Transactional customers often seem pretty clear cut. The customer wants it so they buy it off you because you stock it at a competitive price... But is it really that simple? Are your customers dropping off because the process you have in place for your customers doesn’t make it easy enough for them to buy?

I’ve come across this many times when trying to order products online, often online stores over complicate the process in turn forcing me to abort the process leaving me frustrated and annoyed. In my opinion the saying “Keep it Simple Stupid” is alive and well! This is backed up by recent statistics showing that up to 75% of all shopping carts are abandoned before completing the sale.

Imagine if you could turn this around? Here are the top reasons for a highly transactional customer not completing the sale are:

1. High shipping prices (72%)
2. Comparison shopping or browsing (61%)
3. Changed mind (56%)
4. Saving items for later purchase (51%)
5. Total cost of items is too high (43%)
6. Checkout process is too long (41%)
7. Checkout requires too much personal information (35%)
8. Site requires registration before purchase (34%)
9. Site is unstable or unreliable (31%)
10. Checkout process is confusing (27%)

As you can see from the list above a few factors are out of our control, but once you get further down the list you will see these complaints stem from poor system design.

Investing a little time correcting what annoys your transactional customers could significantly increase your sales. By removing barriers you are adding value in the customers eyes. It will increase the chances of the customer coming back at a later date and they might even recommend you to others.

Succesful companies understand it is essential to create value for customers, employees and investors and that there is a inextricable link between these three. Right now I’m going to focus on one aspect which is being talked about a lot in the pharmaceutical industry: creating value for customers.

If you ask around you’ll find the thinking on creating value in the pharmaceutical industry can range from clinical discussions on disease management solutions, to key behaviours of a successful call, to a total rethink of the whole pharmaceutical industry. “Value creation” has become a well-coined phrase to mean many things to many different people so for the purpose of this discussion and to help increase the “value” it has for you, I think it is important to define what we mean by value creation in pharmaceutical customer engagements.

For the customer, it is about delivering products, providing services and creating interactions that customers find consistently useful. In today's pharma economy, with the days of big block-busters long gone, this is about understanding each customers unique needs and providing valuable insight during the customer-interaction itself.

What is the value of the sales force to the customer?

A question I have heard a lot recently is “So what is the value of the pharmaceutical sales force to the customer?”. The reason I believe I’m hearing it a lot is that more and more across the industry customers’ doors are closing, sales growth is flat lining, sales forces are being cut, trust is eroding and profits are falling. Given this kind of market environment many are now logically extending the question to “what is the value of the sales force to our organisation?”. These are serious questions with far reaching consequences if left unaddressed by a modern pharmaceutical sales force.

During Huthwaite’s ground-breaking research and analysis of sales calls we identified a phenomenon that at first glance appeared to be counter intuitive: in a significant number of cases where customers reported that they saw the product as an interchangeable commodity, they still did not choose the lowest-cost product. Naturally, this led us to wonder why these customers were willing to pay a premium for what was essentially a commodity, and so we went back and asked them. Their answers helped us identify 4 drivers which created value in the customer-sales representative interaction itself.

1. Uncover the unrecognised problem: Sales representatives helped healthcare providers see problems in their own organisation that they would not have seen without the expertise of the sales representative
   
2. Offer the unanticipated solution: Sales representatives were able to chart a better solution or achieve a better outcome for the customer than they could have realised on their own.
3. Reveal an unseen opportunity: Sales representatives had utilised their industry knowledge and product expertise to show the customer a previously unseen opportunity
4. Be a broker of capabilities: Sales representatives brought to bear the full array of their company’s resources to produce a better outcome for the customer.

These Four Value Drivers are not based on theory or hear-say. Healthcare providers establish consultative relationships based on the specific and concrete skills and behaviours that sellers employ that ‘create value’. Products must be first-rate. The sales representative’s services must be regarded as “good” or “excellent” by the customer. But these are just the pre-conditions of the customer looking for something more than a purely transactional relationship.

With this in mind, ask yourself this question “What is the value of the sales representative to our customers?”, or more precisely “What are your sales representatives currently doing during a sales call that the customer would be willing to pay a premium for”. Now test those answers, because ‘have an excellent relationship’ and ‘we are easy to deal with’ are no longer enough to differentiate your team or your product in this marketplace.

In today’s competitive environment and when customers are under increasing time-pressure, it is the sales force that can deliver solutions to healthcare providers within the framework of a value-oriented, customer-centric relationship that will win – win market share, sustain customer relationships and erect enormous barriers to competition.

• Can you say as a pharmaceutical company you do that yet?
• Do you have metrics in place that measure how your sales force is creating value for your customers?
• Does your sales force really know what your customers value in their interactions with them?
• Is everyone on the same page when it comes to value-creation?

The pharmaceutical sales force that makes this transition to a true value-creating interaction has the opportunity to fundamentally change its sales representative-customer engagement. Further, these changes offer the first-to-adapt a fertile and virtually untapped marketplace. Those that are late to implement these changes, or is slow to adapt, may find that it is losing market share to more nimble competitors who are adding value in a way that physicians really care about.

Keep up-to-date on the healthcare industry. Join the Huthwaite Pharma and Medical Devices LinkedIn group here.

Whitepaper: Creating Real Value for Healthcare Providers

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This free whitepaper provides some great sales strategies to employ and some to avoid.
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Why is sales coaching so neglected, especially for the sales superstars? If great coaching is such a critical component of success, why is it so largely ignored in the sales effectiveness industry? The reasons are many and varied, and we shall look at some of them as we progress. But let us reflect for a moment on a few of the most obvious reasons that sales coaching is disregarded.

The first reason is that sales coaching is hard. Many top performers are prima donnas (don’t misunderstand us – they are prima donnas, and need to be treated as such), and are simply not easy to coach. The second reason is that there is a lack of great coaches. Many managers were promoted from being sales stars themselves and were never trained in coaching. The skill sets required for selling and coaching have little in common. (Tiger Woods would likely triumph over Butch Harmon in even the friendliest of golf matches... every time.) Thirdly, where does a busy manager find the time to coach? For great coaches it is not about incremental time; it is about using what little coaching time may exist wisely; discarding non-productive behaviours and replacing them with productive behaviours. It is also about choosing the right salespeople to coach and not spreading the time over the gamut thinly (more on this shortly). And finally, most organisations do not support a coaching culture. We shall look at this in some depth later.

The reason we need sales coaches is that we simply cannot see our own swing; we humans are notoriously bad at self analysis. Many top performers haven’t a clue what it is they do that is so successful. Huthwaite research actually reveals that there is very little relation between what top salespeople say is effective and what they do in the field. We need another with a critical eye to see our strengths and help us build on them; to recognise our weaknesses and help us compensate for - or control - them. Gallup research shows a significant link between great salespeople and their managers. Wherever they found a great salesperson, a great manager was not far behind. Indeed, the Gallup research shows that salespeople with the right managers can improve their performance up to 20 percent.

Perhaps the strongest argument for sales coaching is this; however good your skills training in the classroom, unless it’s followed up on the job, most of its effectiveness is lost. The Xerox Corporation carried out several studies, one of which showed that in the absence of follow-up coaching, 87 percent of the skills change brought about by the program was lost. That’s 87 cents out of every skills dollar. Knowledge training, on the other hand, generally shows a much smaller loss.

The reason for this painful finding lies in the nature of a skill. By definition, a new skill feels awkward and uncomfortable. It doesn’t bring instant results. Think of any skill you’ve tried to change, such as your golf swing, your presentation style or your methods of handling your children. Does the change bring instant success? Almost certainly not.

In learning most skills, we go through an awkward period where the skill doesn’t feel natural and isn’t bringing results. This period, sometimes called the “results dip,” or “incorporation lag,” is a bad time for most people. However, those who persevere gain the expected reward.

If the learner continues with the new behaviour, the skill feels more and more natural and begins to result in better sales performance.

What does this have to do with coaching? Coaching is the only way to keep a new skill reinforced and encouraged during the dismal period of the results dip. Without coaching, very few people can maintain a newly acquired skill. When we are in the results dip, we abandon the new skill. Particularly in sales training, our evaluation studies show that classroom methods are almost useless for skills development without effective follow-up coaching. Most salespeople try out the new skills for a few calls only to find that they feel awkward, and the new method isn’t bringing instant results. So, they go back to their old ways.

However excellent your classroom training, without good coaching you are probably wasting 87 cents out of every skills dollar you spend. Coaching is the only cost-effective way to reinforce new behaviours and skills until a learner is through the dangerous results dip. Once through the dip, when the new skills bring results, they will become self-reinforcing.

It is clear, then, that sales coaching is imperative. The question then becomes: Who do we coach? Time is limited, and we may have more people reporting to us than is optimal (an 8 to 1 ratio is optimal, but not always practical or actual). So then where is coaching time best served? Our research has made this a fairly clear cut determination. It is not about equality, but rather about fairness and good business sense.

Six Characteristics of World Class Sales Coaches:

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This paper details how to make your coaching efforts more effective.
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Bruce Wedderburn, a global expert in sales, and Huthwaite's Vice President of International Operations, will be in Singapore for a series of presentations that will guide corporations to improved pipelines, more accurate forecasting and maximised profit from sales.

In leaner times, bottom lines were protected by cutbacks; but growth in late 2009 and 2010 bolstered revenues. Wedderburn says, "The big question being asked by companies as they budget for 2011 is how to maintain that revenue growth and do it in a way that drives significant increases in profitability per client, per deal, per region, per sales person."

He says that sticking with GFC legacy strategies - costimising then reliance on top line growth - will hold back organisations from capitalising on the current marketplace.

In his addresses to CEO's, CFO's and sales leaders, Wedderburn will reveal how to build on top-line revenue improvements of 2010 to advance bottom line results in 2011. He will also explain why commonly employed "best practice" metrics for predicting sales results are in fact unconsciously increasing sales costs and hindering margin growth. He will highlight some of the common and rarely detected sales practices that are silently eating away at every company's bottom line.

As well as predictive metrics falling under Wedderburn's analysis, he will also debunk the belief that having a large number of opportunities in the early stages of a sales pipeline is advantageous. He will outline strategies for addressing bottlenecks to accelerate sales and discuss strategies that have been proven to increase the probability of closing a deal.

Breakfast Seminar in Singapore: Date: Tuesday, 26 October 2010 Time: 7:00am - 9:00am Venue: Raffles City Convention Centre, 80

For details on how to book visit here.