Sales professionalism 5

The second character of professional sales person or medical rep is knowledge, as we know knowledge is power. Also we can say unknown is the main reason to fear so salesperson must sharp himself with knowledge.

There are many types of knowledge like:

A-    Product knowledge: You must know all things about your product like composition, active ingredient, etc… It is important to any salesperson but to medical rep it is absolutely vital. It must be comprehensive in both breadth and in depth. It gives medical rep self-confidence and helps him to answer any inquiry from customer.

You must be sure that No doctors up to most seniors have greater product knowledge than your own. It does not need to be displayed to every doctor you meet to prove how much you know. Take a pride in your product knowledge and try to make sure that it is always up to date.

B-    Competitor knowledge: Knowledge of competitors’ products is just as important as knowledge of your own product; it can give you a Considerable promotional advantage. The degree of competitor knowledge depends upon the importance of a particular product as a competitor. You need product knowledge for 2-3 most important competitors as much depth as for your own product. Be careful not to fall into the trap of promoting a competitor drug by mentioning its name more frequently than that of your own.

Remember to make a strength and weakness analysis of your own product and competitors one. In sales call make highlights on strength (selling points) of your product and also highlights the weakness of competitor one when it’s important in the call.

C-    Customer knowledge: When you first start it will be limited but it will grow with every visit to the doctors or pharmacists. Most medical reps have too many doctors in their territory to remember every detail of every Doctor it’s impossible, therefore some kind of record system is essential (customers list).

It is more useful when you get more details especially for potential customer.

It does require effort, but the results are well worthwhile.

You must also know that your customers is different in potentiality and remember that 20% of your customers will make 80% of your business. So those customers are very important you must give them more time and care them well. You must also try to build long relation with them.

D-   Territory knowledge; You are a manager of your territory so you must now everything about it like number of customers, types of customers like doctors, Pharmacies ,hospitals and distributors. You must also classify those customers into A, B, C and determine which group will be 20% and set your plan according to this classification. You must also know geographic , economic and commerce of your territory.

E-     Medical knowledge: Professional medical rep needs to know a great deal about the disease areas in which products are used and the current                 opinion about managing those diseases. He must update his medical knowledge through clinical papers, journals, text books and training materials.

In the next article we will begin to discuss the most important character of professional medical rep which is selling skills, we will go deeply through the steps of sales call. Don’t miss the next article ….