medical
    sales call. Many reps can get carried away with a ‘consultative’
    approach to calls such that there is little or no ‘persuasion’
    present to gain the extra business. If you go down this road you
    become a billboard, you’d just as well drive by, shout your product
    name and shower them in branded pens. If you followed a structured
    sales approach to your calls you will sell so much more.