Challenges in the field operations with field-force – Medical Delegates

It is a penultimate period of pharmaceutical marketing since more new competitors are finding new ways to enter the market without any entry barrier. This competition reflects an epic example of the “higher the quantity lowers the quality” theory. It all depends on how the firm manages or drive medical delegates towards its corporate goals. Let’s further discuss challenges in field operations with the field force or medical delegates.

Taking into account the current situation, higher & middle management finding it difficult to maintain the field force ethics & discipline to perfection. Below mentioned areas of improvements are for an open discussion to take Pharma marketing to the next level.

Challenges with the Z generation medical delegates

Generation Z medical delegates started to arrive into the workforce with no prior experiences. Interestingly, at the initial stage what they do is basically, what they see or what they feel is correct or rather go with the norms.

Unplanned customer visits by medical delegates

Even though first impressions matter a lot, most Medical Representatives are going with obscure minds at the first meeting of the doctor. Indeed, this is a result of having no proper pre-call plan or a customer background analysis. Moreover, medical representatives tend to deliver a conservative or a patten detailing to doctors which feels odd to the customer. Importantly, those costly boring customer visits underdeliver all the time. This makes the customer feel annoying & they try to give close-ended answers in terms of getting rid of this mess. Perhaps, you may like to try trending storytelling instead of traditional medical detailing. Read our article about pharma storytelling here.

So rather than going with a premeditated mindset, medical representatives should do a sound background analysis of the customer. Further, they should learn how to handle the situations accordingly. Firstly, need to understand the status quo of the customer’s mind & then need to pitch accordingly. Field supervisors role is vital at this point of the state, they need to set an example that subordinates could follow.

Expressions and Presentations

Good sellers needed to use their full force of arms to get the customer convinced. Body language is a vital part of it. Being too close or too far physically will make the doctor feel uncomfortable. Being either too or low expressive well will have an impact on the effectiveness of the call. So medical representatives should have a good physical distance & pleasant facial expressions (kind of animated) as well other postures in a positive manner for a productive call.

Verbal disciplines of medical delegates

Verbal discipline is another area that needs to have deep concerns. This could be divided into a few different areas. Such as Language discipline, Pace of speech, Tone of speech. Language discipline matters a lot since the words & terms that are used by medical delegates could affect the productivity of the call. 

So, using proper words, using correct terms is one vital area medical representatives should concern about. Common issues faced by medical representatives are speaking too fast or too slow. When it is too fast the message would not be clear to the customer. But being too slow also will underutilize the given time. So, pitching at the correct pace is important. The tone of speech is another most common complaint made by the customer regarding medical representatives. Either too arrogant or too calm voice tones more commonly seen by medical representatives nowadays. Being too arrogant will make the customers tend to refuse the medical representatives. However, using a too calm voice tone customer will feel the representative low in confidence.

Building the rapport

Pharmaceutical marketing is based on the personal selling method. Thus the representatives needed to build rapport with customers for successful business creation. Building rapport is a different method of art. It comes through mutual understandings, mutual trusts, mutual beliefs & many other factors.

The medical representative becomes more or less of a messenger. Customers do meet 10 medical representatives on an average day. Hence, just being a messenger generates nothing good for both parties. Good medical representatives should have the capabilities of building productive discussions, matching the interests, ultimately being at par with the customer’s state of mind.

All in all, the medical delegate’s job profile was a professional one & should be more professional in future, as well. Continuous training, keeping an eye on current affairs, discovering new knowledge will give a solid armoury of options for medical representatives. Using them to perfection & choosing the correct targets to aim at is still up to the person who handles the situations though.