Sales professionalism 4

We will start our article today by a question any one work in sales can ask it to himself. The question is what makes professional sales person (medical rep)? Or we can ask; have you met a professional sales person or medical rep before? From your point of view what makes him so professional.

We can collect many answers for these questions but we want to look to the whole picture. Any professional must have three important characters:   Attitude, Knowledge and Skills, what we call ASK or KSA.

These three characters are also the axis for human development, combine and interrelated to makes your habits and behavior.

Let’s discuss each one in details

Attitude which is the way you look at things in your life, positive or negative. We don’t exaggerate when we say that attitude is everything. Medical rep must have a positive attitude. Attitude is a pattern of life and the most important character all company hire medical rep for it.

There are also many characters for successful medical reps or sales people but no one fixed pattern to measure with it. One quality is vital, two or three are desirable, and several more can be helpful. The most important qualities are:

ü Enthusiasm: Real enthusiasm is contagious. Those who are able to infect others with their enthusiasm will be undoubtedly successful. Unfortunately enthusiasm is not a quality which can be learned or easily adopted. It’s a born character in sales person so till now in our articles professional sales person is born. So medical rep must be enthusiastic about:

1-    His company and  its products, this will help him to sell and  other skills will help him to sell more

2-    His sales career, Sees his job as a start to managerial ladder (career path) not a low level job. If he is not enthusiastic , no amount of product knowledge or selling skills will raise his results above average.

ü Sincerity: Is the quality that allows medical rep to be regarded as trusted advisor.  Sincere medical rep knows what the best is for their doctors & also best for him in the long term. Medical rep sincere to himself, to his company by avoiding the false visits which has a bad impact on his sales career.

ü Determination that when potential doctors reject a product; some medical reps often those with most product enthusiasm take it as a personal rejection. The frequent rejection which is part of the medical rep’s work. This can sap energy and enthusiasm and requires considerable determination and resilience to withstand.

So if your doctor doesn’t prescribe remember that you may; Choose the wrong customer or your product doesn’t match with his need, or you may not discover this need yet.

There are many other characters like: Energetic, Intelligent (can deal with difficult situation), Sense of humor (But don’t play the role of the clown ), A good listener , Smart appearance (Neat-  Clean – Neutral)  – First impression is the last impression, Has the willingness to grow , Self-motivated , Patient , Dynamic ,  Active , Creative (looking for new ways to do things ), Building rapport with the customers, Excellent Time Management (Punctual, always on time), Reach agreement , Avoids confrontations , Cooperative with his colleagues (A good member of a team), Smiley face (Able to remove the barriers).

All medical rep asked me in all training sessions about how they can make a good impression with their customers and i reply with three words. To make a good impression to any one you must care of the way you Look, Act and Speak.

This means you must care of your appearance and personal hygiene. You must care about your action and promises to your customer and don’t overpromise him. The last one is your voice tone while you are speaking to the customer your voice tone reflect your self-confidence and enthusiasm.