Pharma sales representatives in customer assessments: Astonishing and disturbing results
02.09.2011 13:20
Even if many sales representatives believe that they know “their” doctors and their satisfaction, it turns out that there are significant discrepancies between their own image and the image of others, which prevent the customer's potential from being exploited as much as possible. Regional customer satisfaction analyzes can close this gap and help to significantly increase customer and territory success.
“If my doctors were dissatisfied, I would be the first to notice!” This is how, or similar to Peter R., the majority of the twenty sales representatives who were employed as part of a study by the Institute for Business Analysis, Consulting and Strategy Development (IFABS) put it. determined the satisfaction of their customers.
However, analyzes of this success-critical variable have so far only focused on the effects of individual service instruments (e.g. events) or are carried out globally in the form of random samples for entire field services, but not based on the work of the individual employee. Although consultants are trained and trained uniformly by the company, each individual influences doctor satisfaction very differently due to their individual personality traits, the way they conduct the conversation, the extent of their expertise and the services offered.
The target group for the regional IFABS customer satisfaction analysis was 65 randomly selected practicing physicians in each area. The analysis was carried out with the help of a questionnaire, which was handed over by the employees in combination with a personal letter explaining the action and sent by fax to our institute. The subject of the study was the key performance areas “conversation management”, “competence” and “service”, supplemented by open questions about the doctors' strengths, weaknesses and requests for change in the care.
Before the survey began, all pharmaceutical consultants were asked to rate, from their perspective, both the average overall satisfaction of their customers with their care and the average expected importance and satisfaction ratings for the individual performance characteristics.
The evaluation of the study revealed surprising results for the employees involved, e.g. T. disturbing results:
(1) Comparison of self-image and external image
Even if the employees were consistently of the opinion that they knew “their” doctors and their satisfaction, for example, T. considerable discrepancies between the self-image and the image of others. Overall satisfaction was overestimated, feature importance was underestimated and satisfaction was overestimated. The greatest differences between self-perception and external perception were found in the quality of the conversation, but also in the effect of the services offered. The average overall satisfaction from an employee perspective was 2.1, the average doctor satisfaction was actually 3.2.
(2) Customer satisfaction
For the study group, it emerged that the care provided by 14 of the 20 employees did not meet the doctor's requirements. The reasons for this were different depending on the employee, but what they all had in common was that, from the doctor's perspective, the information provided was insufficiently practical, there was not enough competence in the area of patient management and insufficient support for doctors in their entrepreneurial activities
Peter R. had to note that his estimated overall satisfaction of 2.5 (school grade scale) was compared to an actual rating of 4.1. In particular, his approach of putting the mechanism of action of his main preparation at the forefront of his discussions did not meet with a positive response. “Penetrant”, “Theoretical”, “Tiring” were just some of the criticisms. On the other hand, he was certified as having a high level of professional competence, both medically and health-related. His customers saw another avenue for optimization in support services with regard to practice management.
Conclusion
Even if many sales representatives believe that they know “their” doctors and their satisfaction, it turns out that there are significant discrepancies between their own image and the image of others, which prevent the customer's potential from being exploited as much as possible. Regional customer satisfaction analyzes can close this gap and help to significantly increase customer and territory success
The analysis instruments used for the study have now been made available for widespread practical use. Under the title “Regional Customer Satisfaction Analysis”, field staff have access to the materials they need as well as the evaluation and creation of an analysis report (max. 100 doctors). The system provides answers to the following key questions to increase the success of area work:
– How satisfied are the target doctors in an area with the field service support?
– Which care services are particularly important for the area doctors, and which are less so?
– Where are the strengths, weaknesses and previously unused opportunities in employee work?
– How well does the employee’s own image of the doctor’s care match the customer’s external image?
– How good is your own quality of support compared to other pharmaceutical sales representatives?
– How can an employee present their performance potential internally and externally with regard to their career development?